India, Oct. 27 -- The liberalised Drone Rules of 2021 opened the skies for innovation, enterprise and new use cases across agriculture, mapping, logistics, infrastructure and security. But the policy architecture that followed did not build an indigenous manufacturing base with the same urgency. Instead, it created a powerful incentive to assemble in India while sourcing the technological heart of the drone from abroad. This is where the roots of India's drone ecosystem's dependence on Chinese supply chains lie. Unlike the PLI schemes for white goods and mobile phones, where 4-5% incentives broadly matched extent of domestic value addition, the drone PLI offered an outsized 20% incentive despite India's weak component base. That single dist...