India is willing to work for peace and growth in the neighbourhood on a “non-reciprocal basis and assume the responsibilities befitting its size and the advantages that it has got” said National Security Adviser Ajit Doval on Friday.
Meanwhile, he also said that India is “not part of any alliance” and its cooperation is “not directed against any country.”
Technology sharing
In this regard, he offered India’s capacities in information sharing, GPS-aided Geo Augmented Navigation (GAGAN) satellite system, submarine safety and deep submergence rescue vessels and disaster management and mitigation to countries in the region.
“India aspires to be a major contributor to maritime safety in the region with active cooperation of all. The technological and infrastructure facilities that India has been able to build up, we would like to throw it open and make it available to the best use by countries of the region,” Mr. Doval said.
He was addressing the second edition of the Goa Maritime Conclave hosted by the Indian Navy with Indian Ocean littoral states.
This edition of GMC saw the participation of 10 littoral states and a few observers from friendly foreign countries. The biennial conclave was set up to identify common threats in the region and evolve a cooperative mechanism on how to tackle them. Navy Chief Admiral Karambir Singh said that “seas will become central to national discourse in the years to come” and laid out action points for improving cooperative mechanisms between friendly navies.
Mr. Doval said India has provided navigational warnings and hydrographical surveys to neighbouring countries and under the ‘neighbourhood first’ policy he identified fighting terror, human trafficking, drug and narcotics smuggling as major areas of cooperation.
He said it was important to have an advance warning system and intelligence sharing which are beyond white shipping so that “we have ability to forsee troubles and take initiatives and respond in real time to minimise their negative impact.”
The Indian Navy had established an Information Fusion Centre (IFC) for the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) at Gurugram and has invited international observers for information exchange of movements on the high seas.
Referring to this, he said, “We would like our neighbours to draw upon it, consider it as their own facility and probably rather than duplicating it we can augment it further by their cooperation and we can also have other centres in the region which can have much more communication with each other.”
He also offered GAGAN which meets maritime and aviation related requirements in the IOR from the shores of Africa to Australia. “We will be quite willing and happy if other countries in the region make use of it and the data bank would be available to everyone when we develop these facilities further,” he stated.
In the recent past, India has scaled up its foreign cooperation activities in the IOR and the Navy has positioned itself as the ‘net security provider’ in the region.
