India’s Maritime Power: New Directions Hardcover – by P V RAO

Contemporary India is redefining national perception of the sea. Past neglect of the sea (sea blindness) is shed. New roadmaps to leverage ocean wealth for national progress are being dawn. Successive maritime programmes and projects launched - Coastal Industrial Corridors, Deep Ocean Mission, Maritime Visions, Matsya Sampada, Yojana, NLEP, Rail Sagar, Sagarmala - are the building blocks of national maritime power.

India’s naval power and maritime power quite often are used as synonymous, or coterminous terms. Are they so? Are the attributes of naval and maritime power same? This book argues building naval power and maritime power demand different blue prints, resources and are directed to serve different objectives.

Blue economy, India’s current maritime discourse, inspires maritime power building. But what are the capabilities of maritime power? Does India have the requisite resources - capital, technology, skills - to develop them? If not, how are these resources mobilised? Who are the stakeholders involved in the maritime sectors? What are the government strategies to mobilise private partnerships and its regulatory controls over the investing partners? Lastly, what is the status of major maritime projects launched, and the problems encountered by them. These are the critical issues this book laboured to address. But, it does not claim to survey all the maritime programmes, given their large number and scope. Nonetheless, it is assumed no other publication on India’s maritime power matches the contents of this book.