TURNING SEAWARD

Delhi has woken up to the need for developing its ignored island territories. Focus on Andaman and Nicobar is welcome

AREPORT IN The Indian Express revealed the government's expansive plans to transform the Andaman and Nicobar Islands into a genuine security sentinel to the east of peninsular India and a crucial node for peace and security in the Indo-pacific. The report points to the rapid expansion of military infrastructure in the island chain that will allow the basing of advanced military platforms, improve communication and surveillance infrastructure, and the permanent deployment of troops. These plans mark the end of Delhi’s prolonged strategic neglect of these islands. Tucked away under the control of the Union Home Ministry, the islands were treated as closed territory, with limited access to the Indian mainland and no connection to the neighbouring South East Asian nations. The NDA government deserves credit for recognising the strategic and economic significance of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Lakshadweep.

Given its deep maritime orientation and a global primacy rooted in naval power, the British Raj was conscious of the value of island territories — as crucial places for transoceanic commerce and the projection of power in the emerging age of capitalism and great power competition for markets and geopolitical influence. The innocent internationalism of independent India, its inward economic orientation, preoccupation with the consequences of Partition, and the Chinese occupation of Tibet, saw India pay little attention to its vast possibilities at sea despite a long coastline and the vital location of its two island chains. As Delhi’s economic reforms began to change the picture in the 1990s, it was the Indian Navy that called for a fresh perspective on sea power. It was hard to change landlubbers that dominated India’s policy establishment in Delhi. Even when they moved, for example, with the setting up of the first and only joint tri-service command at Port Blair in 2001, it was never given the financial and military resources to realise the full potential of the Andaman and Nicobar island chain.

Successive coalition governments did not have the strategic bandwidth or the bureaucratic energy to do justice to the island territories. It needed a strong government in Delhi, with a full majority and the political will of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, to force policy changes in the maritime domain. Delhi’s maritime push to develop the islands was reinforced by China's naval pull. Since the turn of the 21st century, a rising China began to send regular naval squadrons into the Indian Ocean and develop bases and dual-use facilities at key locations in the littoral. Like the British Raj, a rising China had the geopolitical sensibility of a great maritime power and understood the strategic value of islands. It made consistent political outreach to island states in the Indian Ocean — from Sri Lanka and Maldives to Seychelles and Mauritius. Even as it began to compete with China, Delhi has woken up to the possibility of developing its own ignored island territories. It is for a good reason that the Chinese strategic community calls the Andaman and Nicobar Islands a “metal chain” strung right down the Bay of Bengal to the mouth of the Malacca — with the potential to block China’s access to the Indian Ocean. A bestirred Delhi will hopefully waste no time in turning its impressive plans into concrete outcomes.