India must utilise geopolitical leverages to ensure energy security: Experts

A turbulent global order seriously impacts India’s energy security and New Delhi must build capacity besides generating skilled workforce and utilising geopolitical leverages to navigate tough alliances and sanctions, experts said at the Military Literature Festival here today.

Pointing out that the newest domain being implemented by developed nations across the world is resource weaponisation to secure their energy needs, experts said that the ongoing wars in Ukraine and West Asia were being fought in the context of securing oil supply.

They said India, which is the third biggest energy consumer globally after the US and China, did not have the luxury of time and must act swiftly to shun over dependence on Russian Oil.

Citing the example of China, which has revolutionised its transport sector through the electrification of vehicles to cut down its oil bill by a massive one million barrels per day, Lt Gen Vinod G Khandare, former Director General of the Defence Intelligence Agency, said India must look to explore space-based solutions for energy needs. Massive generation, assured fuel supply and storage, capacity-building and alternative sources of green energy are important, he said.

Rahul Bedi, a defence journalist, said energy was the invisible force behind every political expedition today and India needed to expand strategic reserves, form resilient supply networks which can outweigh any form of foreign sanctions to upgrading its refineries.

Brigadier Arun Sehgal, a defence analyst, said as the world was saddled with wars today, every nation would need to recalibrate its approach to ensuring energy sustainability. He cautioned that over the next 30 days, the prices of oil will go up by about $8 to $10.

Stressing the importance of developing India’s maritime prowess to meet the challenges that lie ahead, Admiral Arun Prakash, former Chief of Naval Staff, said that the Navy was the only force having an advantage over India’s principal adversaries in the Indian Ocean region.

“If there is a two-front war or two-and-a-half-front war, which means a nexus between China and Pakistan, then the best that our gallant Army and very capable Air Force can do is to hold them there, create a stalemate. I doubt if we can go anything beyond that,” he said while speaking at the Military Literature Festival in Chandigarh on Saturday.

“But if we look seaward, we have a tremendous advantage over both our adversaries. We dominate the Indian Ocean. We have a capable Navy. And we can certainly do harm, threaten anybody who starts a conflict with us in the waters of the Indian Ocean,” he added.

Stating that we must be more vigilant about our maritime security, he rued that we did not understand the full implications of maritime power and speak about it lightly just because we had a competent, robust, technologically-advanced navy. He added this did not mean that India was a maritime power.

“A navy is only a small component of a nation’s maritime power. Our ports are languishing. Our shipbuilding industry, except for warship building, is again moribund. Our merchant fleet is very small,” Admiral Prakash said.

The changing dynamics in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region and Iran were discussed by Ambassador Yash Sinha, Shalini Chawla and RK Kaushik, where the historical perspective as well as recent developments in light of the conflict in West Asia and the ongoing hostilities between Pakistan and the Taliban were explored.

A session was also devoted to the diamond jubilee of the 1965 India Pakistan War, where experts opined that the lessons learnt then were still relevant today. There day also featured a talk on the empire of Maharaja Ranjit Singh and his campaigns in Baltistan and Tibet.