Sea Control - Sea Control 185 - Stable Seas: Bay of Bengal with Jay Benson and Abhijit Singh

Episode Date: June 21, 2020

Links:1. Observer Research Foundation2. Stable Seas3. Stable Seas: Bay of Bengal4. BIMSTEC5. IORA

Hey folks, it's Jared. Thanks for tuning in. We have transitioned fully now to Phase 2 of Project Trident, where we are partnering with Stable Seas on Ocean Governance. My guests today are Jay Benson from Stable Seas and Abhijit Singh from the Observer Research Foundation, discussing the Stable Seas report on the Bay of Bengal. If you don't follow SimSec on Twitter, go do so now or visit the website at simsec.org. If you're interested in shaping the future of international maritime security, this is your opportunity. Submissions on Ocean Governance are due July 13th.

More information on questions and content can be found on our website at simsec.org. Submissions can be emailed to content at simsec.org. With that, I'll turn it over to Kimber's men. Aloha, shipmates, and welcome back aboard Sea Control. Today, our topic is a report published by One Earth Future, Stable Seas, Bay of Bengal. I'm joined by the report's author, Jay Benson, and a senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, Mr. Abhijit Singh. Gentlemen, thank you so much for agreeing to come on today.

So before we go into any contents, could you each tell me a little bit about your backgrounds? Jay, we'll start with you, if you don't mind. Sure. So I've been working at One Earth Future Foundation for over five years. During that time, I've done research on a variety of topics related to interstate conflict, peacekeeping, protection of civilians, and of course, maritime security with our research department. And while I've worked with Stable Seas since its inception a few years ago, I more recently came over to the team full-time where I manage our research and stakeholder engagement efforts in the Indo-Pacific. Thank you. And Abhijit, would you mind introducing yourself, please? Certainly, certainly. I'm a senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, which is one of the leading think tanks in New Delhi.

I am also a retired naval officer. I served for about 22 years in the Indian Navy. I now head the Maritime Policy Initiative at the ORF, in which we look at primarily security, But we also look at maritime environment, issues of trade, maritime law, infrastructure building, et cetera. I've had some experience of working in think tanks. I was for a period of about four to five years in the Institute of Defense Studies and Analysis, which is one of the, again, leading think tanks in New Delhi, India, looking at maritime as well as defense issues. And yes, I've looked very closely at issues in the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea. is also largely the Indian Ocean. So I'm looking forward to this discussion today.

Excellent. Thank you. And this is a good time to remind our listeners that any opinions express our own and not reflective of any institution with which we may be otherwise associated. So Jay, I'm going to come back to you. What is Stable Seas and what are you hoping to accomplish with this report? So Stable Seas is a non-profit research organization that engages the international community with research on illicit maritime activities such as piracy and armed robbery, trafficking and smuggling in persons, IIU illegal unreported and unregulated fishing, and illicit trades in weapons, drugs, and other contraband. We focus largely on how these activities perpetuate organized political violence and reinforce each other to threaten

economic development and the welfare of coastal populations. This work takes a variety of forms, including a quantitative index of maritime security across Africa, the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, regional reports like the one we're discussing today, as well as more tailored and fine-grained analysis for stakeholders in the international maritime security community. So this report is really part of that mission to shed light on the interconnected nature of maritime security challenges in the region and provide a few potential areas of policy prioritization that might help address those challenges. So why choose the Bay of Bengal to study from a maritime security perspective? The Bay of Bengal is a region that a few of our stakeholders have expressed an interest in better understanding. So with this report, we wanted to provide a comprehensive look at

maritime security in the region, as it's sometimes overlooked by members of the maritime security community outside of the region itself. That said, I think the Bay of Bengal is gaining attention in the international security community for a few reasons. First, the Bay of Bengal littoral has immense demographic and economic importance. I think about one in five people in the world live in states along the Bay of Bengal littoral, and they include some of the world's fastest growing economies. Ensuring strong maritime security and governance will be important to that future growth. Less central to the report itself, but also of interest, is that it's increasingly becoming the scene of geopolitical interest in the maritime space.

As China looks to expand sustained operations in the Indian Ocean, India seeks to consolidate its own security interests in the region, and other external maritime powers become increasingly active in the Indian Ocean, maritime security challenges and opportunities specific to the Bay of Bengal will become increasingly relevant to a growing set of stakeholders. Thanks, Abhijit. Did you want to add any Indian perspective to the maritime security in the Bay? Yes, certainly. You know, seeing from an Indian lens, the Bay of Bengal is important because it's a rimmed sea. It's a strategic littoral. It's a sphere of influence. And it's a space where India has deep political, security, and economic interests.

So as Indian theorists see it, there's actually two dimensions to the pay that are really important for Indian interests. One is there is a civilizational, cultural connect that the countries feel for each other. But more importantly, this is a strategic theater. India feels that it has some kind of organic agency. It has authority. It has influence in the space.

