Less than a year ago, around midnight on 4th December 2014, Indian foreign minister, Ms. Sushma Swaraj, received a SOS phone call from Ms. Dunya Mamoon, her Maldivian counterpart, for supply of drinking water to the tourist archipelago. The only desalination plant in the capital Male had caught fire and 150,000 people in the city were without water. The call was one among she made to the U.S., China and Sri Lanka as well, but India responded faster than anyone else did : just under twelve hours, an Indian aircraft landed at Male with drinking water and many more followed suit, trailed by Indian naval ships, extending the water supply chain all the way from India to Maldives.
India gained goodwill and projected its power in the Indian Ocean region, only due to its supply chain capability as the backbone. Earlier, just more than a decade ago, in the aftermath of the tsunami in the Indian Ocean in end-December 2004, India had carried out humanitarian logistics operations in the region, despite being herself affected by the tragedy. Apart from these specific instances, Indian Navy’s patrolling in the waters off the coast of Somalia, in the arc including Maldives and Seychelles in the last decade, contributed in securing the international shipping lanes and the trade logistics routes that drive the flows in crucial supply chains.
Supply chains and geopolitics have had a close relationship, going back to the first wave of globalisation, starting post-industrial revolution that lasted until First World War. Behind the imperial powers quest and competition for newer colonies was the need for uninterrupted raw material to keep their factories running. Had it not been for the colonies in the supply chains, the industrial revolution would have been aborted mid-way.
Consider raw cotton, for instance, as its supply chain panned from India to America, Brazil to Turkey and Mozambique to Egypt and shifted at different times for ensuring supplies to British cotton mills. After the end of the Civil War, American raw cotton was again cheaper than the Egyptian one; and many historians link the sudden plunge in international demand for its raw cotton to bankruptcy of Egypt in 1876, leading to its occupation by the British and the French along with ceding control of the Suez Canal.
In their struggle for independence, Indians used homespun khadi under Gandhi while boycotting cotton textiles and, as a result, British cotton mills in Lancashire and elsewhere teetered on closure. The British banned and confiscated khadi. But post-independence, Indians never thought of using supply chains as a strategic tool to further their national interests.
Especially in the new millennium, as economic growth became the prime concern of the governments all over the world, trade being a major driver of growth assumed importance. For increasing trade, countries, therefore, have to embed themselves in the global supply chains or risk being altogether left out of the global economic system. There is hardly any government, organisation, individual or any aspect of individual’s life that supply chains do not touch.
Though the focus of India’s international relations has shifted toward securing economic interests, her logistics and supply chain competencies lag far behind. However, the diplomatic repertoire is increasingly employing one more tool, rather invisible and even unknown to employers themselves, utilising supply chain capabilities.
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Yet it appears that the supply chain capabilities demonstrated by India were the capabilities more of its military than that of the nation as a whole. A closer examination, however, would reveal it is not so. During the crisis in Yemen in April this year, India evacuated its citizens as well as foreigners from at least around 26 countries. The complex logistics effort included coordination among myriad agencies: Indian Air Force, Indian Navy, Air India, Shipping and railways.
Even then, over the years, India has proved that she is strong only in one particular dimension of supply chain capability: agile response in emergencies. Toward April end this year when an earthquake hit Nepal, India’s response was prompt and Nepali population appreciated her effort in setting up supply chains to save lives and provide relief material. But the Nepal experience also showed that though supply chain is a neutral tool, its usage or even non-usage cuts both ways.
Just over five months after winning kudos, India receives brickbats from Nepal as the discontented madhesis, after the introduction of new constitution, blocked supply chains of essential items from India to Nepal, especially fuel. Now, she stands accused of arm-twisting. As China steps in to provide fuel, the supply chains will shift and so too will slip Indian influence in the region.
For one reason or the other, supply chains will influence geopolitics; for example, oil supply chain has influenced world politics as no other commodity ever has: America’s declining interest in West Asia, with its attendant consequences, due to its decreasing dependency on oil from the region is quite visible. Chinese one-belt-one-road programme, in whatever form it fructifies, is ultimately a strategic approach to control the global supply chains, with its concomitant benefits.
To use supply chains as a geopolitical tool, India would have to sharpen its other dimensions, the ability to set up and manage speedy, durable and robust chains. It however might be a nigh impossible task. Indian planners and policy makers are yet to understand the importance of having a Ministry of Logistics; thinking about controlling supply chains as a source of national strength maybe too farfetched.
Prashant K Singh is a logistics and supply chain management professional with the Indian Air Force. The views are personal.
He tells how supply chains & logistics affect every thing around us on his blog, Unshackled, a part of Business Standard's platform, Punditry.
He tweets as @ZenPK