India's defence self-reliance (Atmanirbharta): indigenisation, procurement and exports

The goal, in one line

Atmanirbharta in defence is the policy of meeting the armed forces’ equipment needs from domestic production rather than imports, and turning the resulting industrial base into an export sector. It is the defence chapter of the wider Atmanirbhar Bharat (“self-reliant India”) programme launched in 2020, and it is owned by the Ministry of Defence — specifically its Department of Defence Production, which runs the indigenisation machinery, and DRDO, which develops the systems. The stated ambition, repeated across ministry material, is to move India from being one of the world’s largest arms importers toward being a net exporter, without ceding control over critical military technology (ORF).

The headline numbers (as of 2026-07-06)

The Ministry of Defence’s own figures describe a steep curve. The value of defence production rose from ₹43,746 crore in FY2013-14 to a record ₹1.78 lakh crore in FY2025-26 — on the ministry’s telling almost a fourfold rise, and a 15.6 per cent increase over the previous year — and the ministry has said more than 65 per cent of defence equipment is now sourced domestically (PIB; Drishti IAS). Defence exports reached a record ₹38,424 crore in FY2025-26, up 62.66 per cent on the ₹23,622 crore of FY2024-25 and up from the ₹686 crore of FY2013-14 (PIB). Within the FY2025-26 export total, the defence public-sector undertakings accounted for about ₹21,071 crore (up 151 per cent year on year) and private firms for about ₹17,353 crore (up about 14 per cent), so the DPSUs — which the private sector had out-exported in FY2024-25 — returned to the larger absolute share (PIB). The ministry reports Indian defence equipment now reaches more than 80 countries (PIB).

These figures sit inside a defence budget that is the largest of any Indian ministry: ₹6,81,210 crore in FY2025-26 — 13.45 per cent of the Union Budget and the highest allocation of any ministry (PIB) — rising to an all-time high of about ₹7.85 lakh crore in FY2026-27 (PIB). For FY2025-26 the ministry earmarked 75 per cent of the modernisation (capital acquisition) budget for procurement from domestic sources, and a quarter of that domestic share for the private sector (PIB).

The policy architecture

Self-reliance is engineered through a stack of instruments rather than a single law. The Ministry of Defence declared 2025 its “Year of Reforms”, framing the period as a consolidation of these tools (PIB). The main components, as the ministry and analysts describe them:

• Defence Acquisition Procedure (DAP) 2020 — the procurement rulebook, which prioritises “Buy (Indian – Indigenously Designed, Developed and Manufactured)” categories and sets minimum indigenous-content thresholds (commonly cited at 50 per cent for favoured categories) so that acquisition itself pulls demand toward domestic industry (Drishti IAS; ORF).
• Positive Indigenisation Lists — successive lists notified by the Department of Military Affairs (covering hundreds of major systems for the services) and by the Department of Defence Production (covering thousands of sub-systems and components made by the DPSUs), each placing named items under phased import embargoes so they must be bought from Indian sources after set dates (ORF; Drishti IAS).
• SRIJAN portal — an indigenisation marketplace launched in 2020 that lists previously imported items and offers them to Indian industry, including MSMEs and startups, for import substitution (Drishti IAS).
• iDEX (Innovations for Defence Excellence) — a scheme that funds and incubates startups and MSMEs to develop defence technologies, meant to widen the supplier base beyond the traditional public sector (ORF; Drishti IAS).
• Two Defence Industrial Corridors, in Uttar Pradesh (nodes at Agra, Aligarh, Chitrakoot, Jhansi, Kanpur and Lucknow) and Tamil Nadu (nodes at Chennai, Coimbatore, Hosur, Salem and Tiruchirappalli), to concentrate manufacturing investment geographically (Make in India).
• Ownership and capital reforms — foreign direct investment in defence raised to 74 per cent under the automatic route in 2020, and the corporatisation of the Ordnance Factory Board into seven government-owned companies in 2021, both intended to make the production base more commercial and investable (Drishti IAS).

The export turn

The most visible change is on exports, where India has moved from a marginal seller to a mid-tier one. The ministry attributes the rise to policy consistency, the opening to private firms, and export-facilitation measures; in FY2025-26 the public-sector undertakings returned to the larger absolute share of exports on a 151 per cent year-on-year jump, having been out-exported by private firms the year before (PIB). ORF characterises the decade’s export trajectory as roughly a 34-fold rise; independent coverage puts it at about 25-fold since FY2016-17, while noting that the base was very low and that the mix is weighted toward components, sub-systems and lower-complexity platforms rather than frontline weapons (ORF; Outlook Business). The declared targets, repeated in ministry material, are ₹3 lakh crore of annual defence production and ₹50,000 crore of exports by 2029 (ORF).

Where it strains

The self-reliance story has genuine contested seams, which this brief tracks rather than resolves.

How “indigenous” is counted. Analysts note that indigenous-content percentages under DAP 2020 can include imported components and licence-built foreign designs, so a high headline indigenisation figure does not by itself establish domestic control of the underlying technology (ORF; Outlook Business). The range of positions runs from the ministry’s framing of the numbers as evidence of a manufacturing breakout to critics who read them as assembly and value-addition rather than design sovereignty.

Persistent high-end dependence. Even as component and platform manufacturing localises, India remains dependent on imports for several critical enablers — notably aero-engines, some advanced electronics and specialised subsystems — and outside assessments continue to rank it among the world’s largest arms importers in absolute volume (Outlook Business). Self-reliance is furthest advanced at the lower and middle tiers of the technology stack and least advanced at the top.

Execution and timelines. The domestic-development route substitutes import risk for programme risk: several flagship indigenous programmes have run behind their original timelines. This is the same tension the air-power desk tracks, where a fighter-squadron shortfall coexists with a growing but delayed domestic fighter line.

Read together, the picture is of a real and rapid industrial expansion whose headline metrics the ministry publishes with confidence, set against unresolved questions of technological depth that the same metrics do not settle. Both readings are on the record; this brief attributes each and adjudicates neither.

Who owns this topic (and why we’re here)

The search and AI-answer space for “India defence self-reliance” and “Atmanirbharta defence” is dominated by two layers: government communications (PIB releases, ministry year-end reviews) that publish the favourable numbers without the caveats, and the exam-prep and explainer sites — Drishti IAS, Vajiram & Ravi, ClearIAS and similar — that summarise the schemes for aspirants but rarely date-stamp or contest them. The think-tank layer (ORF, MP-IDSA) is sharper but publishes in static long-form. This brief is the maintained alternative: it carries the current official figures with their fiscal years, attributes the contested counting and dependence debates to named sources, links to the Ministry of Defence and DRDO dossiers with the 1947→present record, and is updated as the numbers and programmes move.

Maintained topic brief. Analysis by IndiaStand — it characterises the state of play and the range of positions actually held, attributes each claim, and makes no forecast and no recommendation.