And that it is also the fulcrum of strategic agency in this region. So Indian policymakers think that India has some kind of fiduciary responsibility to protect the region and to, in some ways, counter growing extra-regional influence, which is called for Chinese influence in the region. And therefore, there are two dimensions of the Bay of Bengal. One, a prosperity community dimension. The other, a strategic security dimension. And really, it's how policymakers in India and in the region balance between these two imperatives. Thank you. Jay, I'll come back to you for this question. How would you describe the geography of the Bay? Yeah, the physical and maybe even more so the human geography

of the Bay of Bengal is part of what makes it an interesting area to study. First, just the size. It's quite massive. The Bay of Bengal and adjoining Andaman Sea, which is also included in the report, cover almost 30 million square kilometers. So it's a space larger than the land area of India. It's also incredibly diverse in terms of human geography, in terms of religion, language, ethnicity, political systems. There's immense diversity across the five states included in the report. And that makes it a very interesting region to research. Its strategic importance is also clear. As Abhijit already mentioned, the bay sits at the entrance to the Straits of Malacca, and the southern end of the bay is one of the busiest shipping lanes

in the world. So it obviously has a quite important geostrategic or strategic geography as well. thanks Abhijit anything to add on the base geography well you know I would just like to add that there is a human geography aspect of of the bay which Jared has hinted on in that you know there's this immense diversity in terms of religion ethnicity culture you know in different communities but really if that hasn't quite divided in the region in a way that you would expect so despite the fact that there are there's you know sub-nationalism there is domestic ethnic conflict but the region by itself isn't as divided as as say the south china sea so the countries have a fairly good relationship with each other the bilateral relationships are quite nice there's

there's a kind of unity in the diversity even though i what i would hint at is that the regional countries haven't really leveraged this to to improve the political economy of of the bay of So on the one hand, you have a great understanding between the countries and that there's really no conflict between the countries, but they've not been able to utilize the synergy that they have with each other in the economic and security realm. Jay, this actually goes directly into the next question. So fateful segue, but who are the state actors here and how well do they get along? just to provide some context for listeners the report focuses on five states along the littorals of the bay of bengal so um sri lanka india bangladesh myanmar and thailand um you know as abhijit already mentioned generally speaking bilateral relations are fairly good uh you know Obviously, there have been some historical tensions, but currently the region has quite cooperative bilateral relationships, and I think that carries over into the maritime issue space.

You know, a good indication of that might be the status of the region's maritime territorial boundaries. Previous maritime boundary disputes between India and Bangladesh, as well as Bangladesh and Myanmar, have been resolved through international mediation in recent years. So that's left the region with no official maritime territorial disputes that you see in lots of other regions around the world. And I think that lays the groundwork for fairly productive cooperation on maritime issues. And you purposely left out Malaysia and Indonesia from the report. Why did you choose to do that? uh sure so when we were first discussing the scope of the report we we did talk about the potential of including malaysia and indonesia they obviously have eez adjacent to the bay of mingau and the anman sea and they have interests in the region's maritime security however we decided to try and limit the scope of the report in seeing how both Malaysia and Indonesia have

considerably more limited EEZs in the Bay of Bengal, as well as the fact that the vast majority of their maritime space and often their most pressing maritime security concerns lie outside the region, in other parts of their EEZs, we decided not to include them. That said, we certainly do discuss Indonesia and Malaysia and other countries in the broader region and their role in maritime security in the region. For example, you know, our conversation, our chapter on maritime mixed migration in the Bay of Bengal speaks at length about Malaysia and Indonesia, because these are the countries that a lot of maritime migrants in the region are trying to reach. And so they obviously have a critical role to play in addressing that particular issue.

Thanks. I'm going to come back to you then, though I know Abhijit's got some thoughts on this next question. So within the context of the report, what is the blue economy, and why did you write that the region's economy had recently reoriented towards the blue economy? sure so the blue economy is essentially all of the maritime industries which contribute to economic growth so all the components of the economy dependent on the maritime space it includes a wide variety of industries like fisheries coastal tourism offshore hydrocarbons shipping and many others so as the states in the region continue to grow these maritime industries in the bay of bengal have the potential to be a source of economic growth and improved

livelihoods so getting more directly to your question about why we characterized it in this way you know obviously the blue economy has always existed it's it's nothing new the region has an expansive history of maritime commerce. What we're trying to highlight is that some of those industries have faced more recent challenges. For example, there's a strong need for greater capacity and efficiency in some of the port infrastructure in certain parts of the region. So what we're highlighting in this section of the report is that in recent years, the blue economy seems to have risen in importance as a policy priority for governments across the region. Bangladesh, for example, has convened multiple meetings on the blue economy concept

