At Bandra-Kurla Complex in Mumbai in February last year, Capt Amol Yadav courted glory. A six-seater aircraft he made himself on the roof of his house was proudly displayed at a ' Make in India ' programme. He was a perfect icon for Prime Minister Narendra Modi 's pet project to encourage manufacturing in India.Yadav will again take his aircraft to Bandra-Kurla Complex in a month, but for a different purpose. “I am giving myself a month’s time. If I am not able to get funds, then I invite the people of Mumbai to a unique funeral where I will take my six-seater aircraft to Bandra Kurla Complex, where it was first showcased during the ‘Make in India’ week, and then take a hammer and break it down because our country doesn’t like to encourage enterprise by the common man,” Yadav says.How did Yadav end up at the anti-climax of his story? India's plodding babudom pushed Yadav's story to its sorry end.Yadav's aircraft is not just a cranky idea brought to life by an eccentric amateur. Yadav is now on the verge of completing his 19-seater aircraft, which would be the first to be built indigenously. That’s something the National Aerospace Laboratories hasn’t been able to achieve even after working for several years and sinking in crores of rupees. An indigenous 19-seater plane such as the one that pilot Amol Yadav built, would be a boost for India’s aircraft manufacturing industry and help create jobs in the sector. Such aircraft would promote boost regional connectivity and airlines would find it viable to fly them to smaller airports instead of deploying 40- or 70- seater planes that are harder to fill for such destinations.For six long years, Yadav struggled with the bureaucracy to just get a chance to demonstrate his prototype to the government so that he could get necessary approval and work on commercialisation.After he applied to register his six-seater plane under the experimental aircraft category in 2011, DGCA, the aviation regulator, kept dilly-dallying. Red tape not only entangled his dream project, it strangled it eventually. In 2014, the regulator changed the rules under which amateurs can build planes. The new rules allow only planes manufactured by companies to fly. And that happened despite Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis offering him a tie-up with the government and even taking up his issue with PM Modi.“I felt very encouraged by ‘ease of doing business’ and the ‘Make in India’ initiative by Prime Minister Narendra Modi,” said Yadav. “However, I have realised that while the PM may be passionate about these initiatives, for the rest of the bureaucracy, these are just slogans.” Yadav’s primary hurdle is DGCA, the regulator, which has stalled his endeavour.While Make in India is PM Modi's pet project, he is also focused on improving the ease of doing business. But Yadav is a veritable proof that government efforts on both lack substance.