Thread by @Iyervval

A heavily armoured high performance car is a must for the leader of a nuclear armed state, esp one with a No First Use commitment. The leader has to be protected from conventional, nuclear, biological & chemical attacks & make a quick getaway. How were you ever a bureaucrat?

https://twitter.com/jawharsircar/status/1475472570333884427

.2 This is because as the elected leader only he can launch the retaliatory strike. Take a comparison with the Russian and US domestically developed cars - the Russian Aurus cost 1300 crores+ to develop newsweek.com/vladimir-putin… not including per unit cost, from scratch while the

3 American one developed from an existing line of GM & Cadillac vehicles cost 125 crores in 2020 dollar with 2021 USD-INR conversion. web.archive.org/web/2016082609…. The UK Jaguar cost 4 crores+ per car not including the one off development costs (no public figures available). Similarly

4 No figures are available for the french and Chinese state cars which are similar one off modifications. So several hundred crores would’ve been sunk in, while the actual per unit cost would remain a few crores. The Maybach is not a one off, is available to the public and

5 essentially saved the Indian taxpayer a significant amount of money. (To note all the other countries mentioned have nuclear first strike doctrines - except China’s ambiguous NFU). If anything the PM can be criticised for not spending enough - not for spending too much.