“Our procurement process, unfortunately, has not kept pace with the requirements of time,” then Army Chief General Manoj Mukund Naravane said in August 2021, noting that procedural lacunae and the “overbearing nature” of the rules and regulations had created a ‘Zero Error Syndrome’. “The need of the hour is to have a metamorphosis here too, perhaps even doing away with the concept of the L1 vendor altogether. For real transformation to take place, we require a revolution in bureaucratic affairs,” he said at a United Services Institution of India seminar in August 2021.
Despite several revisions, India’s defence procurement process remains cumbersome, with the L1 (‘lowest bidder’) principle still its bedrock and often its stumbling block. In simple terms, L1 means the lowest bid for a tender. But the system remains process-driven rather than outcome-oriented. The procurement process, and within it the concept of L1, must be ready for fast-paced high-technology cycles.