Earlier this year, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi articulated a new, expanded maritime vision for India during a visit to Mauritius, dubbed MAHASAGAR (Mutual and Holistic Advancement for Security and Growth Across Regions). Ten years ago, while visiting the same country, Modi had launched the SAGAR (Security and Growth for All in the Region) initiative, which aimed to strengthen regional partnerships and boost economic development.
Unlike SAGAR’s primarily regional and security-centric approach, MAHASAGAR integrates economic diplomacy, technological connectivity, and environmental sustainability into India’s maritime engagement. The move represents a “significant evolution” of Modi’s original maritime doctrine, demonstrating a shift from a regional focus on the Indian Ocean to a comprehensive global strategy.
As India transitions from SAGAR to MAHASAGAR after a decade, the country’s maritime security implementation has seen notable successes but also faces limitations that constrain its full potential. If New Delhi hopes to realize the powerful political vision of the next phase of its global maritime policy, the Indian government would have to institutionalize MAHASAGAR through policy articulation and bureaucratic innovation while also expanding the substantive scope of the agenda to include economic and environmental cooperation.
Key Achievements of SAGAR
Over the past decade, the SAGAR initiative has achieved significant success across three primary issue areas: maritime domain awareness (MDA), humanitarian assistance and disaster response (HADR), and naval diplomacy. Given the vastness of the oceans, real-time situational awareness remains a paramount concern for the littoral nations of the Indian Ocean. The region faces a wide range of maritime issues, ranging from climate threats such as cyclones and sea level rise to an increasing number of human security challenges such as illegal migration, trafficking, piracy, illegal fishing, pollution and more. For policymakers to address these issues, a real-time picture of the maritime domain is crucial. However, MDA is often complicated, involving the collection, amalgamation, layering, and analysis of data from sources as diverse as radars, satellites, sonars, and ship responder systems. To address this issue, India has significantly expanded its MDA capabilities under the SAGAR policy, particularly through the Information Fusion Centre-Indian Ocean Region (IFC-IOR) in Gurgaon. Established in 2018, IFC-IOR facilitates real-time information sharing with 28 partner nations, International Liaison Officers, and various international organizations, helping track and address maritime traffic, piracy, and illegal activities in the Indian Ocean. With India’s vision expanding from the Indian Ocean to the Indo-Pacific, the IFC-IOR could complement existing efforts through outreach to the wider region.
“If New Delhi hopes to realize the powerful political vision of the next phase of its global maritime policy, the Indian government would have to institutionalize MAHASAGAR through policy articulation and bureaucratic innovation while also expanding the substantive scope of the agenda to include economic and environmental cooperation.”
Beyond maritime domain awareness and aid, the Indian Navy has pursued various deployments and joint exercises with different nations to bolster regional maritime security, which have served as the foundation for extended support to IOR partners through SAGAR. Some of these include anti-piracy patrols in the Gulf of Aden since 2008, joint naval exercises with foreign navies (like Malabar), and capacity building efforts such as personnel training, gifting patrol vessels, and supporting maritime infrastructure development in countries like Mauritius, Seychelles, and the Maldives.
This has enabled the SAGAR vision of expanding India’s HADR support to IOR nations. Notable examples include the supply of vaccines under the Vaccine Maitri program during the COVID-19 pandemic, aid to Mozambique and Madagascar after a devastating cyclone in 2019-20, and rescue and relief missions after natural disasters in Sri Lanka, Maldives, Turkey, and Myanmar in recent years.
Agenda to Action: Institutionalizing MAHASAGAR
Despite its successes with SAGAR, India still faces serious challenges to its maritime ambitions. For one, New Delhi’s maritime agenda remains nebulous and ill-defined, hindering concrete, coordinated action even when India has sufficient capacity. Even after a decade, SAGAR still lacks a white paper that mentions a clear institutional framework, relevant stakeholders, and funding mechanisms. SAGAR still derives much of its substance from the speeches of political leaders instead of a carefully drafted strategy. Given these shortcomings, it resembles more of a guiding strategic vision than an operational policy, limiting its scale, execution, and impact in the region. By contrast, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), part of China’s constitution, exemplifies the translation of state policymaking into concrete action. The codification of the global vision ensures that future leadership will carry the policy forward, crafting an enduring policy.
