New Delhi, Oct. 1 -- India's defence self-reliance cannot stop at manufacturing military equipment domestically and must extend to designing, developing and owning the technology behind those systems, according to R Muralidharan, Technology Advisor of Tata Advanced Systems Ltd (TASL) and Professor of Practice at IIT Tirupati.

"Atmanirbhar Bharat does not only mean Make in India. It also should include Create in India. Create means conceive and design in India," Muralidharan told LiveMint on the sidelines of the Defence Tech Summit, which was organized by the Centre for Emerging Technologies at USI.

He said India has developed the manufacturing capabilities needed to produce several defence systems, but continues to face a gap in the kno...