INDIA'S MARITIME SECURITY By Rahul Roy-Chaudhury, Knowledge World, Rs 550 As India enters the 21st century with a flagging economy and millions of people below the poverty line, does she require a navy? Even if a navy is to be maintained, what purpose is it going to serve? Rahul Roy-Chaudhury, one of the foremost naval analysts of India, attempts to answer the questions in his book. In his first book, Sea Power and Indian Security, Roy-Chaudhury traced the growth of independent India's naval arm. His perspective in India's Maritime Security, his perspective is much broader. The author grapples with the contours of a maritime strategy for India, which includes the economic, political and military imperatives behind maintaining both military ships and merchant marine. According to Roy-Chaudhury, merchant marine and the accompanying infrastructure will increase in importance as the resources of the sea will become vital for the emerging economy. Foreign trade is crucial to India's economy and this is mostly seaborne. Most of the country's oil and natural gas, for example, are imported from west Asia by oil tankers which are of foreign make. In times of crisis the countries might withdraw their tankers, leaving India high and dry. Thus, India has to build and buy more tankers and protect its lines of communication along the Arabian Sea, especially from seaborne pirates supported by hostile countries. Again, India's capacity to utilize deep-sea fishing is hamstrung by its lack of modern trawlers. Worse, trawlers from neighbouring countries occasionally poach in India's territorial water. Not only does India require more sophisticated trawlers, but the navy also needs to protect them. Seaborne terrorism is also becoming a chief threat to the coastal areas of India. The transfer of arms to terrorists and secessionists along the Bay of Bengal and the Palk Straits have made these two areas danger zones for India. Narco-terrorism along these regions needs to be tackled. The only solution, says Roy-Chaudhury, is intense naval policing. The author's argument challenges the traditional view of A.T. Mahan and Julian Corbett that fighting decisive battles at sea is the prime task of all navies. He toes the line of Geoffrey Till, who claims that unconventional war waged by terrorists in the sea is going to be a major problem in the future. Thus for Roy-Chaudhury stateless marginal groups operating in the seas with indirect support from the foreign navies pose a real threat. However, Roy-Chaudhury is a bit ambivalent about the role of nuclear weapons in the Indian navy. He states that the nuke-equipped navy is for deterrence and not for actual fighting. But he also warns that if India retaliates against Pakistan, the latter might escalate the conflict into a nuclear one in the sea. Roy-Chaudhury deserves praise for showing the interrelation between the marine and naval aspects of India. At present, the navy remains the much neglected Cinderella of the armed forces. Only 15 per cent of the defence budget is allocated for the navy. In view of the rising importance of the seas and ocean for India's economy and sovereignty, Roy-Chaudhury's assertions regarding the necessity of overhauling the marine infrastructure and increasing the naval share of the defence cake need to be seriously considered by India's policy-makers.