France,
the only major Western country not to impose sanctions on India after
the 1998 Pokhran-II tests, already has three big defence projects with
India – the Rs 23,562-crore for Scorpene submarines, the Rs 10,947-crore
upgrade of Mirage-2000s and the Rs 6,600-crore acquisition of MICA
missile systems. Now, it has bagged the Rafale deal.
by M K Shukla
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selection of Dassault Rafale to meet the Indian Air Force’s requirement
of a Medium Multirole Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) was deliberately kept as
low key as the short-listing of Rafale and Eurofighter. The objective
was clearly not to attract too much attention to the deal in the middle
of critical assembly elections, where the Congress Party had entered the
arena with clear indictment of its role in disbursement of highly
profitable 2G contracts.
But
the MMRCA story did attract attention because of the twists in the
final capping process, starting from the Request for Information (RFI)
to the Request for Proposal (RFP), and from short listing to the final
selection........readmore
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