Bharat Forge exhibited its first artillery gun in 2012: 'Army guys laughed, not one stopped to look'

In 2012, at a defence exhibition in Delhi, few noticed the artillery gun Bharat Forge had built. "A lot of army guys walked by, some laughed at it. But not a single guy stopped to even see what the hell it was. It was for a simple reason that they did not believe that some Indian company called Bharat Forge could make guns. Everybody believed in imports," company chairman Baba Kalyani recalled in a podcast - New India Junction.

"They just believed that global suppliers were the best, and were the people to go to," said Bharat Forge Joint MD Amit Kalyani, who was also part of the conversation. Baba Kalyani said that in those days, hardly any Indian company ever exhibited products. "It was all done by foreign companies. Few companies like us had enough courage to say - we also make something." 

Baba Kalyani revealed that the idea of diversification of Bharat Forge's traditional forging business and entering defence manufacturing came after the 2008 financial crisis. "This idea of defence came into my mind...somewhere around 2011. Somehow I have fascination for guns. Because I went to military schools, a lot of friends are generals, retired generals, naval chiefs, air marshals, most of my classmates retired as senior people in armed forces,” he said. 

"So that created a little affinity for me — why is India not able to make artillery guns? Look at artillery guns, it is full of forging. It is another form of forging and metallurgy industry. A thought came to my mind — why don't we use our metallurgical and forging knowledge to make artillery guns."

At the time, defence production was largely a public sector monopoly. He pointed out that when India imported 400 artillery guns from Bofors, Sweden had given a complete technology transfer package for the country to make guns domestically. However, he said, private players were not allowed to manufacture defence equipment. "In those days, defence equipment was made by only ordnance factories and defence public sector companies. There was no private sector involvement," Kalyani said.

Even political outreach met with silence. "I even went to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh once. He said go and meet (AK) Antony, then defence minister. I met him, he listened to me for 15-20 minutes. He said — thank you very much. I walked out. I got no response. That's how it was in those days."

Despite the pushback, Bharat Forge moved ahead. "We make guns at half the prices of imports. Price is not the problem," Kalyani said, adding that things began to shift after Narendra Modi became Prime Minister. "In December 2014, he had a conference in Vigyan Bhavan — Make in India. I took part in that conclave on the defence side. We had to make a document along with the defence secretary, industries that participated — that started the process of Make in India."

The breakthrough came under the late Manohar Parrikar. "He was somebody who understood the problems that were involved in indigenising defence products — both from the policy framework point of view and from all implementation issues. He formed committees to change the entire defence procurement process — DPP 2016 was formulated. That was the trigger of what we see today. I wish Parrikar would be alive today, he would have taken defence industry even much further,” Kalyani said.

The delays in reform had lasting effects. When asked why countries like China and South Korea surged ahead in the 1990s while India stagnated, Kalyani pointed out, "The biggest reason is that we focused everything in the public sector. We did not bring private sector in defence sector at all till almost 2014, when PM Modi came in and took charge."

He also added that government regulations smothered innovation. "If you work in the public sector, you spend ₹100 on something, some guy from the finance department will ask you why have you spent it. So they have too many financial regulations. You spend large portion of your time in answering and keeping your paperwork right instead of doing some creative work."

His son, Amit Kalyani, shared a moment that captured this inertia. "One of the times when I went with my father to Manohar Parrikar. My father had a file with him from 1976 or 77. My father had made a proposal to make some defence equipment for the MoD and presented it to then officials...and all the correspondence till that day (Parrikar came in 2016) — that product was still being imported. And in 1976, he had made the proposal to indigenise that."