Strategic message in building INS Jatayu
The new base sends a clear message to India’s neighbours that the Indian Navy is capable of safeguarding India’s vital maritime interests.
Last week, India commissioned INS Jatayu at Minicoy in the Lakshadweep islands. The event marked a milestone for the Indian Navy, which seeks to burnish its credentials as the premier security provider in the Indian Ocean. Sitting astride major shipping lanes in the Indian Ocean, Minicoy already has a naval detachment. With growing pirate activity in the Gulf of Aden and Arabian Sea and Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, the Navy has decided to upgrade the existing facility into a full-fledged base. India’s security managers believe a surveillance outpost in Minicoy will help track illicit activity and keep an eye out for other non-traditional threats such as marine pollution and illegal fishing.
Jatayu, however, is more than about maintaining vigil at sea. The base is aimed at boosting the Indian Navy’s operational reach, enabling faster deployment, and maintaining a strategic presence. Reportedly, there are plans to turn the naval facility at Minicoy into a nodal point for logistics and support operations. Incidentally, Jatayu is the second naval base in Lakshadweep after INS Dweeprakshak on Kavaratti island. At a time of growing threats to shipping, a new base at Minicoy offers the Indian Navy a useful forward outpost in a critical sea space.
The new base sends a clear message to India’s neighbours that its Navy is capable of safeguarding India’s vital maritime interests. In particular, India’s maritime managers are focused on developments in and around the Maldives. After Malé asked New Delhi to withdraw a contingent of Indian military personnel stationed in the island State, experts are worried about the prospect of a greater Chinese presence in the Arabian Sea. Malé’s move to allow a Chinese research vessel to make a port call last month seems to confirm Indian fears. The Maldives and China have also signed a defence cooperation pact that offers free Chinese military assistance to Malé’. To many in New Delhi, Malé’’s moves to offer China greater strategic space in the Indian Ocean seem to be a ploy to subvert Indian authority in its backyard.
To be sure, there is more than a strategic dimension to the commissioning of Jatayu. India is keen to build capacity and foster development in the region. The inauguration of the new base in Minicoy could result in considerable infrastructure growth, potentially enhancing communications, logistics, and support facilities to benefit local communities. It could spur economic growth, and increase demand for local goods and services. The Navy is said to be keen to incorporate environmental sustainability into its development plans for the new base.
Nonetheless, the key factor driving India’s moves in Lakshadweep appears largely geopolitical. With Mohamed Muizzu, the Maldivian President, adopting a markedly pro-China tilt, New Delhi’s patience has been running thin. Malé’s recent anti-India moves have convinced Indian decision-makers that the Muizzu administration is intent on recalibrating ties with India and that the time for New Delhi to act is now. Even so, the decision to develop a naval base on Minicoy, merely 125 km from the Maldives’ northernmost atoll, appears less than carefully considered. For one thing, it upends a long-held consensus in India’s defence and foreign policy establishment that New Delhi must refrain from excessively militarising its island territories. The notion that excessive Indian posturing at sea could unnerve neighbours is no longer popular. With New Delhi seeking a more muscular presence in maritime South Asia, the case for militarising island territories appears stronger than ever. Yet, a full-fledged military facility in Lakshadweep is far from a straightforward proposition.
The problem for New Delhi isn’t so much constructing a naval base at Minicoy as it is maintaining and sustaining it. Supporting a military outpost on an island 400 km from India’s mainland in a region where even fresh water is a scarce resource is an onerous undertaking. Building an airfield with shelters for surveillance aircraft and fighter jets on a small island is difficult enough. Creating associated infrastructure, like housing for personnel, storage facilities, and underground fuel dumps on a small island, complicates the task, not to mention the fragile ecology of Minicoy which adds another significant wrinkle to the challenge.
For the moment, the naval detachment at Minicoy has been formally elevated in status to a naval base. Strategic infrastructure on the island will be created in due course as necessary clearances are obtained. If a naval base must be built at Minicoy, an incremental approach seems the best way forward. Jatayu’s tactical advantages are undeniable, not least the opportunities for collaboration with like-minded partners that it is likely to create. Whether or not it is maintainable and productive in the long-run remains to be seen.
Abhijit Singh is head of the Maritime Policy Initiative at the ORF. The views expressed are personal
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