Since MAHASAGAR aims to connect India with the larger maritime region around it, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs—specifically, its Indo-Pacific division—should develop an authoritative, prescriptive white paper that directs relevant stakeholders to pool efforts toward the stated objectives of this maritime vision, akin to a National Security Strategy or National Defense Strategy in the United States. While white papers have rarely been a part of Indian foreign policymaking, such a step would increase inter-ministerial and inter-organization cooperation, accountability, and cost-sharing while reducing redundancies. It would also send an important signal to partners about India’s strategic commitment to maritime security and the IOR. Currently, multiple ministries and organizations, including the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways, the Ministry of Earth Sciences, and the Indian Navy, actively contribute to advancing the MAHASAGAR vision; establishing a formal policy framework would further enhance coordination, optimize resource sharing, and strengthen collaborative efforts towards achieving shared maritime security and growth objectives.
Beyond Security: A Holistic Maritime Agenda
In addition to developing the necessary institutions to execute its maritime vision, India should also expand the substantive scope of the agenda beyond just security and humanitarian cooperation, adopting a holistic strategy that recognizes the centrality of economic and environmental concerns for the littoral nations of the Indian Ocean region. Many of the IOR nations primarily seek economic prosperity through infrastructure development; such aspirations should remain central to India’s regional maritime engagement. While SAGAR has incorporated development, many of the activities remain security-focused. Economic connectivity and development projects, especially economic cooperation and trade facilitation, require enhanced policy directives both at the domestic and regional levels. Additionally, India’s efforts toward infrastructural development and connectivity projects in the regions are appreciable, but they are yet to match China’s infrastructure investments in the region, leading to missed opportunities for economic influence. Maritime connectivity and infrastructure development act as a force multiplier for security and developmental aspirations but continue to face challenges.
Additionally, IOR policymakers identify blue economy to be among their top priorities but Indian maritime security planners have not taken enough notice of the environmental risks to these activities. The Indian Ocean is among the regions most vulnerable to extreme weather and environmental change in the world, and contains 40 percent of the world’s population. In addition, the IOR contains some of the busiest global searoutes, multiplying the effects of disruptions, pollution, and disasters. Despite recognizing sustainability as the central theme in the IOR, India’s maritime ecological initiatives under SAGAR remain underdeveloped—issues like marine pollution, coastal erosion, and climate change resilience necessitate more focused regional collaboration under SAGAR. Several key issues require greater research and policy attention. These include overfishing, which poses a threat to marine biodiversity and fish stock sustainability, directly impacting coastal livelihoods and industry as well as the blue economy. Furthermore, marine pollution from plastics, oil spills, and industrial waste poses grave environmental and economic risks. Climate change impacts, notably rising sea levels and extreme weather events, threaten coastal communities and marine ecosystems. Political cooperation is critical to address these challenges and can facilitate sharing of adaptation technologies and climate resilient best practices at the regional level.
India’s Strategic Maritime Evolution
Importantly, however, broadening the scope of India’s maritime vision should not come at the cost of its political and security pillars. Rather, a successful approach would continue deepening these core engagements to complement novel economic and environmental dimensions. To this end, initiatives like multilateral maritime exercises (such as the Africa India Key Maritime Engagement) and the deployment of Indian Ocean Ships to friendly countries help position India as a “first responder” and “preferred security partner” in the region, directly boosting interoperability, joint regional surveillance capabilities, and operational collaboration based on trust and partnerships. MAHASAGAR can further integrate technological connectivity within the Indo-Pacific region by expanding joint maritime deployments, enhancing real-time maritime domain awareness via the Quad’s Indo-Pacific Maritime Domain Awareness initiative through shared satellite and radar systems, and promoting cooperative information-sharing networks among partner nations. In addition, India should look for political solutions to resolve geopolitical and maritime boundary disputes that complicate cooperative resource management, such as the India-Sri Lanka fishing conflict.
“Blending political, security, economic, and environmental aims into a unified vision will prove difficult, but this comprehensive approach is necessary if India seeks to become a maritime leader in the Indian Ocean and beyond.”
Blending political, security, economic, and environmental aims into a unified vision will prove difficult, but this comprehensive approach is necessary if India seeks to become a maritime leader in the Indian Ocean and beyond. By building resilient transoceanic partnerships, MAHASAGAR can present a cooperative and inclusive alternative to China’s BRI and its “String of Pearls” strategy—thereby serving a critical strategic objective for New Delhi. By strengthening relationships with Indian Ocean littoral states like Mauritius, Seychelles, and East African nations, some analysts argue that MAHASAGAR looks to diminish China’s unilateral economic, political, and military dominance while enhancing India’s naval presence, maritime security cooperation, and regional leadership. But beyond the maritime threat of China, executing an holistic, well-defined MAHASAGAR would represent a critical step in India’s larger rising power trajectory. India has come a long way since SAGAR was launched a decade ago, but much work remains to be done.
Views expressed are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the positions of South Asian Voices, the Stimson Center, or our supporters.
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Image 1: Narendra Modi via X
Image 2: Indian Navy via X
