Maritime security: Sea change needed
The National Maritime Summit that Narendra Modi inaugurated recently reiterated a concern that has been echoed since long before 1971 when the United Nations General Assembly recognised the Indian Ocean as a zone of peace. True, the summit was principally about merchant shipping, but ports and seaborne trade are inextricably linked with defence. Mr Modi himself made the connection at the 2011 Global Maritime Security and Anti-Piracy Conference in Gandhinagar when he noted that India’s “central position in the Indian Ocean system” gave it “an extensive range of interests in the coastal and the marine activities in the Asia-Pacific”.
Britain treated the Indian Ocean as a British lake, regarding the expanse from Aden to Singapore as India’s protective glacis. But security probably wasn’t explicitly mentioned after independence until 1989 when welcoming Bob Hawke, Australia's prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi vowed “to never again lose control over the approaches to India from the sea.” It was the “neglect of naval defences that led to the colonial era.” One of the most articulate exponents of the need for an activist role at sea, Admiral J.G. Nadkarni, chief of the Indian navy, pointed to the West's (meaning America's) “almost unlimited ability to influence events in the region by exerting coercive maritime pressure” which prevented the emergence of “the natural balance that should exist in a region, based on the relative sizes and capabilities of different countries.”
First piracy and now the menace of terrorism compound the problem. Terrorist groups have kept pace with modern navigation and communication technologies, and developed new ways to challenge maritime forces. There are fears terrorists might exploit the freight trading system to trigger a global economic crisis while also using the container supply chain to transport weapons of mass destruction. The nexus between organised piracy, criminal networks, political power and religious extremism is already evident. Climate change, global warming, rising sea levels and changing coastal topography can also aggravate boundary disputes.
Yet, maritime affairs have not received the serious attention they deserve. When he was governor of West Bengal, M.K. Narayanan revealed that as national security adviser at the Centre, he had unsuccessfully tried to appoint a maritime security adviser in the National Security Council. Now, China’s active – even aggressive – interest in the South China Sea, and the rebuffs India has suffered in its plans for oceanic cooperation with Vietnam may have helped to generate a more realistic understanding of the nature of maritime security.
Many factors will determine India’s response to the challenge. A sound international legal framework and a comprehensive policy regime must balance the needs, concerns and interests of all stakeholder countries whether coastal or landlocked. As Mr Modi told the summit, about 95 per cent of India’s foreign trade (in volume) and 70 per cent (in value) is carried through sea routes. Billions of rupees worth of infrastructure has been created to cater to this industry in India. What he left unsaid was that in absolute terms, India is lagging far behind other comparable countries. China’s 10th largest port is 50 per cent bigger than India’s biggest. All the 12 Indian “major” ports together don’t boast of much more traffic than Singapore. Colombo handles more container traffic than the combined total of all these India’s ports.
Mr Modi took understandable pride at the Gandhinagar conference in Gujarat’s achievements in this sphere. As he told delegates, his state carries almost 35 per cent of India’s sea cargo. In addition to a national port, Gujarat boasts of the country’s first two world-class private ports. At Dahej it has India’s first chemical terminal and also the first LNG terminal. He also announced the first double stack container train at Pipavav. Taking advantage of Gujarat’s maritime location, there are plans for the integrated development of coastal areas including new ports with supporting road and rail links. But although Mr Modi spoke all along in the first person, Gujarat’s development precedes his rule in either Gandhinagar or New Delhi. The Japanese bullet train project linking Mumbai and Ahmedabad, for instance, goes back to Manmohan Singh’s prime ministership.
India has a 7,517-km coastline and an exclusive economic zone of more than 2 million sq. km. In
Wells of Power, the erudite Sir Olaf Caroe wrote lyrically of the Indian dhows that controlled the traffic in the Arabian Sea long before King George V bestowed the term “merchant navy” on trading vessels. Georges Cooedes’s The Indianized States
of Southeast Asia describes the merchants and mariners who created Suvarnabhumi, the Golden Land that is now the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Kolkata’s 100 ft Lascar Memorial commemorates 896 seamen who lost their lives in the First World War. India accounts for 12.8 per cent of the officers and 14.5 per cent of the ratings of the global seafaring community. She ranks 15th in terms of total global deadweight tonnage. Yet, it wasn’t until 1977 that a Coast Guard was set up to protect the coast with its commercial and military installations.
The coastline is changing. Private ports like Mundra in Gujarat and Dhamra in Odisha are attracting more traffic. So is Krishnapatnam in southern Andhra Pradesh. The planned deepwater port at Vizhinjam in Kerala ambitiously expects to divert some transshipment traffic from Colombo. Most private ports have a deeper draft than the old government ports. Because of shallow harbours and poor dredging, many of the older ports cannot take large container vessels and have to resort to transshipment. Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew spoke publicly in New Delhi of the long turnaround time, indicating inefficient port handling.
We are assured all this is being attended to, and that the government’s Port Policy statement spells out an explicit strategy of port-led development. Goals have been announced in terms of capacities, investment and jobs.
But it’s a slow process. Indian bottoms still carry only about 15 per cent of national trade compared to the international norm of 40 per cent. There are hardly any civilian shipyards of world standards. The trade pattern doesn’t help. India imports double the quantity it exports so ships that bring us merchandise often have to return empty. Freight rates are high; so is the cost of bunker fuel. Many special economic zones still have not evolved into the integrated industrial hubs serving a regenerated hinterland they were meant to be.
Mr Narayanan quoted Pranab Mukherjee on “sea-bound trade requir[ing] the assurance of a complex and well-developed maritime strategy,” and cited formidable trade and shipping statistics to stress the importance of navigable sea lanes. He admitted that “the Indian diaspora facilitates cooperation” with littoral countries and acknowledged that China’s interests are “driven primarily by economics and the need for new resources.” But the emphasis was on the part that India’s “sword arm on the seas” (Mr Narayanan’s term for the navy) can play in cooperation with economic integration to safeguard “core national security interests.” Maritime security demands shore support as well.