Whenever I see any content about the Indian Defense Industry, all Indians say that defence companies must be privatized in the comments .I see there are some issues with bureaucracy but where does this neoliberalism come from?
It is common way to easily explain Indian under performance during the cold war era and relative success after it.
i.e earlier state-autarky and suppression of private sector....versus this changing by expansion of the latter in current era.
HAL for example was a private company to begin with, it was nationalised in the 50s.
It is of course more nuanced subject to get into....compared to just saying privatisation is some panacea to fix every issue in every single case and context (rather than look at the causal issues one by one, taking into account key details and context)
Running with argument that state owned companies naturally tend to cultivate lower accountability by virtue of being a shielded monopoly..... a similar thing can also happen if its privately owned but also ends up being a monopoly (say in developing country with scarce capital for initial investment and key stark priorities and opportunity costs regarding the decision tree etc).
There needs to be exposure domestically (i.e other suppliers that compete with you) or internationally (other markets you compete with suppliers there to sell something) to have competition pressure kick in and become something you can then analyse.
So If HAL was simply a domestic market monopoly (in the era of cold war where India's relations with Western countries and their markets were beset by difficulties for various reasons), it would not have mattered much if HAL was public or privately owned IMO.
In the current era though I welcome privatisation given the way international relations and market exposure has been successful in various economic sectors for India....with caveat of there needing to be control on certain strategic technologies related to the collective interest w.r.t say defense given things that still need to mature and grow regarding trust and reliance.
So what windchime explains by that diagram is likely optimal route in current juncture and foreseeable future of current Indian GDP size and era of transition.
It is what we see with say ISRO and DRDO increasingly....so progress of this into aerospace more broadly will continue in this format in general rather than simple thing people say as "privatize everything" (and tend to shy away if it should be so with ISRO).
i.e having HAL say being like ISRO as the final strategic integrator (govt owned) and growing private supply chain to largest extent possible first in current growth stage.
Later on GDP and capability may mature more for maybe 2 separate privately owned + public listed pyramids (even at the apex)....and simply have ADA as the liaison and design agency for govt project requests. i.e something like a Boeing vs Lockmart etc.
More proven capability behind you and market size + maturity, the more one can generally trust and automatically leverage on the private sector with time....even at the apex.
That trust doesnt exist to degree needed early on so there is more scope for govt to occupy the apex in the interim.
