As if India is the only country in the world that is insisting on ToT based licence production deals in defence procurments. Turkey is doing it big time, S. Korea and even more so Japan are getting producing foreign stuff in their own countries under ToT and might add some capabilities and you really want to say that they didn't benefit from it?
The fact is, that is the best way to improve your industrial capabilities, since you get know how of the production of modern techs and systems, that otherwise would take you years to reach the same level. The difference is only, how much access to critical techs you have and how much the vendors are ready to provide. The US for example were always very limiting and gave even close partners only very less, while the Europeans always were more open. India had licence productions deals in the past too and they had proved to be good (Eurocopter helis, Jaguar and Mig fighters, Dornier 228 aircrafts...), but it was the MKI deal that got India at least some hands to more important techs and capabilities and since then, every new deal is negotiated with the aim to gain more and more benefits in return. The MMRCA is the tip of the iceberg if you want, since even the vendors stated, that they haven't faced a competition with so high ToT and offset requirements before, but all of them knew that the outcome is beneficiary for them too, which is why even the close ally of Pakistant, the US wanted to take their chances!
Wrt Rafale, Dassault and their partners had officially stated in the Brazilian and the M-MRCA, that full ToT and source codes of the AESA radar would be provided, we also know that Thales had formed JVs with Samtel and BEL for the production of HMS, TV and IRST channels, as well as the Damocles LDP, which means ToT of all these can be provided to India too, we also know that Snecma is offering the core of the upgraded M88 engine for Kaveri since years, including blade technology. Apart from that we knew that Eurojet was ready to provide us with blade and TVC technology too, if we had selected their engine for LCA MK2.
So it's a bit moot to still claim India could not get critical techs, when the fact is pretty different. The more important questions however would be, is Indian industry already able to "use" (not take advantage of) the ToT and how fast will the foreign vendors divert the ToT (MKI, Hawks, Scorpene, all examples were issues of diverting ToT delayed things too)?
At the end of the day, India will improve with the MMRCA deal, it already has! All the JVs that were created mainly wrt the MMRCA, or comparable defence deals created a lot of industry links in India and pushed the privat sector to participate stronger. So that alone makes it worth it, if IAF now gets one of the most advanced 4.5th gen fighters, it only makes the deal even better!