and pushed for more regional cooperation on the issue in multilateral organizations. India has implemented a major policy drive with a major investment program called Sagar Mala, which focuses heavily on improving port infrastructure and across the region really we see states placing an increased emphasis on policy making on the role the maritime space can play in national development. Thanks Shane. Abhijit I know you had some thoughts on the blue economy so I'll turn it over to you here. Yeah thank you Jared. You know what I'd like to say about the blue economy is that this is first of all this is a subject that comes up for discussion in india's you know bilateral multilateral discussions with the base states

certainly as part of the pin stick and it is true that bangladesh and myanmar thailand you know the countries that are leading the discussion and leading the the push for for greater emphasis on maritime industry but you see issue really with blue economies is this that it works very well in theory not so well in practice in theory this is about you know economic activity that involves the seas and the oceans, as Jay has very rightly mentioned. And the idea behind it is that the sea should be put to good use of mankind, that people don't want to see the seas just as an arena of contestation, and that they actually want the seas to contribute to their prosperity.

Now, so far, so good. And the problem is that while rural economy is a framework for sustainable and inclusive growth, the growth or the prosperity element is highlighted much more than the sustainable and inclusive park, which means that as far as the industry is concerned, and industry is a big stakeholder in the blue economies concept, this is essentially about exploiting resources. So as long as you can go out there and prospect for oil and gas or do fisheries or take all the fishes away from the sea and sell them in the open market, this is a concept that

works well for industry. But as far as generating livelihoods is concerned, as far as the health of the ecosystem is concerned, biodiversity is concerned, this concept doesn't work too well. Second, there is, I think, a sort of a dichotomy or a dilemma predicament that exists in the concept, which is that if you look at, for instance, say, the concept of the Sagar Mala, which Jay was referring to, it's clear that this is actually about energizing and invigorating economic growth but it does not take into account the sort of damage that this will cause to the environment and therefore what it has happened in the past few years we've seen not just in india but also in the countries that surround the bay there's a dilution of regulation that was meant to protect the ecosystem protect communities etc now the the central theme of blue economies is to get the private players and get

the industry interested in all of this activity and generate growth generate profits and prosperity and that i think is detrimental to the health of the oceans yeah you know if i could i i agree very much with a lot of points abhijit just made you know that's something that we try to highlight in the report is, you know, the conversation about using the blue economy as a tool for pure kind of GDP growth and, you know, industrial profit isn't going to have any positive long-term effects. The environmental challenges might be the biggest potential hurdle to a sustainable form of blue economic growth and also that you know this really has to be about providing sustainable livelihoods for coastal communities so putting in place

economic regulation which allows coastal communities to thrive and make a living and not necessarily but but that protects the environment in a way that's going to make that you know possible in years to come so i actually want to jump around in our script a little bit here because you brought up something that i think speaks to one of the questions we identified for later that's about fisheries and the immediate concern that you identify within your report is the dead zone what is the dead zone what's contributed to its existence and what are the countries doing about it i think that goes to the themes we're just discussing so i'll ask you first sure so yeah the the developing dead zone and marine pollution more generally is a major

challenge for regional fisheries you know i think the dead zone is eye-catching uh and it gets a lot of attention but the pollution concerns go go beyond that um you know and and this is really result of coastal industries, as well as the fact that several major river systems with massive watersheds flow into the bay. And these can carry a variety of pollutants, sewage, industrial waste, agricultural runoff from extremely large inland areas, which contributes to significant pollution and the creation of that dead zone you mentioned. The dead zone is essentially an area in which the impacts of pollution have reduced oxygen levels to nearly non-existent, making it nearly impossible for most forms of marine life to survive. I believe at one point recently, it was estimated

to measure around 60,000 square kilometers, so about the size of West Virginia. And there's indications that it may be continuing to grow. And that does definitely pose a significant threat to fisheries and the larger ecosystem in the region. Abhijit, do you have any additional thoughts on fisheries management? Yes, certainly. You know, fisheries is one of the biggest problems in the Bay. And I can tell you for sure that during some of the discussions that are held at a policy level as also at a think tank level, you know, 1.5 track dialogues within the Bay States, fisheries

always comes up for discussion. Now, another way I see it is there's two issues here. One is these destructive, dangerous fishing practices that a lot of fisher folk in the areas are actually resorting to. One of these is bottom trawling. And bottom trawling involves actually dragging the nets to the bottom of the sea. And what that does is that that actually scoops up not just fish, but also entire ecosystems. So you have, you know, sea turtles, dolphins, you know, sea snakes, et cetera, bycatch all coming up. Which then leads to the second problem, is that what do you do with the bycatch?

All of these species are actually a valuable species. But until some time back, a lot of this dead bycatch used to be dumped back into the sea. And this actually contributed to the pollution in the waters, and this also contributed to the formation of this dead zone. But now, actually, the problem is that a lot of this bycatch is actually plucked out of the sea. It's dried up and it's fed to the poultry industry.

