Financial dealings face a lot of bureaucratic redtapism in Gov. Departments.
Once the sanction order is passed. The funds in the Departmental account gets locked until the order is supplied. It cannot be repurposed until the deadline for the order is passed or they get written response from supplier about a possible delay leading to cancellation.
In case of regular purchases. The system automatically selects the L1 bidder. If any purchase other than the L1 has to be done. It has to go through a hectic approval process from someone equivalent to a Commissioner. (The person can face show cause or criminal investigation in case of favouritism)
So People generally stick to L1 now. (Supposedly there was a time before 2014 when favouritism played a big role in these cases)
This is the general process for regular purchases amounting to maybe a couple of crores in total in each Unit.
But even with all these checks in place we could have still be able to make world class equipments available to our soldiers through standardization of supplies.
Maybe standardise the former instead of the latter.
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I really like the Bullet proof vests used by the Indonesian military.
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But are we ready for the exponential increase in expenditure?
Maybe we are ! Considering we dump millions on foreign equipments. But then again it depends on the spending power of the Officer in charge.
Generally PPE doesn't make it to the top priority list & so the purchase has to happen through the automatic route which leads to such disappointing outcome.
Standardisation is the only way forward.