India further cements its interests in the Pacific

India's focus has largely been on the Indian Ocean where it has sought to play a major role and protect its strategic and commercial interests. The FIPIC initiative marks a serious effort to expand India’s engagement in the Pacific region

The second summit of the Forum for India Pacific Cooperation (FIPIC-2) in Jaipur on 21-22 August 2015 has made significant progress in strengthening India’s engagement with the 14 Pacific Island countries who are members of the Forum. Building upon the previous summit in Fiji in November 2014, FIPIC-2 announced several new projects and activities.

Discussions took place on global issues of importance to members such as climate change and reform of the United Nations. Bilateral interactions among the leaders added value to the Summit. The Summit is to be held regularly every year The Pacific Ocean is the earth's largest ocean covering 46 per cent of water surface and 33 per cent of the earth's total surface, making it larger than the entire earth's land area.

It is bounded by 41 sovereign states plus Taiwan, and 22 non-independent territories. It is rich in marine resources and accounts for 71 per cent of the world's ocean fishery catch. The Pacific has for long been an area of geostrategic interest for countries such as the US, Japan, China, Russia, Australia, and Indonesia – large economies which lie on its boundary. The 14 PIF members are being wooed by these powers.

Given the large number of states and territories in the Pacific, numerous maritime disputes have arisen, especially in the South China Sea (China, Taiwan and six ASEAN countries), and in the East China Sea (China-Japan, China-South Korea). China has a relatively small coastline compared to its land mass, and this may explain its aggressive posture in imposing unilateral claims despite being a party to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

India's focus has largely been on the Indian Ocean where it has sought to play a major role and protect its strategic and commercial interests. The FIPIC initiative marks a serious effort to expand India’s engagement in the Pacific region. FIPIC includes 14 of the island countries – Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu. While these countries have relatively small land areas, their exclusive economic zone (EEZ) encompasses fairly large areas of the ocean.

In November 2014, when FIPC was launched, India had offered some major assistance projects… In addition, India has increased the annual "Grant-in-Aid" from $125,000 to $200,000 to each of the 14 Pacific Countries for community projects of their choice, and launched a new Visitors Programme for Pacific Island Countries. These represented a significant upgrade in India’s relationship with the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) countries.

FIPIC-2 has built further on this process and made further progress in bringing the warm and friendly people of the Pacific islands closer to India. India on its part can share relevant expertise with these countries. In a shrinking world, distance need not be a barrier to closer relations. These excerpts are taken from an article published by The Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses on its website The writer is a former Ambassador of India who has been involved in some projects in the PIF countries)

By Bhaskar Balakrishnan