And so what's really happening is that the seas are being removed of all the life which is there. And that then contributes to, again, the formation of this dead zone. So I would say that what's happening in the region is that common policies in the way that subsidies are given to the smaller fishermen for them to grow their ability, to improve their ability to fish in deeper waters, that is what is contributing really to the problem. And among all of the discussions that we have among Bay States to resolve the problem of fisheries, this problem of subsidy to the fishermen somehow doesn't seem to be addressed. So whilst we are all talking about fisheries and we all recognize what the problem is, we are doing nothing to stop these destructive practices. We are doing nothing to stop the subsidies. We are not creating a new awareness among the fisheries communities

that the whole discourse and the whole methodology of going and fishing out there and removing all of the fish from the seas is destructive for the region. Yeah. I think that Abhijit makes an excellent point with raising the issue of subsidies. Subsidies for fishing fleets around the world are nothing new. Many states engage in that. Really, subsidies, if they're going to encourage sustainable fisheries, need to be focused on providing an incentive for adopting sustainable fishing practices rather than simply increasing production by whatever means. And I think the other, while we're speaking of fisheries in the region, I think the other important point to note is that collective fisheries management or regional fisheries management is also a challenge. These fisheries, especially migratory fisheries, are inherently a transnational resource. They don't respect the lines of EEZs and the administrations of various fisheries ministries. So really developing a collective regional approach to the management of migratory fish species is going to be important in the Bay of Bengal, as well as other fisheries regions around the world, because they can't really adequately be managed on a unilateral basis.

Thanks. I'm going to transition here to more general economic questions here. How does the level of economic activity compare to the South China Sea, and what's behind the differences? Yeah, I think in some ways it's a fairly apt comparison to compare the two sub-regional blue economies. Both have a good deal of fishing activity, as we've already discussed, offshore energy exploration, and both are crossed by extremely vital shipping lanes on either side of the Strait of Malacca in Singapore. However, I think the biggest difference in the economic picture in the two regions is the kind of character intra-regional trade that we see. We see a lot more trade within the South China Sea region between neighbors than we do with the Bay of Bengal. A way of highlighting this is that within ASEAN, 30% of trade is intra-regional. In BIMSTEC, we haven't gotten to BIMSTEC yet, but the multilateral organization that covers most of the Bay of Bengal, that same number is 5%.

So while both see major shipping volume transiting the regions, in the Bay of Bengal, much less of that traffic is between neighbors. Is there a reason for that? You know, I don't know that I could say in particular. I think, you know, maybe I'd ask Abhijit if he has a better perspective as to why kind of trade within the Bay of Bengal hasn't grown at the same rate as some of the other kind of economically growing regions around the world. Yes, I think, Jay, what's happened is that this region is actually quite dependent on trade from Southeast Asia and, you know, other spaces. This is not a region that has developed very well internally. And so if you look at it, really, China is one of the biggest trading partners of all of these countries in the region. China is the one country that is investing in, you know, boat projects, that's bringing in other investment into these, all of these countries.

Not India so much, but Sri Lanka, you know, Thailand, Myanmar, Bangladesh, they're all benefiting from Chinese money. And that has, I think, in a sense, also affected the region's ability to develop greater economic interactions with each other. But that said, I think on the BIMSTEC front, there have been some developments. I know this is a topic that still hasn't come up with discussion, but I'd just like to mention that they have recognized a lot of these countries that, you know, they need better synergy. So they need something like a coastal shipping agreement. Talks on that have begun. They need a motor vehicles agreement so that they can be, you know, seamless transfer of trade and goods in the countries. And while they still don't have it, the agreement still hasn't been cleared by all countries. But there is a consensus among all states that they have to do much more to invigorate the region and to make it into a more consistent, coherent economic region.

so that it doesn't remain dependent on external players, in particular China. But there's no getting away from the fact that South Asia has not been able to develop in the same way as Southeast Asia, and for a very clear reason, that as I mentioned earlier, the political economy of the space has not got the importance, the governance in this space has not got the importance that it truly deserves. Thank you. So we've mentioned BIMSTEC now, I don't know, five or six times. I kind of want to jump over there now just to explain for listeners what BIMSTEC is and to highlight some of the international fora that exists to facilitate all the cooperation we're talking about.

So BIMSTEC stands for the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multisectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation. IORA, which we haven't mentioned yet, is the Indian Ocean Rim Association. So, Jay, I'll start with you, and then, Abhijita, of course, I want to hear all of your thoughts on this. What do these organizations do, and how effective are they? Yeah, so the two major multilateral organizations that stand out, as you mentioned, are IORA and BIMSTEC. IORA, the Indian Ocean Rim Association, includes 22 nations across the huge Indian Ocean littoral. IORA is important because it's an entity organized around a maritime space. And as such, it focuses much of its attention on maritime issues like fisheries, the blue economy, and maritime safety and security.

