Sir you are missing the woods for the trees! Even if it is the most basic of ToT it is more than was pitched before.
Not really, as you said yourself, the initial deal did not included the requirement for the licence production and ToT. So they offer more now, but only to show a change, not to fulfill a requirement. The question then is, do we benefit from the offered ToT and what they offer, seems not to be that different from what we have seen in other tenders, where ToT was required. Basic stuff, nothing critical and unless that changes, the ToT issue between Indian and the US remains unchanged, while this is one step forward as said earlier.
They often complain the Indian side doesn't do enough to acknowledge their offers, they have, in someway, extended their hand for India to slap it away now because it is not precisely what they want would be foolish in the long run.
Come on, we ask for an apple, they give us an orange and we should be happy, since at least it is a fruit?
When the PM was in the US he asked for joint developments and productions, all our licence production tenders include critical techs, because we have that on offer from other sources, so why should we lower the benchmark for the US? Either they comply or they don't that's up to them, but as said above, that is not the issue in this case, since ToT was not a requirement.
Anyway, it was said the this deal had been stalled because of offset issues regarding BAE this "make in India " pitch by BAE is surely their attempt to move past these issues and thus I don't see much getting in the way of this deal now.
Exactly, it is a move to fix the
offset problem and in that regard it's a wellcomed step, that they finally moved to fix this deal but nothing more, since minor offsets doesn't improve our industrial capability.