The Hindu Business Line : <I>The training guns on ordnance units </I>

The Defence Ministry and its various establishments are entitled to hold ceremonies, march-pasts, parades, initiation rites and commanders' conferences. Obviously, during peace time, they have to remind the public of their presence, to impress upon the latter their invaluable contribution in safe guarding the nation. However, even civilian organisations, such as the Defence production units under the Ministry, engaged to execute routine back-office tasks of marketing, production and supply, fall into the trap.

Otherwise, the exhortation by the Defence Minister recently at the General Managers' Conference of the 39 Ordnance Factories could not have been as banal. He seemed to blame the Ordnance Factories organisation for ``working only as a departmental production agency without commercial orientation" and asked them to shed `old mindsets' and `secrecy'. The Minister went a step ahead and deplored that the performance of the Ordnance Factories was `discouraging' without saying how it was so, despite the Ministry's helping hand. He is right though.

The Factories' performance is none too encouraging. Although they claim to supply 80 per cent of their output to the Army, their share in the Army's receipts of goods is just around Rs 3,990 crore. Everyone knows that all big ticket and expensive items are imported. The Ordnance Factories output at Rs 3,071 crore in 1997-98 seems to be glacially moving up at less than 10 per cent compounded annual growth when GDP is growing at over 9 per cent and industrial output over 12 per cent. The Ordnance Factories' output was just about Rs 6,890 crore in 2006. At the same time, the output of Hindustan Aeronautics, an undertaking of the same Ministry, recorded a compounded annual growth of over 16 per cent, its turnover rising from Rs 1,838 crore in 1998 to Rs 6,000 crore in 2007. Of course, the Minister hit the nail on the head when he referred to the Ordnance Factories as just another government department. But, now, urging it to behave like a corporate is like asking a blind man to keep his eyes wide open and stare like a noble. It is quite amazing that in this fast-changing corporate scenario, particularly in the last five years, one organisation that has been untouched by reforms is the Ordnance Factories. It is not for want of awareness that such changes are required.

In the last decade alone, several consultants and committees were appointed to suggest ways of lifting the organisation from the `old mindset'. While their findings and practical suggestions are gathering dust, that the Minister should continue to berate the Ordnance Factories for not behaving like a modern autonomous corporation, is unkind, particularly when it has served the nation well in times of crisis.

(The author is former Member,

Ordnance Factories.)