India sheds ‘Sea Blindness’: Government pushes new laws, Rs 70,000-crore shipbuilding plan and mega ports, says Sanjeev Sanyal

India is finally treating the seas as central to its growth and security, senior economic adviser Sanjeev Sanyal said at the Indo-Pacific Regional Dialogue (IPRD) 2025, describing the last two years as a “turning point” in the country’s maritime thinking.

Sanyal said India had long suffered from “sea blindness” despite having the Indian Ocean named after it and a maritime history going back 4,000–5,000 years. “For a very long time, maritime issues did not really enter our national conversation. That has changed only in the last two–three years,” he said, adding that the IPRD was taking place at a very relevant moment.

Explaining why this shift was needed, he said that from an economic point of view India functions like an island nation. “We don’t trade with the western neighbour, and with China we trade through the sea, not through the land border. So in effect, India is as much an island nation as Britain or Japan,” he said. Yet, around 95% of India’s trade is carried on foreign ships, even though India has about 480 merchant vessels, most of them small. This makes shipping, insurance and related costs India’s second or third largest import after oil, he said. “From a geostrategic perspective, it is our single biggest vulnerability. We don’t even need to be sanctioned—if three big shipping lines decide to stop carrying to India, that’s a problem,” he warned.

Sanyal said the government had therefore started to upgrade maritime laws, financing and infrastructure. “In the last 24 months we have modernised five maritime-related laws—on ownership, flagging and so on—which were colonial-era and not fit for purpose,” he said. A key change, he added, was giving ships “infrastructure status”, which will allow long-term financing. “Running a ship is the easy part. The real challenge is financing a 30–35 year asset. If you force people to finance it in five-year blocks, you will never build a fleet. That is what happened to us,” he said.

He said the government has announced a ₹70,000-crore package for shipbuilding and is building a new major port at Vadhavan, north of Mumbai, which is planned to be bigger than all current Indian ports put together by the end of the decade. India is also moving on the long-discussed transshipment port in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and on naval and maritime infrastructure in Karwar, he said.

Sanyal said the government is now confident enough to set ambitious targets. “Last year I had said India should aim to become the world’s fourth-largest shipbuilding country in the next decade. At that time some people smiled. But in just 12 months, foreign lines from France, Norway, Korea and Japan have started placing orders in Indian shipyards. Order books are now full for four–five years,” he said, calling it proof that the mindset has shifted.

“This is the real change—we have begun to take ourselves seriously as a maritime nation,” Sanyal said. A maritime outlook, he added, also changes who India thinks of as its neighbours: “With a landlocked view we see only Pakistan, China or Myanmar. With a maritime view, our neighbourhood is Australia, Indonesia, Singapore, Kenya, Oman, the UAE.”