India's maritime future will hinge on forging partnerships in the technologies and sectors driving the next phase of maritime growth
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This piece is part of the series 'Governing the Oceans: Rethinking Access and Equity'
As maritime trade continues to expand, the maritime domain is increasingly assuming greater economic and strategic significance. This has resulted in a steady growth of focus on intellectual and capital investment in maritime infrastructure initiatives and connectivity efforts. In particular, India is also positioning itself along the emerging connectivity corridors and supply chains, not only by embedding itself within them, but also by fostering new partnerships to imagine new routes.
At the outset, India’s shifting outlook towards maritime trade and connectivity can be traced with the long arc of strategic recalibration of India’s experiment with regionalism. For long, India’s strategic outlook had been dominated by a land-locked view of itself, which positions itself as a South Asian country, embedded with its territorial neighbours with which it shares its borders. However, more recently, India has sought to define itself as a maritime nation, given its geographical proximity to the Indian Ocean.
India’s shifting outlook towards maritime trade and connectivity can be traced with the long arc of strategic recalibration of India’s experiment with regionalism.
The manifestations of these are evident through India’s active engagement in the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA), the only pan-regional organisation in the Indian Ocean, joining and engaging in the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral and Technical Cooperation (BIMSTEC), which seeks to promote trade integration across the Bay of Bengal region, redefining its neighbourhood, by way of attributing geographically distant countries in East Africa, Southeast Asia, and even Australia as its maritime neighbours. Through this, India has introduced intellectual rigour to the notion that oceans are not spaces which divide continents, but rather serve as bridges of engagement and opportunities of cooperation. This view has clearly shaped India’s strategic outlook to advance its trade and connectivity engagements with like-minded countries.
From an operational viewpoint, India’s overhaul of its maritime sector has been underway across various domains. The shipping sector, in particular, has increasingly received significant focus given the dominance of a handful of countries in the sector. Furthermore, given that a critical alignment is evident in India’s labour force and the requirements of the shipping sector, it is imperative for New Delhi to accelerate its strategy to emerge as a leader in this industry. Its ambition to rank among the top five countries in the ship-building sector is a welcome starting point. This would require a closer engagement with like-minded partner countries such as Japan and South Korea, which remain important players in this industry. A slew of important agreements signed between India and Japan earlier in 2025 to enhance cooperation in the maritime sector is an important starting point.
The use of technologies in the maritime sector has itself evolved as multifaceted. India leads efforts of infusion of new technologies in Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA).
Steady efforts to integrate new technologies will help increase the efficiency of these sectors. The use of technologies in the maritime sector has itself evolved as multifaceted. India leads efforts of infusion of new technologies in Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA). Furthermore, India has fostered cooperation in MDA through its Information Fusion Centre-Indian Ocean Region, in groupings such as the Quad and IORA. Given how maritime trade routes and supply chains are increasingly vulnerable to disruptions caused by both traditional and non-traditional sources of maritime security challenges, countries should not view imperatives of security and connectivity at sea as divorced from each other. The stability and resilience of a maritime corridor would increasingly remain contingent on emboldening its security. The role of new technologies in facilitating these security imperatives will, therefore, remain crucial.
Given that India’s maritime sector has been enthused by the strategic framework of Maritime Amrit Kaal to achieve maritime excellence by 2047, New Delhi should continue to advance a forward-looking agenda to tap into the next order of maritime logistics and connectivity architecture. Given the integrated and interdependent nature of globalisation, r India will have to initiate strategies to ensure its own growth using the maritime domain while also acting as a catalyst for growth in its neighbourhood. India’s geography endows it with a position to evolve as a vital node for countries in its neighbourhood which are landlocked, such as Nepal and Bhutan. Given the emerging framework of multi-modal connectivity, which involves connectivity on rail, road, and sea, the bourgeoning growth of India’s maritime sector will also work to benefit its neighbours. By way of facilitating such second-order growth, as an ancillary result, India will also be able to yield strategic currency in its neighbourhood, which has historically seen minimal regional cohesion and integration.
A vital preface for the operational elements of such new partnerships would be to ensure India continues to harness strategic heft across new geographies, which will remain key in ushering the maritime futures of the world.
Second, India must continue to invest in new geographies and align its connectivity architectures with its strategic priorities. While this may entail expanding India’s strategic presence in new geographies, it will also have to enhance engagements in geographies which have traditionally remained important and figured in India’s engagements, but hold the promise of greater potential. Southeast Asia is arguably one such geography, which, although it has remained a vital area for India’s strategic engagement, capped by frameworks such as the Look East policy and, more recently, the Act East policy, but have remained marginal in terms of strengthening connectivity architectures and trade routes. Although the much-discussed Chennai-Vladivostok maritime corridor has remained in vogue in India’s strategic vocabulary, it has seen minimal substantial growth. With the melting of Arctic ice and opening of new trade corridors in the region, India needs to foster new partnerships to bolster engagement. A vital preface for the operational elements of such new partnerships would be to ensure India continues to harness strategic heft across new geographies, which will remain key in ushering the maritime futures of the world.
As India charts the path of bolstering its economic and strategic prowess, it will remain vital to recalibrate the contours of its maritime resilience by fostering new partnerships with like-minded countries on issues and sectors that will increasingly shape the future of the maritime domain. Inclusion of new technologies, striving for climatic balance, and bolstering infrastructure capabilities are sectors that are likely to galvanise New Delhi’s maritime potential.
Sayantan Haldar is an Associate Fellow with the Strategic Studies Programme at the Observer Research Foundation.
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Sayantan Haldar is an Associate Fellow with ORF’s Strategic Studies Programme. At ORF, Sayantan’s work is focused on Maritime Studies. He is interested in questions on ...
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