The armed forces will fully ban the import of clothes, required to maintain its troopers at excessive temperatures throughout the nation, if the Indian textile business is ready to innovate and manufacture them, stated Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Bipin Rawat on Wednesday.
“We are looking at the kind of clothing that can sustain our soldiers in the kind of extreme cold climate (near northern borders of Ladakh) and in the hot, dry and humid climate in the deserts and the north-eastern regions where we have the jungle and semi-mountainous terrain,” he stated in his speech at an occasion organised by business physique FICCI.
“As of now, a large amount of clothing for the armed forces is being imported but in the past one or two years, there has been a lot of innovation by the Indian industry as far as high altitude clothing is concerned,” he stated.
“We have now started placing orders for such clothing. And if we find that this thing can take off and support us, we will not hesitate in putting the entire clothing or the entire ‘techno clothing’ that we are using in the armed forces on the positive indigenisation list, which we were earlier calling the negative list for imports,” Rawat stated.
“This means we will completely ban the import of these items and make sure that the defence services have to depend only on the Indian industry as part of our Atmanirbhar Bharat support that we wish to give to the industry,” he added.
Techno clothes is particular clothes that’s developed by incorporating new know-how to make it usable in particular circumstances and locations corresponding to extraordinarily chilly areas, biomedical gear, plane, and so on.
The authorities in August final yr introduced a ‘negative list for imports’ that restricted buy of 101 defence objects corresponding to mild fight helicopters, transport plane, standard submarines and cruise missiles from international entities.
Rawat stated, “As far as defence services are concerned, we have a huge stake in techno textiles. We are large users of textiles that use technology and we will continue to use them in the years ahead.”
Today, troopers are serving in altitudes on the northern borders the place the temperature falls to as little as minus 50 diploma Celsius within the winters, he stated.
“We have our jawans operating in the deserts where the temperature rises to as high as 58 degree Celsius in the summers. I’m not saying the same textile should suffice and meet both the parameters,” he added.
