That's why I suggest you to visit the proper LCA Tejas Sticky thread, before making any impressions. There are many reasons for the delay. And most important LCA project -- it is the project to close the technological difference, and to make the whole Aerospace industry in the country for which, the country have to work on the following technology such as FADEEC, FBW, Turbofan Engine, Composite, Indegenous MMR and that too at a small budget and resources, and having less knowledge,.and lack of equipments, institutions, budget, engineers, scientists. And in this whole learning process build a 4th Generatiion Fighter plane.
LCA have survived from many difficulties -- Import lobies, tech denial, funds stopage etc
And why it was so slow development another reason was the Holistic approach, so that no mishaps occur during the testing and the development phase, because any Mishaps (Not even drastic mishaps/accident of the Gripen due to faulty FBW) would directly send the whole project to the GALLOW.
What is important is that how many OEMs is capable of building turbofan engine for the combat plane, and you can easily count on your fingers of which two are in US (GE, and Pratt and Whitney), 2 in Russia, and 2 in Europe (Snerma and Eurojet) and no one is gonna share their secrets to anyone. And the budget of development of the turbofan engine such as Kaveri was 2 Billion and that too in Parts is 5 times less than the contemporary project in the whole world.
Heck SAAB don't have any Turbofan engine. And how many countries in the world could build their own Turbofan engine of its own.
Why to feel proud, because GTRE have solve the mistery puzzle to build the turbofan engine, and have already have a working engine, which have completed the high altitude test, and though we have the GE engine, the ADA could fly the LCA with the suboptimal kaveri engine, just like what Chinese did with there indegenous engine.
So let me make an assumption that Gripen would be the last combat plane which sweeden would develop, and soon the SAAB would be acquired by some Indian company like TATA, Mahindra, Reliance, Birla and would build trucks, civil planes, small planes, avionics, sensors in India.