There is more than meet the eyes,
Firstly you can agree that it was impossible to get 126 planes at 10 billion dollars with the lines and other things.
The price for all that was offered would be more than twice, maybe about US$ 30 billion
Now how does one move from 10 billion to 30 billion dollars? Surely UPA knew that they just cannot say "now the prices are 30 bn and lets sign" they would have to try and justify it.
Thus with all known facts that HAL would be lead integrator and they had signed RFP Dassault tried to delay it (perhaps in cahoots with UPA) so that there would be delay and hence price rise would be justified.
Also the way the method was chosen is that 2 would be final selected and the govt will deal only with L1 and in case the discussions did not reach conclusions then there was no condition to discuss with L2 thus, with all the fixing. Rafale was selected L1 and with Dassault playing hard ball, there was no chance for GoI discussing with L2
So then we are left with situation where, we either accept Rafale with the price and terms and conditions they offer (and the IAF top brass were not help at all when they were giving bad timed interviews like "there is no plan B" thus actually putting the ball in Dassaults court, thus there was no way Dassault could lose this,
But unfortunately for them the govt changed, and UPA thought that now NDA had to deal with Dassault and sign it which of course they will try to cry foul, as to how 10 bn dollar deal became 30 billion.. But NDA turned out very smart, and he cancelled the RFP and just to keep IAF happy they ordered 36 token Rafale along with base infrastructure, and with terms and conditions that were win win both for Dassault, India and IAF, but in real sense, Dassualt playing hardball lost a HUGE ORDER, perhaps they were doing this at behest of UPA to whom they had paid kickbacks before.. and it was safer to do business with UPA as UPA made it "sellers market" for the planes, but all the NDA moves its made it buyers market where there are many options available to us and we are in position to either take or refuse at our discretion.
You have to differ here! On the one hand you have a vendor that has proven to be guided by greed and according to reports from the UAE and Belgium by arrogance.
But on the other hand you have one of the best 4.5th gen fighters, that was the first to be designed with priority on passive sensors and EW, that had unique weapon capabilities and good flight performance.
To be more precise, after they teamed up with Reliance (in 2012) the problems started, because then Dassault wanted to shift work share away, which is against the RFP. Dassault only complained about the RFP clauses at a later stage, after the MoD and HAL settled the work share issue. But Dassault kept making up issues, which stalled the whole negotiations for 3 years, till it was cancelled.
