Relevance: GS-2: Bilateral, Regional, and Global Groupings and Agreements involving India and/or affecting India’s interests.

Key Phrases: Yuan Wang 5, Hambantota port, Belt and Road Initiative, Maritime Silk Road Initiative (MSRI), Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB), Centralizing trade routes, Centralizing trade routes.

Why in News?

• A Chinese military vessel, Yuan Wang 5, is scheduled to call at the Sri Lankan Port of Hambantota around 11th August.
• The Indian Government, with their concerns for Indian security, has raised the issue with the Sri Lankan government.

Why is India worried?

• The ‘Yuan Wang 5’ is a powerful tracking vessel whose significant aerial reach — reportedly around 750 km — means that several ports in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Andhra Pradesh could be on China’s radar.
• Reports have claimed that several vital installations in South India could be under threat of being snooped upon.
• It means that it can snoop upon Kalpakkam, Koodankulam, and the atomic research centre within Indian borders.

Why is the Hambantota port crucial strategically?

• The second-largest Lankan port, Hambantota sits on the route connecting Southeast Asia with Africa and West Asia.
• For China, it is an important stop in its Belt and Road Initiative.
• Its development has been largely funded by China, and in 2017, Colombo handed over its majority stake to a Chinese firm after failing to repay the burgeoning debt.
• India and the US have repeatedly flagged concerns that Chinese control of this port could harm their interests in the Indian Ocean by becoming a hub for the PLA Navy.
• Security experts in India have often questioned its economic viability while pointing out that it fits right into China’s ‘string of pearls’ strategy to surround India in the Indian Ocean through increasing land and maritime footprint.

One Belt, One Road initiative:

• China’s interests in the Indian Ocean grew in the context of the ‘One Belt, One Road’ initiative.
• The OBOR consists of two components; namely the Maritime Silk Road Initiative (MSRI) and the Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB).
• It constitutes a massive geopolitical project that aims to construct landscapes to enable the flow of trade and investment by ‘promoting economic cooperation and connectivity between Asia, West Asia, Africa, and Europe.

Centralizing trade routes:

• In the last one thousand years, many emerging powers have frequently attempted to capture and centralize these trade routes, only to find that they finally end up dealing with the same merchant families of the Indian Ocean - families prospering in the Arabian Gulf, East Africa, the Indian Peninsula, Bay of Bengal, Sri Lanka, Maldives, and other small island states.
• For centuries, Indian Ocean navigators, ship owners, and merchants were the custodians of all trade routes that crisscrossed their ocean.
• From the ports and harbours on Bahr Faris (Arabian Gulf) and down to the Swahili Coast on the west to the ports and harbours on the far east to Malacca. The Gujarat and Malabar Coasts to the Bay of Bengal on the north and the island states in the south of the ocean.
• Hundreds of ports and thousands of families were linked by navigation and trade, marriage, and love.
• The Portuguese rule immensely improved the boat-building capabilities of the Indian Ocean port cities but took away the trade from the local families.
• The Dutch, the East India Company, and later the British Empire went on capturing and colonizing the port cities. The British colonial rule consolidated cargo in several bigger port cities.
• Britain’s advocacy of free trade also allowed the local traders to freely trade within the Indian Ocean states.

The Indian Ocean ports:

• The resilience of the Indian Ocean rim ports and their hinterland is because of their smallness.
• The recent Chinese attempts to consolidate the Indian Ocean trade routes under the road and belt initiative are yet to materialize.
• Host countries of the Belt and Road ports have gone or are going bankrupt, defaulting on their sovereign debt.
• Sri Lanka has gone into default, East African port countries look shaky, and Pakistan stands on the brink of sovereign default.
• Attempts to consolidate and centralize economic activities in hub ports remain a series of white elephants, dotted throughout the Indian Ocean rim countries, while the debt of the nonperforming infrastructure breaks local economies and livelihoods.
• There might be an argument for economies of scale and mega ports but this argument rarely holds water when robust small units with more flexibility and agility produce more inclusive and sustainable returns.
• Attempts to restructure the debt of the Indian Ocean port cities and proceed with the same mega infrastructure programs must not be the future vision of the Indian Ocean states.

Conclusion:

• In one form or another, the Indian Ocean states still maintain their maritime heritage.
• Revitalising regional trade networks will be for the advantage of not only the port city economies in distress but also to maintain peace and stability in the Indian Ocean.

Source: The Hindu

Mains Question:

Q. To sustain peace and stability in the Indian Ocean, regional trade networks should be revitalized rather than the trade routes being consolidated with large-scale infrastructure projects. Discuss.