It’s not shipshape

Context: The commissioning of two naval platforms in Mumbai, the guided-missile destroyer INS Visakhapatnam and the diesel submarine INS Vela.

Challenges to India in maritime security

• Rise of China: The Chinese footprint in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) is steadily increasing.
• Beijing acquired a military base at Djibouti in the Horn of Africa in 2017.
• Galwan to Gwadar: Heavily invested in ports in Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
• Secret military facility in the UAE port of Khalifa without the knowledge of the host.
• Current pace of warship-building sustained by Beijing forecasts PLA navy owning 425 platforms by 2030.
• Beijing has added between 14 and 22 platforms annually to its navy in the past five years.
• Budget allocation: Navy is often termed the Cinderella service since it receives the least funding support among the three armed forces.
• Maritime Capability Perspective Plan (MCPP) envisioned a force of a 200-ship Navy by 2027 but has now been trimmed to 170 platforms.
• Budgetary allocation reached upwards to 18 per cent of the overall defence budget in FY 2012-13 and now shrunk to less than 14 per cent.
• Ship building capability: India aspires to acquire a credible trans-border maritime profile has to acquire a certain level nimble ship-building capability. 
• Lacks requisite strategic perspicacity and national resolve: Though it has the potential to be a maritime power that would enhance its composite national power and improve the socio-economic indicators of its sizeable demography.
• Naval power is only one attribute of a nation’s holistic maritime capability.
• Despite its favourable geography (Indian peninsula majestically dominates the Indian Ocean) remains unable to realise its natural maritime potential even 70-plus years after Independence.
• Efficiency: Indian ports and harbours are operating well below the globally accepted median of efficiency except for the private sector.
• Despite its economic and global trade status, does not have a single port on the list of global 20 major ports.
• Yet to acquire that level of ‘atmanirbharta’: While no nation produces every bit of military equipment indigenously, a certain core competence in ordnance and propulsion is a must.
• The inventory that makes the platforms built a fighting unit is largely imported.

Positives for India:

• Sustained policy support: Elusive policy to contain China, punish Pakistan, reassure Russia, invigorate the IOR and upscale ties with the US.
• Success areas: India’s success in areas like sonars and electronic warfare is commendable.
• SAGAR (security and growth for all in the region): India’s policy for  substantive enhancement of national maritime capability.
• Pace of construction: India merits in the sector by building in 2 years and commissioning in 8 years.

Conclusion: Navy is a template that needs to be internalised by the Indian higher defence establishment in the decades ahead as Delhi seeks to acquire an appropriate level of relevance in the IOR.

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