In the context of maritime security in the Bay of Bengal, it certainly has a role to play. However, there are also some challenges. One is the huge geographic scope. Organizations span several different sub regions, each with its own unique set of maritime security challenges and priorities. You have this immense space. You have a country like Australia that might have its own kind of maritime security concerns in its regions and a much different capacity to respond than another member state like Yemen, where the capacity and the local maritime security challenges are much different. Also, more specifically in regards to Ayora's role in the Bay of Bengal, its role might be hampered by the fact that Myanmar is not yet a member. Myanmar obviously makes up a large part of the Bay of Bengal littoral. It'll be difficult for Ayora to take a leading role on Bay of Bengal-specific issues without engaging with Myanmar. That said, it certainly has a positive role to play, and it's already done quite a bit, you know, working on maritime security issues in the broader Indian Ocean region.

When we look at BIMSTEC, the Bay of Bengal Internet Initiative for Multisectoral Technical Economic Cooperation, that's really a huge focus of the report. it's of particularly value as a framework for cooperation on maritime issues specific to the bay of bengal because its membership is so closely aligned with the geography of the bay it includes the five countries already mentioned in the report in addition to nepal and bhutan which are obviously landlocked but have a vested economic interest in maritime security in the bay BIMSTEC has been around for decades, but recent years have seen a bit of a reinvigoration, as many of the member states appear increasingly willing to invest more political capital in its development into a more robust organization. The geography of BIMSTEC also aligns well with

some of the stated foreign policy objectives of the member states, such as India's Act East policy and Thailand's Look West initiative. And it has the potential to be the key platform for maritime cooperation in the Bay, which is otherwise kind of split in regional blocks between South Asia and Southeast Asia. However, BIMSTEC also has some fairly significant hurdles to overcome, if it's going to effectively facilitate maritime cooperation within the region. As of now, the organization is extremely under-resourced. It simply has too little staff and financial resources to drive coordinated policy on maritime

issues. If states begin to match the political clout they've begun to invest in BIMSTEC with similar financial and human resources, it can begin to play a more significant and more substantive role on maritime issues. That said, the organization is already taking on a bit more of a proactive role on some of these issues in recent years, particularly in the area of the blue economy. You know, Abhijit has already highlighted the BIMSTEC as a platform for conversations about how to improve regional economic integrations. And I think that one initiative in particular of the organizations, which will be increasingly important in the next few years, is its master

plan for connectivity, which envisions hundreds of projects investing in infrastructure and transportation, which would make the Bay a much more economically integrated maritime space. thanks shay uh obviously i know you have some thoughts on bimstech so i'll turn it over to you here yeah thanks uh uh jared i i'd actually start with iora because that's one of the things that jay jay spoke about and also his report covers this and covers this in quite uh quite some detail look the thing is that iora gets a lot of political play it gets a lot of emphasis and importance in in regional discussions. And that's because it's really the only pan-regional,

pan-Indian Ocean multilateral organization. And ever since Perth communique in 2013, and also recently, two years back, there was the Jakarta Concord. IORA has been looked at the one organization that can do a lot for maritime security, as well as create a better sense of governance in the space. I would say that the problem that we have encountered with the IORA is that on paper, things look good.

Everyone seems to agree with whatever needs to be done. So IORA has identified five or six areas of which at least four of them have to do with maritime security, trade, trade investment, tourism, disaster management. But the problem is a lack of synergy, is that all of the countries and all of the regions actually have a very different agenda of where the emphasis should be laid on. And there is also an absence of coherence and convergence. And so Jared mentioned the fact that Myanmar is not a member of the IORA. The problem actually goes further is that IORA is not well coordinated with the IONS, which is the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium, which is really the organization of regional navies, the tactical grouping that looks at a lot of these challenges, security challenges, and that enables the collective responses to these security challenges. So unless you don't have that kind of interface, you don't have the kind of coordination between these two bodies, there's very little that can happen on the maritime security front. As far as BIMSTEC is concerned, you know, BIMSTEC was actually nowhere until 2016.

