India
oi-Pankaj Mishra
In March 2026, an Indian gas tanker crept towards the Strait of Hormuz. Iran had
closed the passage. Mines lay somewhere beneath her keel. Yet she sailed on. An
Indian warship guided her through, mile by mile, using hydrographic charts and
unbroken radio contact. Once she cleared the strait, destroyers took over the escort
and shepherded her home. The Indian Navy named it Operation Urja Suraksha. It
began on 23 March 2026. It has not stopped since.
India requires enhanced naval power, including carriers, to protect its crucial maritime trade routes like the Strait of Hormuz, evidenced by March 2026’s Operation Urja Suraksha, and ensure energy security, especially given increasing reliance on imports and China’s naval expansion.
Look closely at that tanker. She carried cooking gas for Indian kitchens. Her cargo
was ordinary. Her escort was not. That contrast explains India’s problem. The
country must build more aircraft carriers and more surface combatants. Moreover, it
must decide now.
The lifeline starts 2,000 kilometres away
India buys 88.7 per cent of its crude oil abroad, a record high as of 2025-26 – and
the figure has kept climbing since. Most of it loads in the Gulf. Around 30 per cent of
the world’s seaborne crude squeezes through Hormuz every day.
Consequently, India’s petrol pumps, power plants and fertiliser units depend on a
channel it does not control. Diplomacy can win permission to transit. Only warships
can escort the ship once she enters the minefield.
Alternatives exist on paper. Pipelines, strategic reserves and new suppliers all help.
None of them, however, removes the need to protect a hull at sea. Shore-based
fighters cannot loiter over that water for long. Carriers can. A carrier battle group
carries its own airfield, its own radar picture and its own refuelling aircraft. It parks
power exactly where the cargo is.
Three Gates, One Economy
Roughly 95 per cent of India’s trade by volume moves by sea. About 70 per cent by
value does too. Nearly all of it passes through Hormuz, Bab el-Mandeb or Malacca.
Attack any one gate and the bill lands in Indian homes. Since February 2026,
shipping lines have avoided both Suez and Hormuz. Ships now sail around the
Cape, adding thousands of miles and a fortnight to each voyage. Freight rates climb.
Insurance follows.
Malacca matters just as much. India’s trade with East Asia funnels through that
narrow corridor. So do coal cargoes, electronics and shipping bound for the Pacific.
Whoever watches Malacca watches half of India’s commerce.
Indian warships have therefore patrolled the Gulf of Aden since 2008 and Hormuz
since 2019. Even now, the Navy keeps ships escorting merchantmen through both
chokepoints. Escorting, however, devours hulls. One ship on station demands two
more behind her: one refitting, one working up.
Nine Million Citizens, One Flag
About 9 million Indians live in the Gulf. They send home nearly 40 per cent of India’s
remittances. Millions more work across East Africa.
When the shooting starts, airspace shuts first. The sea stays open, but not always.
During Operation Kaveri in 2023, INS Sumedha lifted 278 citizens out of Port Sudan
while runways burned, and naval ships ran several more such sorties as India
brought home 3,862 people in total. Operation Sindhu, launched in Iran in 2025, tells
the other half of the story: with the Navy’s ships too far from Iran’s interior to reach
most evacuees, India leaned almost entirely on overland routes into Armenia and
Turkmenistan and on air bridges out of Yerevan, Ashgabat, Amman and Sharm el-
Sheikh to bring home roughly 4,400 people. Kaveri shows what a hull already on
station can do. Sindhu shows what happens when one isn’t, the operation still
succeeded, but only because neighbouring states and airspace stayed open long
enough for an airlift to work. That is an assumption India cannot always bank on.
Each rescue needs presence nearby, whether naval or diplomatic, arranged well
before the crisis breaks. India cannot despatch a ship from Mumbai and hope to
arrive in time.
The Wires Beneath the Waves
Undersea cables carry about 99 per cent of the world’s internet traffic. In September
2025, cuts near Jeddah severed the SMW4 and IMEWE systems and slowed traffic
across India and the Gulf.
Meanwhile, India’s offshore rigs, floating terminals and new deep-water fields sit
exposed on open water. Drones and one-way boats now threaten them cheaply.
Protecting such assets demands persistent patrol, helicopters and sensors at sea.
Warships tied alongside protect nothing.
Numbers Decide, not Intentions
Estimates of the Navy’s current strength vary by what is counted, but most put its
combat fleet in the range of 130 to 150 warships, with an official target of around 175
by 2035. China, by contrast, fields three carriers and more than 370 battle-force
hulls. Furthermore, it runs a base in Djibouti and has kept an escort task force off
Africa since 2008.
India therefore needs a third carrier to keep two decks always ready, one for each
seaboard. The second indigenous carrier, IAC-2, awaits clearance and will take eight
to nine years to build at Cochin. Approve it in 2026 and it sails in the mid-2030s.
Delay it, and India simply loses a decade.
Critics call carriers costly targets. Yet the alternative costs more. Every rerouted
cargo, every stranded worker and every spike in fuel prices lands on the same
budget.
Building also pays back. Yards, steel mills and thousands of suppliers share the
money. India has already committed a large shipbuilding package precisely for this
reason. Steel takes years. Crises take days.
That gas tanker reached India safely. Thousands more will follow her. The only real
question is whether an Indian warship will still be waiting when they do.
