No, everything isn’t shipshape : The Tribune India

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No, everything isn’t shipshape

For long, air crashes in the Indian Air Force, which continue to occur with monotonous regularity, has become an ‘accepted’ norm.

No, everything isn’t shipshape

Seven naval officers were found guilty following a probe into the fire that occurred on board submarine INS Sindhuratna in 2014.



Dinesh Kumar in Chandigarh

For long, air crashes in the Indian Air Force, which continue to occur with monotonous regularity, has become an ‘accepted’ norm. For the past decade the Navy’s warship and submarine fleet is being afflicted with alarming regularity by a malady of mishaps, some of which are among most horrific and unusual in the world. As if loss of high-technology aircraft is not bad enough, mishaps in the Navy involve the loss of considerably more human lives along with very expensive high-technology vessels. This at a time when the country’s multi-dimensional blue water fleet is entrusted with a wide array of challenges, which include preparing for the strategic role of retaliatory missile strikes fitted with nuclear warheads in the event of a nuclear war. 

The latest mishap is the sideways toppling of INS Betwa, an indigenously built guided missile frigate, while it was undocking in Mumbai Dockyard on December 5. The 12-and-a-half-year-old warship was undergoing a medium refit since April which was expected to take two years. Described as ‘rarest of the rare’ and ‘unimaginable’, this bizarre incident is probably unprecedented. 

Another similarly unprecedented incident was the sinking of a docked submarine (INS Sindhurakshak), also in Mumbai, following a series of explosions in its torpedo section in August 2013. 

These two incidents have been embarrassing for the world’s seventh largest Navy: in the last two decades, it has recorded the first-ever resignation (Admiral Devendra Kumar Joshi in 2014) and the first-ever sacking (Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat in 1998) of a Service Chief in India’s post-Independent history. Indeed this ‘silent Service’, as navies worldwide are known, which also happens to be the smallest of the three Services in India, has been disproportionately loud in making news for the wrong reasons. In the last 11 years, starting from December 2005, the Navy’s surface, sub surface and air fleet has been involved in close to 70 mishaps and has lost about 40 personnel including male and female officers. In the last five years alone, the Navy has lost four vessels including a submarine. Prior to 2011, it lost a warship each in 2006 and 1990. The Navy has announced that it will endeavour to get INS Betwa, the 3,850-ton warship built at a cost of about Rs 600 crore, sailing again. But this appears a herculean task. 

Defence planners have been steeped in a land-centric mindset but have occasionally also been acknowledging that India has a complex maritime environment for which it is important to have a capability-based Navy. Statistically, India comprises a 7,516 km coastline, 1,197 islands across two seas, 1,55,889 sq km of territorial waters, 2.01 million sq km exclusive economic zone, 1.2 million sq km continental shelf, two stations in Antarctica (Maître and Bharati) and one in the Arctic (Himadri) and conducts 90 percent of trade by volume and 70 percent by value. 

Conventional military threats apart, smuggling, piracy and, in recent years, sea-based movement of terrorists, have added to India’s maritime concerns. The menacingly growing Chinese naval presence in the semi-landlocked Indian Ocean and in India’s immediate maritime neighbourhood (Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Thailand) is a cause for concern for New Delhi. Also, the all-weather Sino-Pakistan strategic alliance is clearly inimical towards India.

The intense ongoing maritime activity in the Indian Ocean across the world’s third largest ocean (10,000 km in width and 13,000 km in length) needs to be kept under surveillance which requires substantial reconnaissance and anti-submarine capabilities. A highly busy Indian Navy has evolved into a major instrument of diplomacy continually engaged as it is in bilateral and multi-lateral exercises, joint patrolling, port calls, hydro graphic surveys, flag-showing deployments and maritime security on specific requests from some maritime neighbours.

But like the Army and the Air Force, the Indian Navy too is mired in a wide range of shortcomings and challenges, some of which fall outside its domain. Depleting force levels, especially that of the submarine fleet which is down to just 13 diesel-electirc and one nuclear-powered submarine on lease from Russia; the long delays and escalating costs involved in inducting both indigenously built and imported vessels; an over-dependency on imported equipment due to the country’s limited indigenous capability; a sluggish shipbuilding industry; inefficiently managed, congested and heavily silted ports along with inadequate port infrastructure have combined to adversely affect India’s maritime security environment. 

Clearly there is need for better coordination and a seriousness of purpose among the 16 different ministries, departments and organisations that are engaged in ocean related matters. The fact that the Navy is smitten with mishaps occurring with alarming regularity reflects poorly on training, competence and the quality of leadership is only adding to the problem which the Navy needs to urgently address. Even more, the government as a whole has to share the bigger responsibility.

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