10
Mar
Giving a major fillip to India’s neighourhood outreach in the Indian Ocean region, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is embarking on a five-day visit to the three key island nations of Seychelles, Mauritius and Sri Lanka from March 10. However, the Maldives leg of the visit is not on, in view of the political turmoil in that country after the arrest of opposition leader and former Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed.
The exchange of high level visits is a manifestation of the keen desire of the two countries to build upon and nurture an age-old friendship to a level of extraordinary level of excellence. “This will provide opportunities to build on the close contacts at the highest political level and enhance mutual cooperation and understanding on major issues of common interest,” said the ministry of external affairs. The visit of the Prime Minister to our friendly maritime neighbours is reflective of India’s desire to further strengthen our ties in the Indian Ocean region.
India’s Indian Ocean diplomacy comes as China is pushing ahead with its Maritime Silk Road project, which entails port-building activities at several places in the Indian Ocean. China has built seaports, power plants and highways across the small island nations. Its navy has also made forays into the Indian Ocean, including when submarines docked last year in Sri Lanka, rattling New Delhi, which has an uneasy relationship with Beijing.
India occupies a central and strategic location in the Indian Ocean area. Its national and economic interests are inseparably linked up with Indian Ocean. The region has always been India’s foreign Policy’s goal for example Look East policy, Indian Ocean Rim Association for Regional Cooperation, BIMSTECK and Ganga-Mekong Cooperation etc. In the 1940s, KM Pannikar, a noted scholar and diplomat, argued that “while to other countries the Indian Ocean is only one of the important oceanic areas, to India it is a vital sea. Her lifelines are concentrated in that area, her freedom is dependent on the freedom of that water surface.
A major concern of India in the Indian Ocean is energy. India is fourth-largest economy in the world, which is almost 70 per cent dependent on oil import, major part of which comes from the Gulf region. Along with strategic importance. Indian Ocean is the only fishing ground for coastal fisherman is India. Due to huge marine recourses it spreads prosperity in coastal plains of India. In the Indian Ocean region, as India has begun to assert a more pronounced presence, the US would like to see it become a “net security provider.”
India’s gradual emergence and increased reliance on international commerce compound these divergences: its deepening engagement in the Indian Ocean region inevitably gives the area greater prominence in India’s foreign policy considerations. As it emerges as the resident power of the region, India has no desire of being viewed as harboring hegemonic enterprises. It rejects any perception of the Indian Ocean region that would reduce it to a highway, as well as any attempt to equate it with an arena for great power competition.
Instead, India now engages with bilateral maneuvers with all the major powers present in the region, a shift that further cements its own standing as the resident power in the Indian Ocean while rejecting any hegemonic intent. Although India has since resumed multilateral naval exercises with the U.S. and Japan, such exercises now take place in the Sea of Japan, far from the Indian Ocean – indeed, they are referred to today as the multilateral element of MALABAR exercises, while the strictly bilateral part continues to play out in the Indian Ocean.
Although India is uncomfortable with China’s growing footprint in the Indian Ocean, it has no intention of jeopardizing its delicate relationship with China, or precipitating their ties into irreversibly and overtly hostile territory. For one thing, India’s culture of non-alignment and obsession with “strategic autonomy” preclude it from entering into any alliance or exclusive partnership aimed at another country.
Furthermore, China possesses sufficient leverage in South Asia (where on India’s eastern border the border dispute with China remains unresolved, while to the west lies the troublesome and troubled Pakistani neighbor, a close if asymmetric partner of China’s) to prevent New Delhi from implementing any policy that might go too far in targeting China.
Source: http://www.thehansindia.com/posts/index/2015-03-08/Why-PM-is-focussing-on-Indian-Ocean-rim-136096