BIMSTEC as an organization was really dead. It was moribund. It needed to be revived. Initially, it looked at only economic issues. But ever since there was the BRICS and BINSTEC seminar or rather forum in 2016, there is a new energy to the organization. Now, India has been one of the key reasons or one of the key driving agents behind BINSTEC. And India did it, I think, in my opinion, because India actually sees the Bay as a sort of a connective tissue, a buffer buffer zone between south asia and southeast asia so i mean as jeff was mentioning

if you look at the act east policy if the act east policy had to actually deliver we needed an organization that could pull together that that could bring all these all the base states together and that would mean that india would be able to develop better connectivity have better trade have better integration with bangladesh menma thailand but also as an extension with Southeast Asia. So that was the whole idea of reviving BIMSTEC. I would agree completely with Jair that it's that master plan for connectivity that we really need to be focused on. And depending on how that goes, we will really know about how much the organization has been able to deliver. But my emphasis would actually be on the security front, in which I would say that since

2017, the national security chiefs of all of these countries have been meeting on a regular basis, something that the report actually talks about and if they have been there there has been a general understanding that these countries need to work together on issues like piracy armed robbery you know illegal fishing terrorism terrorism comes up in a really big way india has given a lot of stress on terrorism the movement of militants radicals across all of the space migration has got a lot of importance and a lot of discussion around migration and illegal illegal migration But also exchange of information. About three years ago, three or four years ago, India set up this information fusion center in Gurgaon here close to Delhi. And a lot of information now is being shared between all of these regional states. There is also better intelligence sharing now. And this has helped combat issues like trafficking, radicalization, and also the movement of radicals between these countries. There's also a joint working group for terrorism. And most importantly, something that I think, I did not actually have a chance to read this in the report, but there is actually an MLAC treaty, which is a Mutual Law Enforcement Treaty, which actually what it does is that it's a law assistance treaty that it actually creates ways in which all of these countries can coordinate their, sync their law machinery and their laws and their law machinery,

and be able to provide assistance to each other in trying criminals or people that have been caught in criminal acts. And that, I think, will contribute a lot to setting up a more secure building. So one of my next questions was going to be, what's the greatest rule of law challenge? But I think you've kind of covered rule of law. Jay, do you have anything to add in that regard? I would say that I think the biggest, you know, there's a couple. And in addition to what Abhijit already mentioned, you know, I think corruption and its impacts on the maritime space is important, particularly port corruption where it exists in the region. This can have a poor economic impact by decreasing port efficiency and trade efficiency. It also can open the door for a movement of a whole host of illicit products through regional ports.

These could be things as mundane as counterband cigarettes or goods. or they could be of greater concern things like wildlife illegal wildlife product drugs and arms i think pork corruption is a is a major rule of law challenge when it comes to the maritime space in the region in addition abajit has already mentioned kind of the the i don't know i guess the identity based kind of exclusion that has come up in some of the countries around the region with economic and political exclusion of certain ethnic and linguistic groups, you know, and that that's not a challenge unique to the region. What I think is unique is the more extreme and the more formalized type of exclusion that we see in the region, which is the extremely high prevalence

of stateless populations. You know, stateless populations are those who are not recognized as legal citizens in any state. As you can imagine, that lack of official recognition creates a host of challenges for stateless persons, economic and physical safety. And three of the five countries in the region, Myanmar, Bangladesh, and Thailand, are all in the top five for stateless populations globally. In Thailand, much of that is not in kind of coastal or maritime spaces, with the exception of a group called the Mokhan, which live kind of a semi-nomadic lifestyle in coastal and archipelagic areas of the Andaman Seas. And then the other big stateless population impacting the region, obviously, are the Rohingya in Myanmar and

Bangladesh, a largely Muslim ethnic group from Myanmar, which have been denied official citizenship for decades. In recent years, waves of ethnic violence have driven many into displacement camps across the border in Southeast Bangladesh. And money has subsequently chosen to take the long and extremely dangerous maritime migration route to Southeast Asia, particularly Malaysia, where they've often been exploited and subjected to brutal violence at the hands of smugglers and traffickers. This has very obvious implications for maritime security. And I think that state – the prevalence of stateless communities in the region is one rule of law challenge that has outsized impacts on maritime security in the region. Abhijit, do you have any final thoughts on rule of law?

Otherwise, I've got kind of two more questions to cover, and then we'll close it out. Right. I would actually agree with Jay on this, that port corruption is certainly an issue. It decreases port efficiency. And it is true that it leads to, you know, things like contraband smuggling, you know, movement of illicit products, wildlife, drugs, arms, etc. That certainly is a concern. From an Indian perspective, I mean, I would go back to what I'd mentioned earlier, that militancy and terrorism is actually what is taking up a lot of policy attention here. And what's really happened is that after the 26-11 incident that happened in 2008, the Mumbai attacks, Indian law enforcement agencies extremely wary of a repeat incident. And it is believed that we've somehow been able to secure the Western Front, but the Eastern Front somehow is still porous. and that you might actually have, you know, militants, terrorists entering India from the eastern side.

Maybe, you know, it could well be from Myanmar or Bangladesh. It's still not happened so far. Most of these militant movements actually happen on land through the porous land border. But it is believed that it is entirely possible that some of these terrorists could actually find their way into one of the ports and carry out an incident like that. So, yes, the port corruption is important, but really it's terrorism, militancy, that the region remains most concerned about. Statelessness, I think Jay couldn't be more right.

