Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: India’s sixth defence indigenisation list landed on Tuesday. Read the item classes rather than the headline number and something becomes obvious: there is not a single complete weapon system on it. That is not a shortcoming. That is the point.
The Department of Defence Production, Ministry of Defence, notified the sixth Positive Indigenisation List on 18 August — 405 strategically important items carrying an estimated business potential of ₹3,070 crore. Of the 405, 389 belong to Defence Public Sector Undertakings and 16 to the Indian Coast Guard. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, writing on X, said the move would expand opportunities for Indian industry, strengthen the domestic manufacturing ecosystem, promote investment and innovation, and reduce dependence on imports.
Now read what is actually on the list. The Ministry’s own description names Line Replaceable Units, sub-systems, sub-assemblies, spares, components and raw materials — for the Advanced Light Helicopter, the Light Utility Helicopter, the Su-30MKI, the Light Combat Aircraft and the AL-31FP engine; for the T-72, T-90 and BMP-II armoured platforms; for warships; for the Konkurs-M, Invar and MRSAM missile systems; for radars, sonars, fire-control and satellite communication systems; and for High Explosive Anti-Tank ammunition. Not one entry is a finished platform. Divide ₹3,070 crore by 405 and the average item on this list is worth about ₹7.58 crore. That is not an aircraft or a tank. It is a card, a casting, a bearing, a seeker component — the tier at which import dependence has always actually lived, and the tier that almost never makes a headline.
The sixth list, and the smallest average item yet: Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh in New Delhi on 17 August 2026, a day before the Department of Defence Production notified 405 items for indigenisation.
₹3,070 crore across 405 items is about ₹7.58 crore apiece. India has stopped announcing that it will build the aircraft, and started announcing that it will build the part inside it.
At a Glance
• Notified: 18 August 2026, Department of Defence Production, Ministry of Defence
• Sixth Positive Indigenisation List: 405 items
• Estimated business potential: ₹3,070 crore
• Split: 389 DPSU items • 16 Indian Coast Guard items
• Average value an item: about ₹7.58 crore
• Platforms covered: ALH, LUH, Su-30MKI, LCA, AL-31FP engine; T-72, T-90, BMP-II; warships; Konkurs-M, Invar, MRSAM
• SRIJAN portal (launched August 2020): more than 33,000 items offered to industry up to June 2026
• First five lists: 5,012 items notified
• Indigenised so far: more than 15,700 items • about ₹9,000 crore of import substitution over five years
• DPSU orders with domestic vendors: about ₹10,000 crore up to March 2026
Set the sixth list against the first five and the shape of the programme becomes clearer still. The first five lists together carried 5,012 items; the sixth carries 405. The lists are getting shorter, not longer — which is what happens when a programme stops sweeping up the easy substitutions and starts working through the residual, difficult ones. The conversion record behind them is the more interesting number, and it is one the announcement does not put in a single sentence. The SRIJAN portal, opened by the Department in August 2020 so that DPSUs and Service Headquarters could offer items to Indian industry, had carried more than 33,000 items up to June 2026. More than 15,700 have been successfully indigenised. That is a little under half of everything ever offered — a serious figure for a programme six years old, and an honest one, because it admits that the other half is still open.
The two money figures deserve to be read together as well. Import substitution over the last five years is put at about ₹9,000 crore; procurement orders placed by DPSUs with domestic vendors, including in-house production, at about ₹10,000 crore up to March 2026. The periods are not identical and the two should not be divided into one another as though they were, but their closeness says something worth saying plainly: the money being spent at home and the imports being displaced are moving at broadly similar scale, which is the outcome the policy was designed to produce. The constructive path from here is measurement of the same quality as the ambition. Each item on the sixth list already carries an indicative timeline for indigenisation; publishing performance against those timelines, and the offer-to-indigenisation conversion rate on SRIJAN by DPSU, would let Indian industry — and particularly the MSMEs the ‘Make’ procedure is designed to draw in — see where the real openings are. A list of 405 parts is an invitation. A published scoreboard would make it a market.
