Two-thirds of the world’s oil moves across it. So do the submarine cables that carry the global internet and a seabed rich in the minerals that will power electric vehicles and defence systems alike. The Indian Ocean is no longer merely the highway between East and West. It has become the prize.
That was the underlying message of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s address in Seychelles. On a three-day state visit earlier this week, he declared that India’s vision is “to make the Indian Ocean an Ocean of Opportunity, an ocean of peace, prosperity and partnership”. The remark comes as the contest over these waters, between India and a rapidly expanding China, grows steadily sharper. Here is what is at stake.
Why does the Indian Ocean matter so much?
Because almost everything passes through it. A Carnegie Endowment assessment reads that the Indian Ocean carries over a third of the world’s bulk cargo and roughly two-thirds of its oil shipments, with close to 90,000 vessels transiting every year.
Much of this traffic is funnelled through a handful of narrow chokepoints including the Strait of Hormuz, the Bab-el-Mandeb, the Malacca Strait and the Mozambique Channel. A disruption at any one of them can ripple through global supply chains.
For India, the stakes are direct. Roughly 80% of its crude oil imports travel these waters. With a 7,500-km coastline and island territories from Lakshadweep to the Andaman & Nicobar chain, the ocean is simultaneously India’s economic lifeline and its most exposed frontier.
What does India want in the region? (Vision MAHASAGAR)
MAHASAGAR or Mutual and Holistic Advancement for Security and Growth Across Regions, is New Delhi’s current framework for the Indian Ocean. It builds on the earlier SAGAR doctrine.
Under it, India positions itself as a “net security provider” and development partner, offering maritime domain awareness, training, patrol vessels, and concessional financing to the region’s smaller states. Seychelles, a nation of about 100,000 people with a vast Exclusive Economic Zone straddling key sea lanes, occupies a central place in this framework. Hence the significance of a prime-ministerial visit.
How large is China’s footprint now?
Substantial and expanding on several fronts. Beijing opened its first overseas military base in Djibouti in 2017 and now sustains regular naval deployments, including nuclear attack submarines, across the Indian Ocean.
This has often been described as a growing network of ports and access arrangements or the “String of Pearls”, running through Gwadar in Pakistan, Hambantota in Sri Lanka, Djibouti, and facilities linked to Myanmar’s Coco Islands. Beijing rejects the characterisation.
A fresh study by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute concluded that China has built “a network capable of supporting long-duration naval operations”, resting not only on warships but on coast-guard vessels, research ships, intelligence platforms and dual-use ports.
India’s concern is that this architecture allows the PLAN to monitor Indian activity, contest the sea lanes and entrench itself in its maritime neighbourhood.
And the Chinese ‘research vessels’?
This is the quieter front. On paper, the ships are civilian, operated by scientific or state bodies and are free to operate in international waters. However, a CSIS study from 2024 found that several Chinese research vessels active in the Indian Ocean had organisational links to the PLA or to military-affiliated state entities. China fields the world’s largest such fleet, more than 50 vessels, against India’s 10-12.
The difficulty lies in their dual-use nature. Seabed terrain, salinity and acoustic profiles gathered for ostensibly scientific purposes also hold considerable value for submarine warfare. Some vessels have gone dark near sensitive areas or operated close to India’s submarine routes. New Delhi has repeatedly conveyed its discomfort to neighbours, Sri Lanka in particular, over hosting them.
Where do critical minerals fit in?
This is the emerging frontier and arguably the most consequential. The seabed holds polymetallic nodules (manganese, nickel, copper, cobalt), polymetallic sulphides (copper, zinc, gold, silver) and cobalt-rich crusts, all essential for EV batteries, semiconductors, renewables and defence manufacturing.
Crucially, these resources remain largely untapped. The competition is therefore over future supply chains rather than present production. With China dominating global mineral processing, securing independent access to the seabed has become a strategic imperative rather than a scientific exercise.
India was the first country to receive “Pioneer Investor” status from the International Seabed Authority (ISA), in 1987. It holds a 75,000-sq-km nodule block in the Central Indian Ocean Basin. Last year, it became the first nation to hold two ISA polymetallic-sulphide contracts, one of them over the Carlsberg Ridge, giving it the largest such exploration area in the world. China, Germany and Korea hold the other Indian Ocean sulphidelicences, making the ocean floor itself contested ground.
How is India responding?
On multiple fronts simultaneously. The Navy maintains near-continuous mission-based deployments across the region, from anti-piracy patrols off the Gulf of Aden to surveillance sorties by P-8I aircraft and Dornier squadrons.
Underpinning this is a wider maritime architecture: the coastal surveillance radar chains in partner states such as Seychelles, Mauritius and Sri Lanka; White Shipping Information Exchange agreements with more than 20 countries to track merchant traffic; logistics pacts with friendly navies; and the Information Fusion Centre-Indian Ocean Region at Gurgaon, which collates real-time data on movement across the region.
India also draws on its standing as a “first responder” in humanitarian and disaster-relief (HADR) operations and on capacity-building for island states through vessels, aircraft and training. It is also investing in the deep ocean. The Deep Ocean Mission’s Matsya 6000 submersible is being developed to carry a crew to a depth of 6,000 m, along with a seabed-mining system.
So why does a visit to a nation of 100,000 people matter?
Because Seychelles is a test of whether India’s “ocean of opportunity” can be made tangible. The visit translated the rhetoric into hardware and money. It reaffirmed a $175-million package ($125 million in concessional credit, $50 million in grants), a fast patrol vessel and assistance ranging from vehicles and boats to rice and cement.
Equally telling was what went unsaid. The long-stalled plan for an Indian naval facility on Assumption Island did not figure formally, a reminder that even willing partners guard their sovereignty closely. Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said only that India remained open to reviving it if Victoria wished.
That restraint is itself the strategy. While China’s expansion has bred wariness about debt and bases, India is betting that the smaller states in the region will choose a partner that builds capacity rather than leverages them.
The larger shift is one of meaning. The Indian Ocean is no longer simply a route between East and West. It is at once an economic engine, a store of critical minerals, a corridor for the world’s data cables and an arena of great-power rivalry.
For India, that convergence is the whole point. Maritime security, economic growth and foreign policy now meet on a single body of water, which is precisely why “ocean of opportunity” is meant as a statement of intent, not a turn of phrase.