It can not be justified in anyways, even 20 years ago, we never had situation like IAF, not a single jet hand over to airforce in a whole year, this is absurd.
I am not justifying anything but you need to be more realistic.
India mostly depended on Russia for the latest technologies in the past. We purchased the weapons from the west with much restrictions and almost no technology of transfer.
Downfall of Soviet and later, incapability of Russia to develop and work on the new technologies caused more challanges for india since india was highly rely on Soviet/Russia for military weapons.
Aircraft, Tanks, submarines and navy ships, these four are one of the most important weapons for military...... Aircraft and submarines are most complex to develop and manufacture, this is the reason only a selected countries still can develop.
Developments of HAL Tejas, and Arjun tank, classic example of error of making decisions. I called Arjun Tank as a failure because even after a long development process, it is not good enough to serve the nation, but definitely it helped to develop infrastructure in india, and it will help for developing new tanks.
Similar to HAL Tejas, it took a very long but I don't call it failure because china and Pakistan air forces still flying the similar capable aircrafts as example jf17 block 2 & 3, and these fighters planes not going anywhere soon before 2050. So if India will be having Hal Tejas Mk1a, Total 100 aircrafts within this decade, to serve the nation for atleast next two decades.... It will be very helpful for IAF.
But we need more capable aircrafts, likely Hal Tejas mk2 will start coming from 2029-30, but for the time being we need to import fighters planes and number would be around 100 aircrafts.
Problem is now that USA fighters are very good but many strings are attached, western once are very costlier and Russians are not good enough.......... IAF is now on very tough situation..... Again, I am not justifying anything but being more realistic.
Sorry for typo errors - traveling and using mobile