In a compact 208-page treatise, the author has covered various facets of our maritime security concerns. He has chosen not to highlight the country's rich maritime heritage only because he has talked about it in an earlier book, Sea Power and Indian Security. With the help of exhaustive and well-researched data, Mr Roy-Chaudhury has stressed the country's dependence on the seas for its economic growth and critical energy needs.

More than 97 per cent of India's trade in volume terms, and nearly 80 per cent in value terms, is seaborne, and we have a vital interest in ensuring that there are enough assets to support this activity and to permit its unhindered progress.

Development of ports and harbours and associated hinterland facilities, ensuring safety of navigation and the freedom of the seas, creation of an adequate mercantile marine, exploration and exploitation of seabed resources, and the coordination and control mechanisms needed to mesh all these activities into one cohesive mosaic, are clearly very important.

Many of these things are actually in motion, but in their own segregated compartments. There is no focussed and integrated approach, and the results, consequently, are less than satisfactory. For example, while tonnage under the Indian flag has grown twenty times since independence, more than 60 per cent of it has been purchased from abroad even as Indian shipyards are idle for want of orders. To overcome such mismatches, the author has suggested the formulation of a definitive and all embracing Maritime Security Policy. He has also highlighted the need for ensuring the safety of our maritime assets by integrating into this policy the forces that may be needed to protect them. This is a reasonable proposition.

There is a general tendency to equate the roles of Navies in maritime security with the protection of commerce and the Sea Lanes of Communications (SLOCS). In our case, this may be only partly true. For almost everything, other than its energy needs, India is a relatively self-sufficient country, and disruption of SLOCS would not be a penalty we could not bear except for oil and gas imports. The main task of the Navy would be to ensure that the energy lifeline is maintained, preferably by a deterrent and proactive posture in which diplomacy needs to be fully interfaced, and, in the worst case, by having capabilities to respond, should this fail. Both strategic and tactical wherewithal are needed.

Strategic power, quite distinct from nuclear power, deters the potential aggressor nation while tactical capability is a counter to the naval threats that it can actually pose. Navies of larger countries, like India, have to be seen more as "conflict preventers" rather than as tactical war fighting machines. If finally challenged, their main contribution must be towards neutralisation of the threat at source-to the defeat of the enemy as a whole. It is true that nuclear capabilities of potential aggressors make conventional conflict, other than limited ones, unlikely, but it is also a fact that modern technology now provides the capabilities to impose strong enough punishment on an enemy without making him reach for the nuclear button.

The author has correctly highlighted the increasingly menacing role of piracy at sea and its linkages with drugs and arms trade, ultimately leading to terrorism. These threats are real and maritime nations, like ours, must have a viable force structure to counter them, including those arising from an inadequately protected coast line. No country can police every mile of its coast, but we already have a well spread out network of police and customs check points, which if suitably strengthened, can provide enough of an impediment to those seeking illegal entry or having evil intent.

The book is well documented with meticulously compiled data on just about every aspect relevant to India's maritime scene. It has to be essential reading for all those who wish to devote more thought to a badly neglected area of our national security spectrum. Mr Roy-Chaudhury could, perhaps, have elaborated a little more than he has, on what needs to be done. That notwithstanding, his new book is timely and topical, and merits a place in the libraries of all those involved in the study and management of India's maritime security concerns.

(The author is a former C-in-C, Eastern Naval Command, and Member, Task Force on Defence Management, Government of India.)

India's Maritime Security by Rahul Roy-Chaudhary; Knowledge World & IDSA; Pp 208; Rs 550