The Indian Ocean Region Mattered in 1498. It Matters Even More in 2024
Just In: India’s Chief Economic Advisor Dr. V Anantha Nageswaran at Takshashila Next Week
The Indian Ocean Region Mattered in 1498. It Matters Even More in 2024
In his landmark book ‘Holy War: How Vasco da Gama's Epic Voyages Turned the Tide in a Centuries-Old Clash of Civilizations’, British historian Nigel Cliff describes how the Portuguese explorer literally changed the world by introducing global multiculturism with his epic voyage from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean before finally reaching the western shores of India in 1498.
Since then, the Indian Ocean has been a strategically as well as tactically important pathway. At Takshashila, we have been studying the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) from exactly those points of view.
Our latest discussion document revolves around policy recommendations for the Quad in the Western Indian Ocean Region (WIOR). It discusses two prominent maritime security challenges in the region: Illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing and maritime terrorism. It examines how the Quad may aid efforts towards mitigating these.
As Bharat Sharma and Kingshuk Saha, both research analysts at Takshashila, put it:
“1. The Western Indian Ocean Region (WIOR) sub-region has emerged as an important strategic space for various actors, most importantly China. The Quad’s maritime security mandate involves a policy focus on the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), working towards deepening maritime cooperation in the Indo-Pacific, building a maritime rules-based order, and combating illicit maritime activities in the region.
2. As a group looking to find ground in the IOR, the Quad should invest its capital and resources towards the WIOR and subsume this focus under its maritime security domain. This discussion document examines two prominent challenges in the WIOR: Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing (IUU) and maritime terrorism. It provides policy recommendations regarding how the Quad may aid efforts towards mitigating these challenges.
3. The Quad can help aid efforts towards meeting the IUU challenge by strengthening legislative frameworks concerning combatting IUU, bolstering regional maritime surveillance networks, and building institutional connections with IOR organisations. Maritime terrorism, particularly drug smuggling and piracy, can be tackled by focusing on the implementation of key legal instruments and frameworks, and enhancing existing capacities of WIOR countries.”
You can read the full discussion document here.
Is India Ready to Tackle Maritime Threats?
Trivia time: When Edward Norton Lorenz, the mathematician and meteorologist, proposed the now-famous Butterfly Effect to describe Chaos Theory, he gave the example of seagulls. Butterflies came only later when a few of his colleagues and friends told him that introducing the smaller, prettier creatures would make it more poetic. In his 1963 paper, the MIT scholar’s paper ‘The Predictability of Hydrodynamic Flow’ (published in The New York Academy of Sciences), Dr Lorenz wrote:
“One meteorologist remarked that if the theory were correct, one flap of a sea gull's wings would be enough to alter the course of the weather forever. The controversy has not yet been settled, but the most recent evidence seems to favor the sea gulls.”
And frankly, Lorenz did not even come up with this epic title for his paper: “Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?” It was Philip Merilees, just before Lorenz’s presentation at the 139th meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1972.
Anyway, the reason we bring up the Butterfly Effect is because no matter what happens in West Asia, it’d be foolish to think it won’t impact India. Takshashila Scholar Yusuf T Unjhawala describes one such event: heightened tensions in West Asia due to the war in Gaza and increasing attacks on commercial shipping by Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen’s Red Sea.
One such ship that was targeted was the Indian – MV Chem Pluto. India’s external affairs minister S Jaishankar was in Iran on January 15 to discuss just that.
As Yusuf writes:
“In response (to the attack), the Indian Navy boarded two suspect Iranian ships near the attack area and stepped up its patrol of the Arabian Sea, deploying as many as 10 warships, including India’s latest destroyers, frigates, P8 maritime patrol aircraft, and Sea Guardian drones, for deterrence. India’s defence minister pledged to hunt down the perpetrators, even if they were hiding at the bottom of the ocean, and act strictly against them. However, nothing has been said or done since then.”
He adds:
“Endangering the shipping lanes in the Arabian Sea is a direct threat to India’s economy and national security. About 50% of India’s trade passes through the Arabian Sea; 60% of India’s energy needs are fulfilled by the Arab states. It is estimated that just the threats to shipping in the Red Sea can hit India’s exports by $30 billion this year. India is pursuing increased investments in manufacturing with western nations that have adopted a China+1 strategy or are de-risking their economies. It cannot afford disruptions in the supply chain and the shipping of finished goods.”
You can read Yusuf’s op-ed here.
Eating Together and National Consciousness
We have often wondered why a celebration invariably involves communal eating. No matter what the achievement — a job promotion, a sporting victory, a graduation — people demand a “party”.
Takshashila director Nitin Pai thinks it goes beyond just short festivities — Like a family, a nation that eats together stays together, he says, in his latest column for Mint.
Nitin writes:
“You might not have noticed it, but it is extremely difficult to find a restaurant in India that can seat a dozen people around a single round table. If you have more than six diners, you have to ask the restaurant to join two or more tables to create a long rectangle. While this allows several colleagues or family members to technically sit at the same table, conversation and sharing of food is limited to groups of four or five people sitting next to each other. Compared to many East Asian countries where big round tables are commonplace in restaurants, communal dining in India mostly caters to rather small groups.
