Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Sunday announced a negative list for import of 101 defence items. This is seen as a major step towards Modi government`s `Self-Reliant India` campaign. Defence import bills have been rising over the past two decades and have constrained India`s strategic rise in the sector. The goal of making the country self-reliant in defence production has been on the priority list of defence ministers, especially after the 1999 Kargil War. The Make in India scheme announced in 2014 aimed to develop the indigenous defence industry but has failed to achieve its targets. The Defence Minister`s announcement of a negative import list of 101 defence items as a major step towards `self-reliant India` is in line with this thinking. The major complaint from the domestic defence industry was the absence of a commitment from the armed forces on procuring a defence item that was developed and produced in India. By putting certain items on the embargo list and creating a separate budget head for domestic capital procurement, the government has sent a positive signal to the indigenous industry. The negative list of 101 items has been chosen carefully by the services, and at least a third of these items – including corvettes and frigates for the Navy and multi-barrel rocket launchers for the Army – are already being produced in India.