Negotiating the seas

In Indian Ocean Region especially, India has to become a net security provider

It must be truly rare in bilateral discussions between heads of state or government, and especially those in which the global superpower is a party, for a relatively inconsequential item like maritime security to even figure in the agenda, much less attract any serious attention. Yet, in the just concluded Modi-Trump interface, this theme was stressed thrice, not by our prime minister but by the US president. First, he spoke of the forthcoming Malabar exercises at sea which would, in his words, be the most elaborate and complex carried out until now. He then went on to stress the need