BOOSTING MARITIME SECURITY

India needs to think of how to integrate the armed services in a national maritime policy and to work with friendly neighbours in a broader IOR context

Over the past two decades India has built up its naval capabilities to counter the growing maritime challenges that have emerged in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR). As naval capabilities have grown, there has also been a push to develop a true blue-water navy that can not only go to the southern most parts of the IOR but also project power in South East and eventually North-East Asia. There are now even occasional analyses of India playing a role in security operations in the South China Sea, a maritime space that China regards as its backyard and does not want a foreign naval presence in. To achieve this capability, India now has an ambitious programme to build a fleet of aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines, and surface vessels to project power. But then there are some challenges that need to be overcome to pursue this strategy.

Stagnating defence budgets

India's major challenge in building up its armed forces and preserving national security is that while the challenges to national security grow, the budgetary resources do not match them. Since the first UPA government, one has seen Indian defines expenditure stagnate at between 1.6 percent to 1.8 percent of GDP. This is considerably below the 3 percent of GDP that the erstwhile planning commission used to recommend. It seems that both the incumbent government, as well as any future one, are not going to spend lavishly on defence and, instead, will invest resources in domestic programmes like job creation, healthcare, and education. Indian military planners will, therefore, have to build their forces within the budgetary constraints of the government and what this means is that one will need realistic weapons acquisitions and programmes that match the threat levels, lead to the timely building of weaponry, and to weapons acquisitions which are not based on glamorous western ideas of military modernisation but, instead, deal with the actual challenges in the maritime domain.