South Asia and Beyond

My Dream Is To Make A Jet Engine For Indian Air Force: Bharat Forge Boss Baba Kalyani

NEW DELHI: For a company that’s a supplier to OEMs across the globe, Bharat Forge has been hit hard by the Coronavirus but the company’s boss Baba Kalyani sees an opportunity in the pandemic, echoing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call for a self-reliant India. This, coupled with the defence reforms, should be the way forward, according to him. There’s an able team at the MoD and it should ensure quick implementation of the policy changes, he hopes. And while ‘Make in india’ is the mantra, the government should put in place due systems to safeguard knowledge property, he told BharatShakti.in Editor-in-Chief Nitin A. Gokhale. On indigenization, Kalyani says if it can happen in the U.S. defence industry 1in the 1970s, there’s no reason it cannot be replicated here in India now. My personal dream is to make a jet engine for the Indian Air Force, he reveals, adding that his company cannot do it alone but a consortium of 5-7 Indian companies (both public and private sector) in a mission mode can.

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Nitin A. Gokhale

Left to himself, Nitin A. Gokhale would rather watch films and sports matches but his day job as a media entrepreneur, communications specialist, analyst and author, leaves him little time to indulge in his primary interests. Gokhale in fact started his career in journalism in 1983 as a sports reporter. Since then he has, in the past 41 years, traversed the entire spectrum across print, broadcast and digital space. One of South Asia's leading strategic analysts, Gokhale has moved on from conventional media to become an independent media entrepreneur running three niche digital platforms—BharatShakti, StratNewsGlobal and Interstellar—besides undertaking consultancy and training workshops in communications for military institutions, corporates and individuals. Now better known for his conflict coverage and strategic analyses, Gokhale has lived and reported from India’s North-east for 23 years between 1983 and 2006, been on the ground at Kargil in the summer of 1999 and also brought us live coverage from Sri Lanka’s Eelam War IV between 2006-2009.    An alumni of the Asia-Pacific Centre for Security Studies in Hawaii, Gokhale now writes, lectures and analyses security and strategic matters in Indo-Pacific and travels regularly to US, Europe, Australia, South and South-East Asia to take part in various seminars and conferences. Gokhale is also a popular visiting faculty at India’s Defence Services Staff College, the three war colleges, India's National Defence College, College of Defence Management and the IB’s intelligence school.

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