India eyes a strategic opportunity in the Bay of Bengal

The Andaman Islands 

From outpost to springboard 

Sep 13th 2014 | PORT BLAIR | 

Barrack room banyan

EXPLORE the palm-fringed bays of Port Blair, the capital of the Indian-owned Andaman and Nicobar islands, and intriguing sights appear. On one islet are the ghostly remains of a Victorian-era British settlement, its barracks, ballroom and Presbyterian church strangled by monstrous banyan trees. On another shore sits the headquarters of India’s only three-service—army, air and navy—military command. At a nearby wharf warships form a line, white ensigns flapping. A dry dock lies moored out in the harbour as a frigate steams out into the Bay of Bengal.

India had long neglected its island outpost close to mainland South-East Asia. Populated for thousands of years by indigenous tribes, the Andamans were used as a penal colony by the British until the Japanese invasion in 1942. After independence, India treated the Andamans as a remote backwater, too costly to supply or defend. The country’s military planners mostly faced west, to Pakistan. 

Attitudes are changing. India increasingly looks east, whether hoping for trade or fretting about China’s military heft. In the Himalayas China has built roads, railways and other infrastructure along a 3,380-kilometre (2,100-mile) disputed border. India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, says his country must build up there too. He will discuss the border with Xi Jinping, China’s president, who will visit India for three days from September 17th. Whatever progress he might make, India is at a strategic disadvantage in the Himalayas, since China looks down on it from the high Tibetan plateau. To compensate, Indian strategists seek advantages elsewhere.

That means bolstering strength at sea. A rising share of India’s growing military budget is being passed to the Indian navy. Three years ago it got just $4.2 billion; this year it has $6.2 billion, or nearly a fifth of total military spending. The navy is reportedly moving vessels and men from its western to its eastern command, which is said to include five guided-missile destroyers, three stealth frigates and a nuclear submarine. An aircraft-carrier is to come later. In the Andaman command a fleet of 15 vessels will expand to 32 in eight years. The army presence will also double, to 6,000.

Those in charge in Port Blair are natural disciples of those late-19th-century strategists who argued that geography and sea power are destiny. To such Indians, the 572 mostly uninhabited islands are an anchor for India’s broad commercial, diplomatic and military strategy of reaching out east. “It is geography,” says Ajay Singh, a former tank commander who governs the Andamans on behalf of India’s president. He pores over charts showing the islands stretching as a 750km-long chain above the entrance to the Malacca Strait, which connects the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The strait is one of the world’s busiest sea routes, with more than 1,000 ships running through it each week. It is vital to the Asian economic miracle centred on China.

Hawks in Delhi who are suspicious of Chinese long-term aims say bluntly that India and its friends will acquire some sway over China only once the Andamans are treated as a “chokepoint”, a place to disrupt Chinese trade in the event of any future confrontation. Four-fifths of Chinese oil imports go through the strait. Chinese naval strategists warn of Indian designs to drop an “iron curtain” there.

But that is all to get ahead of reality. When Mr Xi is in Delhi, Mr Modi will praise growing trade and other ties with China. Besides, says Jeff Smith, an expert on Sino-Indian relations, for all the Andamans’ potential as a powerful base, India’s military expansion has much that is ad hoc about it. There are, he says, still no clear, formal proposals on how to beef up the military presence there.

Certainly, activity on the islands is growing. An air base that opened two years ago in Campbell Bay, Great Nicobar, has taken Indian military aircraft 300km closer than before to the Malacca Strait. Other airstrips are reportedly being built or lengthened to handle big aircraft, including the Hercules transport plane. Airfields for helicopters will follow. The navy wants to deploy drones to track passing ships. New coastguard stations serve a similar purpose. Regular naval exercises with neighbours are interspersed with big international training manoeuvres hosted in the Andamans and named “Millan”. The most recent involved 17 navies in a disaster-relief exercise meant to mark a decade after the 2004 Asian tsunami.

Such expansion, however, lacks clear purpose. The Andamans have a population of 400,000 and can support a large military presence only with difficulty. Communications are poor—at least until a long-promised submarine cable from the mainland arrives. And the economy is dependent on money and goods from mainland India. Mr Singh argues that for the Andamans to become robust, their economy must first develop.

For that, he wants a big boost to tourism, including direct flights from Phuket in Thailand, only 45 minutes’ flying time away. Fisheries should also grow. One businessman in Port Blair shows off a haul of several dozen carcasses of huge yellowfin tuna. Yet real development faces all sorts of hurdles. They include a lack of available land because of strict—and certainly necessary—protection for indigenous tribal groups and valuable rainforest. India may yet develop the islands into a big military asset, but it has to balance the interests of civilians, too. It is going to be a slow boat.