I think the Rohingya problem, which we don't hear of much now, but that we did about two or three years ago, I think is going to come again. And I think this time it's not going to be so much because of the ethnic divide that we see in Myanmar. I think a lot of what we are going to see, migration that we see now is going to be a result of climate change. The rising seas, the fact that a lot of these coastal communities

are going to be displaced. And that might trigger a migration pattern to maybe the Indian side or maybe Southeast Asia. That will result in a whole new set of challenges that might come up. So I would agree with Jay on that. Thank you. I don't have an artful segue to either of the last two questions, so I'm just going to jump to the last one. I know the Chinese have attempted to run the Maritime Silk Road through the region, and specifically in Sri Lanka. Jay, you identified that as an opportunity, but with significant potential drawbacks for the countries that participate. So what dangers did you see for those countries in participating in that initiative? Sure. You know, I think that like any form of foreign investment, investment related to the

Maritime Silk Road needs to be viewed as a potential opportunity and a potential risk. In many places and in many sectors in the region, there is a strong need for large-scale investment in blue economic infrastructure. In that sense, the Maritime Silk Road is filling a need and presents an opportunity for those states in the region that don't quite yet draw in sufficient private sector investment to meet their need for investment. However, there are also significant risks, and individual states need to be wary about these. First, there's the financial risk. Overseas Chinese infrastructure investments simply don't have a strong history of economic viability. This has been the case as well with some of the Maritime Silk Road projects in the

Bay of Bengal, which is capacity for years after completion, to do their own independent economic feasibility studies to ensure that the debt they're taking on is going to be used to address their most pressing development needs. Second, and relatedly, is that you do not lead to the economic gains anticipated, states need to be wary of falling into a potential debt trap, exposing them to asset seizures and raising concerning questions about the degree of Chinese political leverage. Finally, that we've already mentioned has some struggles with corruption. The sometimes untransparent nature of deals that is often part of the Maritime Silk road projects has the potential to exacerbate corruption problems.

Thanks, Anupjit. I am sure that there is a strong Indian opinion about the maritime silk road, so I'll turn it to you for that perspective. Yeah, thank you, Jared. This is actually one of the issues that most agitates Indian minds, the maritime silk road. And I would only add to what Jay has very rightly mentioned. Look, an Indian perspective on this is that what China is doing in the region through its Silk Road or the Belt and Road Project actually is a form of expansionism. India believes that there is a predatory mindset behind which the Chinese are actually investing in all of these countries.

You take the example of Sri Lanka and the manner in which the Chinese literally bought out one Chinese port, Hambantota. And Jez mentioned the asset seizure. What's happened actually in Hambantota is phenomenal. The Chinese have managed to actually carve out an entire Chinese space in South Asia by managing to buy out an entire port for 99 years. And it is an Indian assessment that we will see a similar strategy play out in other countries like Myanmar and Bangladesh. Already, the Chinese are helping Bangladesh develop naval base in one of their ports in Cox's Bazaar. So if you really look at it, the Chinese strategy appears to be one in which they will bring in the money. They will sort of create a need for Chinese resources.

and then they will then use that to extract greater or generate greater equities in these spaces. I think India has made its stand on the BRI very clear. We are opposed to it because this is, first of all, a violation of Indian sovereignty in the way if you actually see the China-Pakistan economic corridor develop and the regions through which it passes through, India has officially protested to the CPEC. But if you see on the maritime front, India is deeply uncomfortable with the way that the Chinese are investing in a lot of these places. But I will just sort of add two more lines to the PLA to say that the problem really is not just the Belt and Road Initiative. The problem is that the Chinese strategy of expansionism actually goes further.

This is about creating Chinese hubs along the flocks, the sea lines of communications that pass through the Indian Ocean region. So this whole discourse of China's rights and interests that, you know, the Chinese white papers, defense white papers talk about, the fact that the Chinese now say that our warships will be here for open seas protection, we will be there to protect the sloths in the region, we will carry out out-of-area contingencies in the Indian Ocean region, we will be a security provider in the Indian Ocean region. And all of this cuts against India's own authority, India's own leverage, India's own heft, and its own influence in the Indian Ocean region, and particularly the Bay of Bengal. So I think India is extremely wary about the manner in which the Chinese are growing their influence in this space. And especially the manner in which they're, you know, selling arms. And, you know, there's this whole talk about Chinese submarines being supplied to the Pakistanis, already to the Bangladeshis, to the Thai Navy. India is now beginning to take counteraction by supplying a lot of its own equipment to the Bay countries. And I think we will only see this competition exacerbate in the future. Thank you. My last question then was one that really just intrigued me as a mariner. And it was, Jay, you had identified that one of the issues was the prevalence of riverine ports in this region. So a lot of the ports that you identified were not coastal ports, but you have to actually drive up a river to get to them. What specific challenges are associated with riverine ports? yeah so um yeah that's something probably a little more niche than a lot of the kind of higher level issues we're talking about without the report but we also found it pretty interesting

