New Delhi, March 24: India is offering its
indigenously-built Advanced Light Helicopters (ALHs) Dhruv to Indonesia but
taking out a leaf from its experience in Latin America it will be clubbing
maintenance and training in the package as well.
If Indian defence diplomacy gets through the deal the ALHs
will be operating in China’s backyard and it would be nothing sort of a coup
with the Indian-built helicopters operating from Chinese background.
A Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) official told me, “We
will be making our offer for ALHs to Indonesia and this time with training and
maintenance package as our experience in Ecuador has taught us.” ALHs, made by
Hindustan Aeronautics Limited and supplied to Ecuador, had crashed bringing a
bad name to the home-built choppers.
India does not have a defence export policy but it does have
a secret list of countries that it will not be selling the defence equipment
to. Recently, India has been pushing its defence diplomacy to help the
countries in the South-East Asian region – namely Indonesia and Vietnam – to
develop potent armed forces. So far the defence element of cooperation between
these countries have been largely focussed on training armed forces personnel
and joint wargames.
