Jaishankar wants navy to be combat-ready

Days after China released its first home-made aircraft carrier in the ocean, Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar told top naval commanders to reduce the downtime for warships so that maximum number of naval vessels remain in a combat-ready state.

In an unusual move, Jaishankar on Friday interacted with naval commanders and pointed to how maritime diplomacy can be used more fruitfully to consolidate New Delhi’s position in the Indian Ocean region where Beijing has begun to flex its maritime muscles.

While discussions between naval commanders and the defence minister as well as with the chiefs of the army and the air force are commonplace, this is after a long time that, India’s top diplomat met the men in uniform to assert the importance of naval diplomacy and spoke of the need to be in a combat-ready state.

Jaishankar’s meeting with the navy top brass comes in the wake of the People’s Liberation Army Navy launching its first domestically built aircraft carrier, the Type 001A last week. In the strategic game, aircraft carriers are considered as power projection platforms as well as important foreign policy tools.

Even though Beijing’s aircraft carrier programmes are at a nascent stage at the moment, New Delhi keeps a watch because of the Communist country’s decision to expand its naval prowess. Much to India’s chagrin, Chinese nuclear submarines now move freely in the Indian Ocean, regularly docking at Sri Lanka or Pakistan ports.