as we mentioned before the geography of the bay there's all of these massive river systems that flow into the bay of bengal and there's a relatively high prevalence of these riverine ports. You know, as you said, and as the name implies, these are ports which are not directly on the coast, but located upriver to a degree. Some of the more prominent such ports in the region are Kolkata in India, Chittagong in Bangladesh, and Yangon in Myanmar. You know, the distance from the coast differed, but all faced some unique challenges. Depending on the specific conditions. These can include limited berthing space, low drafts, the need for continuous dredging operations, shifting sandbars in the regions and seasonally shifting water levels,

and the need for vessel pilotage over considerably longer distances. All of these factors can hamper port capacity and efficiency, limiting their economic competitiveness and making the basic maintenance of operations significantly more costly. In some cases, improvements in the efficiency of loading and unloading operations can help mitigate some of these challenges. But in certain cases where the geography of the river significantly limits draft or berthing space, alternative deep water port development may also need to be part of the solution. Thank you very much. Abhijit, any final thoughts on that or anything else really before I close it out here? No, just on the riverine, I think I found that this particular issue that Jay has

mentioned in the report very interesting. And I would agree completely that a lot of these ports in the region are riverine and we've not been able to develop them in the way that would be ideal but i think in many ways this the riverine port problem is a is an interesting allegory or it's an interesting metaphor for the problem that the bay faces which is that there is a need to balance between economic growth on the one hand and and ecological stability on the other so for instance in the case of kolkata port if we dredge it too much it actually poses problem for the ecology of the region. And there's only limits to how much you can do it. Similarly, in a lot of Bangladeshi ports, environmentalists have pointed out that a lot of this port building

activity is going to be hugely detrimental for the ecosystem and from an environmental point of view. And so I think that, you know, the Bay faces these peculiar challenges in which economic prosperity is very hard to create unless you actually compromise on the quality of the environment. And given the fact that we are now in the age of climate change and that some of these challenges are only going to grow, I think there is need for greater caution in the way that we implement some of these developmental projects because it should not in any way be at the cost of the environment. Well, thank you both. I think we're out of time here. Jay, I just want to compliment you once again on creating the report here. We had talked about this offline, but it's

a very interesting mix of both quantitative and qualitative analysis. Tremendous aesthetic appearance here, just the quality of the graphics and the way the report is mixed together. And there are all these interesting side stories as you go through. I really thought it was a great read and we will include a link to it in the show notes. So I'd like to thank my guests, Jay Benson and Abhijit Singh. Jay, where can we find you online and what are you working on next? Sure. Yeah, we're hoping that this is just kind of the first step in more maritime security related research in South Asia. Our organization, Stable Seas, has also just released a similar report on the Gulf of Guinea and kind of the Atlantic coast of Africa. So that may be of

interest to some of your listeners as well. You can find me online on LinkedIn or Twitter at Benson underscore OEF. Thank you. Yeah, I am in touch with the authors of your Gulf of Guinea report. So hopefully we'll be doing something like this very soon with them as well. Abhijit, where can we find you online and what are you working on next? Right. So I'm actually doing a We have a project on Indo-Pacific security. Indo-Pacific is, again, the flavor of the season here in New Delhi, and a lot of study actually is in this space. But my project is actually going to look at maritime cooperation

in terms of naval cooperation and coast guard cooperation. And I'm also going to talk a little bit about, in the reports, I'm also going to look a little bit about the submarine deployments that are now happening both in the Pacific as well as the Indian Ocean. So it's a security-related report, but I'm hoping to bring out some facts that haven't been covered earlier. You can find me on Twitter. I'm abhijit227 is my Twitter handle. I am also quite active. I write quite actively. I publish a lot of the web sites with a lot of my articles on them.

and I can also be reached on email. My email ID is abj.sync27 at Gmail. Thank you, Jared, for inviting me for this excellent conversation and compliments, Jay, on an excellent report. We are going to do a similar discussion at ORF in coming days and I hope that will be as good as this one. Absolutely. Pleasure to speak to you. So thank you again both for joining us and to our listeners.

Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next time. I walked up to the firewood counter. Hey, hey, put it in the alley. There I met with Greasy Annie. Put it on the shimbo now. So help me, Bob, I'm putting it in the alley. Hey, hey, put it in the alley. Help me, Bob, I'm putting it in the alley.

Put it on the shimbo now. I bought her a robe and I bought her a gin When I had a bully in the alley I bought her a wine, both white and red I bought it out of the shimbo now So help me, Bob, I'm bullying the alley When I had a bully in the alley Help me, Bob, I'm bullying the alley

Put it out of the shimbo now