India’s burgeoning defense industry, marked by collaborations with Israeli arms giant Elbit Systems and domestic firms like Alpha Elsec, is casting a shadow over its ethical responsibilities. While the government touts these partnerships as part of the “Make in India” initiative to boost self-reliance in defense, the reality is far more damning. These deals are not just about advancing India’s defense capabilities—they are about complicity in genocide, destruction, and the systematic oppression of Palestinian lives.
Adani and Elbit: Manufacturing Machines of War
In 2018, Adani Enterprises partnered with Elbit Systems to form Adani Elbit Advanced Systems India Limited. This joint venture operates the only facility outside Israel to produce Hermes 900 drones, a UAV widely used by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in their military campaigns. The Hermes 900, equipped with advanced surveillance and combat technologies, is a weapon of war, implicated in countless operations in Gaza that have led to civilian deaths and the destruction of critical infrastructure. By enabling the production of these drones in Hyderabad, India is no longer just a neutral party in this conflict. It has become an active participant in enabling a military campaign that is genocidal. Human rights advocates worldwide have called for states to divest from Elbit Systems, but India has gone the other way, embracing this blood-stained technology and providing its labour force and resources to manufacture tools of oppression.
Alpha Elsec: Supplying the Tools of Destruction
Alpha-Elsec Aerospace Systems, a joint venture between India’s Alpha Design Technologies Limited (ADTL) and Elbit, plays a supporting role in this disturbing collaboration. With its Bengaluru facility, Alpha Elsec develops essential tactical components like thermal imagers, night vision devices, and laser target designators—critical technologies that enhance the operational precision of drones like the Hermes 900. India’s skilled workforce is thus directly involved in creating the very technologies used in Gaza to surveil, target, and kill. The human cost of these drones is no secret: entire neighbourhoods reduced to rubble, families obliterated, and basic infrastructure destroyed under the watchful lens of these machines. Yet, instead of channeling this labour and expertise into uplifting its own citizens, India is exporting tools of violence and repression.
COVID-19: A Stark Contrast of Priorities
The starkest indictment of this misplaced focus comes from the COVID-19 pandemic, which exposed India’s woefully inadequate healthcare system. During the crisis, hospitals overflowed with patients while ventilators and oxygen supplies ran out. Hundreds of thousands of lives were lost—not because of a lack of knowledge or labour, but because of a failure to invest in the infrastructure that could save lives. Imagine if the same effort and resources that went into building dronesfor Israel’s military campaigns were spent on producing ventilators, improving housing, or developing life-saving medical technologies. Instead, India’s labour force is being exploited to build machines that take lives abroad while its citizens die preventable deaths at home.
India’s Labour: Build Lives, Not Destroy Them
India’s workers deserve better than this. The nation’s skilled workforce and technological prowess should be directed toward creating opportunities that uplift Indian lives. Strengthening healthcare, improving housing, and building resilient infrastructure should take precedence over manufacturing weapons for conflicts thousands of miles away. These workers should not be reduced to cogs in the machinery of a genocide in Gaza. As citizens of this country it is our duty to point out that India’s participation in these defense partnerships cannot be tolerated. By aiding Israel’s military-industrial complex, India aligns itself with a regime that has been repeatedly accused of war crimes. It also squanders the chance to harness its labour and technology for its own development, to heal its own wounds, and to prepare for its own challenges. The lakhs of Indian labourers being sent to Israel is also part of the same problem.
The Call for Accountability
The Indian government must take responsibility for this failure. States have the power to terminate contracts and divest from companies like Elbit Systems. Other countries have shown that divestment works. Why should India not follow suit? Why should Indian workers’ labour fuel the destruction of Palestinian homes instead of building homes for their own people?
This is not just a question of policy but of morality. An erstwhile colonised nation has a duty to reevaluate its defense partnerships and consider the ethical cost of aligning with companies implicated in genocide. It must prioritize the welfare of its citizens and the ethical use of its resources.
A Path Forward
India’s labour should be a force for good, a means to improve healthcare, bolster education, and build infrastructure that uplifts its people. The government and corporations must redirect their focus to these areas, ensuring that every worker contributes to preserving and supporting life, not to perpetuating suffering and death abroad. The people of India must come together to pressurise the government that has been hand-in-gloves with the Zionist regime both economically and ideologically to cut off all ties with the Israeli state.
