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The Narendra Modi government’s new proposal of a Venture Capital Fund (VCF) dedicated for defence industries is a reaffirmation of the Centre’s “fetish for funds”, writes Raghav Bahl, co-founder and chairman of Quintillion Media, in a column for Bloomberg Quint.
This fetish, he writes, is “not for raising, but creating” the funds. The proposal is quite unique and simple – Every vendor who sells armaments to India has to compulsorily invest 30 percent of the contract value in domestic industries.
Since India is a huge buyer of foreign arsenal, an estimated Rs 30,000 crore could flow into VCFs over the next 5 years, even if only 25 percent of the total offset obligation is infused, according to the government.
While that might sound like good news, here’s the catch: Given the government’s past record, will it impose a complex web of conditions on it, ruining it entirely?
Read the full article on BloombergQuint.
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