When a child first scribbled his name at age four, his parents are excited and very proud but the same parents are also fully aware of the CONTEXT of their pride as writing one's own name is not really an impressive a feat for adults. In the CONTEXT of India's first attempt, the Tejas took a very long time but it does represent the completion of the first step/scribble. To the adults in the world, it is just a throwaway child's toy.
Tejas is in a league of its own. It is both the lightest and also the most useless. The trage-comedy here is that you cannot differentiate between polite words, sales pitch, and honest assessments. Like the Dhruv, India cannot give away the Tejas. Every country that ever claimed to have considered the Tejas out of politeness, rejected the plane. Maybe all these aviation/military professionals know something you don't. Their actions are better than any debate here. Talk (what you repeat so much) is dirt cheap. Action (Tejas rejected in ALL competitions) spoke loud and clear. As noted by others in this thread, Tejas is an educational TOY that is useful in sustaining the domestic industrial base until the next generation or two can come up with something actually useful beyond 2030. This is also the same reason why the U.S. is still building the LCS in order to keep the shipyard workers employed until the Constellation is ready. I am sure if you have an uncle working for DRDO or HAL or IAF, he will tell you exactly the same thing. The saddest part is most Tejas components were bought from abroad at exorbitant prices that India had no other choice. If I am Indian, I would be more embarrassed knowing this instead of trying to brag about how much foreign exchange India can afford to waste. The fact India decided to go with a foreign engine (F414) for the next 20 years shows a loser/defeatist mentality admitting that India cannot possibly develop its own and must depend on foreign handouts.
Put what you said in another way. Suppose a Polish guy brags about how great his country's F-35 is and how much it means for Poland to have such amazing technology, what would you think? A bit strange perhaps as all Poland did was signing a big check. This is also how non-Indians think about the Tejas. All the fancy and hard-to-make components are made elsewhere. If I assembled a super-duper 16-core Ryzen box with dual 4090 GPU's, would it be very foolish for me to brag about my own technical expertise when everyone knows all it took was a few mouse clicks on Amazon. Your pride and excitement are very misplaced.
