NEW DELHI: Imagine for a moment that you grow tired of your life one day. You want more money, excitement, adventure, foreign vacations, fancy cars and suchlike. Nothing could help you achieve your dreams better and faster than becoming an arms dealer. Who owns a certain five-star hotel in Lutyens' Delhi? An arms dealer. Which Indian was among the largest donors to the Liberal Democrats in Britain? An arms dealer. Who has enough clout to influence domestic politics in Slovakia? An Indian arms dealer.If you are inspired by these big guns and want to take the plunge, there are a few things you need to know. India is the world's largest arms importer and will remain that way for years. There will be plenty of work to go around. India officially disallows arms dealers. But that doesn't seem to deter anyone. You will need a front business. Cigars, stud farm, vintage cars, real estate - take your pick.Competition is formidable. The field is dominated by longstanding Delhi figures and families. These people have been in the business for long and they have intimate knowledge of procedure and people that you won't be able to figure out if you dial the defence ministry phone directory for 10 years. So to give you a headstart, we did some research on how the procurement process works. We are using the example of the Indian Army. The specifics may vary depending on the service and size of procurement, but all defence procurement in India more or less follows the following path, whether you are selling handguns or a fleet of fighter jets.If you don't make it to the end of this story, it is safe to conclude that you are not cut out for this business.But then, foreign arms companies rely on agents here precisely due to the complexity of this process, in addition to the perception - fair or otherwise - that everything can be fixed here.Any request for new equipment for the Indian Army originates from an office called Deputy Directorate General (Weapons and Equipment). This office is held by an officer of the brigadier rank and has one colonel and two majors under him. Army units such as infantry, artillery, signals, ordnance, etc, all have a DDG (WE).This office draws up a draft request for weapons in a format known variously as qualitative requirements (QR), general staff qualitative requirements (GSQR) or services qualitative requirements (SQR). This is the birth of a potential order. This goes up through a chain of command involving three Additional Director-Generals (major general rank), one Director-General (WE) of lieutenant general rank onwards to a vice-chief of army staff, who also holds the rank of lieutenant general.Comments are invited from a broad cross-section of agencies such as the Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO), Directorate General of Electronics and Mechanical Engineering, Army Centre for Electromagnetics, and various other agencies that might potentially have any comments or modifications to offer.Some suggestions are incorporated and the document is submitted for approval to an agency called the General Staff Equipment Policy Committee. Once the GSQR is approved by this panel, it is assigned a number, and the document commences a long journey that will potentially end in an acquisition worth anywhere between a few million dollars to billions of dollars.The user (the concerned office of the specific armed force) then approaches the ministry of defence with the approved GSQR for a process known as acceptance of need (AoN). The service headquarters prepares a Statement of Case in a prescribed format that requires the service to justify the procurement proposal. Four copies of this document are prepared. One copy goes to the DRDO and three copies to various offices of the defence ministry - defence finance, department of defence production and the administrative branch of MoD.These offices consider the case, approve the quantities required and the financial outflow and send the Statement of Case and their comments back to the service headquarters. This is then examined by the Integrated Defence Staff Headquarters, which determines if the equipment being requested can be used by other services. All of these inputs then go to a body called the Categorisation Committee, which makes final recommendations on the quantity, acceptance of need and which procurement category - make, buy global, buy and make Indian, etc - should apply.This is then submitted for the approval of the Defence Acquisition Council (headed by the defence minister, it approves procurement worth Rs 40 crore and more) or the Defence Procurement Board (headed by the defence secretary).Several additional steps could happen before this. The user could send out requests for information from companies asking for details of their products and they could even request a meeting to seek more info. These companies will almost certainly receive a request for proposal (RFP), so this is also meant as an indicator for them to secure government approvals for foreign sale.The approved file then goes back to the service headquarters and down the chain of command to the Director-General (Weapons and Acquisition). That office (where the request originated in the first place) then prepares a draft RFP. This is then vetted by an office called Technical Manager (Land Systems) in the case of the Army. Air Force and