Examine the increasing significance of maritime security in India’s foreign policy.
How the answer moves
The flow snapshot — the routes in, the body, the counter-view and the routes out.
Route 1 largest littoral state + Indian Ocean = busiest sea lane → Mahan: sea power / choke points → Indo-Pacific shift raises salience → maritime security moving to the centre
Route 2 India’s continental, defensive mindset → the sea long under-weighted → rising maritime focus corrects a neglected destiny
Mahan (sea power / choke points) → Indo-Pacific shift → Tanham (charge of no strategic culture yet his own record of naval denial + blue-water navy) → Panikkar & Menon (geography compels naval presence) → peninsular projection / Indian Ocean control → Act East + net security provider → Bajpai (widened security = global commons, freedom of high seas) → operationalised: SAGAR, Quad, BIMSTEC, Project Mausam, IORA → contest for choke points (Duqm, Sabang, 2018) → Rao (strategic autonomy driven by maritime security)
Pant: strategic thought still inconsistent → net-security-provider = aspiration > capability → continental pull (China pressure in the Indian Ocean and the Himalayas) tests the ambition
Route 1 margin to centre → maritime security now a defining pillar, integral to strategic autonomy and the net-security-provider identity
Route 2 significance real but transition incomplete → ambition ahead of capability → a defining yet still-maturing maritime turn
Model answer
Handwritten, in the form it would be written in the examination hall.