In fact, both eating out and with others are relatively new phenomena in Indian society. The oldest restaurants date back to the mid-19th century and until a few decades ago, were either not open to all or not acceptable by all. Before independence, there was hardly any communal dining that cut across caste and religious lines. Festivals and weddings could be very large, with thousands of guests, but scrupulously avoided mixing of caste groups.”
What are the consequences of this lack of communal dining culture? Several, Nitin says. For one:
“The consequence of such an inter-dining culture is that India’s stock of cross-cutting social capital is weak. Like a family, a nation that eats together stays together. That traditional wisdom has been backed by evolutionary psychology in recent decades. Communal eating creates social bonding. Our sense of ‘us’ depends on who we eat with. The more we eat with ‘them,’ ‘they’ become ‘us.’ Religion and caste impose severe limitations on our choice of dining companions and limit us to very small, exclusive communities. It is not surprising that the Buddha, Guru Nanak, Sahodaran Ayyappan and various social reformers through the ages sought to shape egalitarian communities by breaking inter-dining rules.”
You can read Nitin’s piece here (it’s behind a paywall).
Watching the Taiwan Elections Closely
The CNN headline was emphatic: ‘Taiwan voters dismiss China warnings and hand ruling party a historic third consecutive presidential win’.
Takshashila’s Anushka Saxena, though, was understated yet brilliant in her pre-election analysis of one of the most consequential and watched Taiwan polls in recent times.
“From the presidential debate that took place on 30 December 2023,” Anushka wrote for The Quint, “it was evident that the key factor of deliberation for all the three candidates were cross-strait relations and mainland China policies of the parties. Lai, in particular, was attacked by both Hou and Ko for referring to himself as a "pragmatic Taiwan independence worker,” which the latter perceived as a sign that Lai would create more room for insecurity and tensions in cross-straits relations.”
Of course, an election in Taiwan is always accompanied by backlash from China.
“An election in Taiwan is incomplete without backlash from China and tactics for influencing and interfering with public opinion. Lai, for example, has received intense criticism from the Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) of the Chinese State Council for being a "trouble-maker,” a "secessionist,” and an individual with a "confrontational mindset.” China has also sanctioned Hsiao Bi-Khim, Lai’s running mate, and her family members, for a second time in April 2023, right after Tsai’s stopover in the US on her trip to Guatemala and her meeting with the then-US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.”
You can read Anushka’s piece here. You can listen to an All Things Policy podcast on the important issue here.
Wait, there’s more!
Our pick for the All Things Policy podcast of the week is the one on advertising lessons from the 2004 general elections.
Twenty years ago, the Congress Party took a drubbing in three state elections. The ‘India Shining’ slogan of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA government had taken everyone by storm. Buoyed by their momentum, the ruling party decided to advance general elections by eight months. Yet in May 2004, the ultimate story was one of an absolute surprise.
The Congress won the elections. In this interesting episode, Carl Jaison speaks to Jayshree M Sundar, author of the book – ‘Don’t Forget 2004’ and who headed the agency that executed the marketing and advertising campaigns which dovetailed into the political strategy for the Congress party, bringing it back to power after a nine-year hiatus.
During the period when she oversaw the agency pitch that won the rights to execute the advertising campaign of the Congress party, Jayshree was President (North region) of Leo Burnett.
You can listen to her fascinating insights here.
#BookLounge this Friday at Takshashila
On January 19, you might want to head over to the Takshashila office in Bengaluru for a #BookLounge discussion on the latest hit, ‘When The Chips Are Down: A Deep Dive Into A Global Crisis’, authored by Takshashila deputy director Pranay Kotasthane and alum Abhiram Manchi.
Shree Kumar, Senior Architect, Innominds, will host the conversation. Click here to read more about the book and here to purchase a copy.
The event is open to all. RSVP at contact[at]takshashila[dot]org[dot]in. You can find our location here.
State of Prisons in India
The latest in our Police Chowki podcast series is seriously enlightening and interesting. It is about an issue that troubles even the most hardened of law and order policymakers: India’s prison system. It is the most overlooked pillar of the Indian criminal justice system. Starved of funds, overcrowded with prisoners and laced with corruption, is there a scope for reforming Indian prisons and achieving true rehabilitation of prisoners?
Takshashila’s Shrikrishna Upadhyaya hosts two experts, Somesh Goyal (ex-IPS and DGP of Himachal Pradesh) and Javeed Ahmad (ex-IPS and DGP of Uttar Pradesh), in a conversation on the colonial context of Indian prisons, issues of overcrowding, health and hygiene, the prison economy, and policy reforms needed in Prison Manuals. Mr Goyal also talks about the ‘Har Haath ko Kaam’ initiative he led towards giving paid jobs to all prisoners in Himachal Pradesh.
You can listen to the episode here.
OFC is Back
Our hit new, alum-only offering, ‘Organising for Change’ (OFC), will feature Piyush Tewari of the SaveLIFE Foundation. On Thursday, January 18, Piyush will speak about road safety in India and why it is not just the responsibility of policymakers. If you are a Takshashila alum, you don’t want to miss this! Details here on OpenTakshashila.
GCPP 37 is On
And yes, our latest GCPP cohort — the 37th — kicked off on January 13, with Pranay Kotasthane inviting the latest batch. From this cohort onwards, the course will be offered on OpenTakshashila. Are you there yet?
That’s all from us this week. Take care!