Navy have similar offices. This office is the MoD's watchdog for the technical aspects of the acquisition process. Technical Manager (Land Systems) is an officer of the major general rank, but he reports to Director-General (Acquisitions) in the MoD and not to the military chain of command.The office of the Technical Manager (Land Systems), after thorough vetting of the draft RFP, issues the final RFP to a number of vendors. By the time the process reaches this stage, typically two-and-a-half to three years will have passed from the time the original request was raised.Vendors who receive an RFP from the defence ministry are required to submit two sealed bids - a technical bid and a commercial bid. A Technical Evaluation Committee (TEC) is formed with representatives from the user and various agencies. Where the RFP involves transfer of technology, a representative from a defence PSU such as Bharat Electronics or Hindustan Aeronautics - that has been nominated as the production agency - will also be part of the committee.The technical bids are opened in the presence of representatives from the vendors as well as the user, and all members of the TEC sign on every page of the bid document. This is to make sure no alteration is subsequently made. The commercial bid is kept aside.The TEC then undertakes a detailed study of the technical bid. This can take anywhere between six months and 18 months, depending on the complexity of the weapons system. The TEC shortlists vendors who have qualified, and they are then invited for a pre-trial meeting. If the TEC finds that only one vendor has qualified, the entire process must start from scratch by diluting the qualitative requirements. India's defence authorities hates single-vendor procurement as it always results in accusations that the requirements were designed to exclude other vendors. India commits to single-vendor procurement only when it is a Foreign Military Sale deal with another government.The vendors who qualify in the TEC process are called for a pre-trial meeting at the service headquarters. They are given a detailed schedule of the trials and the equipment needed and will typically get two months to arrange for the equipment to be made available at the site of the trials.Weapons are first put through three general trials - summer trials, desert trials and high-altitude trials. Depending on the application of the equipment, the summer trial could take place at the infantry school in Mhow, Indore, the artillery school in Deolali, Nashik, or the Armoured Corps Centre in Ahmednagar, Pune. Desert trials typically happen at the Pokhran deserts in Rajasthan and high-altitude trials are undertaken in Leh, Arunachal Pradesh or Sikkim's eastern sector.All these trials generate voluminous reports and vendors are required to be informed right away if their equipment fails to meet performance parameters at any stage.Then comes the maintainability trials that are undertaken by the Electronics and Mechanical Engineers Corps. This could take place in Pune, Mumbai or Secunderabad.Then comes the environmental testing by the Directorate-General of Quality Assurance. Equipment is put through a series of tests such as drop test, vibration test, heat test, mold test, cold test, water test and sand test. Equipment must meet an established standard known as JSS pentafive. These tests could happen in Kanpur, Dehradun or Bangalore.By the time the trials are completed, four years could have passed from the time the request was raised.All the reports from the trials come back to the Director-General (Weapons and Equipment) through the service headquarters. Here, a compatibility matrix is prepared through a process known as staff evaluation. This process examines how the equipment performed against the requirements laid down in the RFP and reports which vendors have cleared the field trials. The staff evaluation report then goes to the service headquarters for approval, onwards to the technical manager and then to DG (Acquisition) in the ministry of defence. If no vendor has cleared the trials, the case is closed at this stage and the entire process is restarted after diluting the QRs. If the acquisition is worth more than Rs300 crore, a Technical Oversight Committee will oversee the staff evaluation process.Once the DG (Acquisition) approves the staff evaluation report, a Contract Negotiation Committee enters the picture. This committee is constituted by the defence secretary and is responsible for all the remaining steps, from creating an internal price benchmark, opening the commercial bids and arriving at a lowest bidder by taking into account a complex array of factors including lifecycle costs, payment terms, guarantee provisions, engineering support package, etc. The CNC's recommendation then goes to a competent financial authority, which is the Cabinet Committee on Security in the case of very large contracts.By this time, at least five years will have passed, typically, and technology companies from Tel Aviv to San Francisco will have brought to market new technologies.The entire process is conducted on a no-cost, no-commitment basis, which means if the process is cancelled at any stage, a vendor cannot ask for compensation for costs incurred. And any shadow of suspicion, on occasion even anonymous letters, is sufficient to shelve the entire process.