“DRDO chief says cutting edge projects avoided in India due to aversion to risk and intolerance of failure”, The Hindu, September 21, 2024:
“Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) Chairman Dr. Samir V Kamat said that there is an aversion to risk and intolerance of failure in India due to which people end up taking less challenging projects. Dr. Kamat made the comment in Bengaluru on September 21 while delivering the Air Chief Marshal L.M. Katre Memorial Lecture 2024 on Defence R&D The Road Ahead.
“If there is a failure, immediately you get a Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report saying that you have caused loss to the government. Questions are raised on who is accountable. That makes people take on less challenging projects.” Need for change Due to this, many projects keep getting extended instead of them being closed. “This has to change. You learn a lot more from your failures than from your success. If you have to fail, fail fast, so that you learn and move on,” he added.
Dr. Kamat said that this attitude is slowly changing as Defence Minister Rajnath Singh recently gave leeway for high-risk projects. “The Defence Minister has given us this leeway where if you say at the beginning of the project that this is a high-risk project, we will make an attempt, but if it doesn’t happen, we will close the project……”
Read the full article at Thehindu.com
