The latest go to of Indian Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi to Mauritius on 11–12 March 2025 comes at an important time when the Western Indian Ocean (WIO) area is witnessing heightened instability and battle. It marks a major milestone in India’s oceanic outreach, aimed toward fostering a steady and affluent area by holistic maritime safety, which serves as an enabler for sustainable growth and development. On this context, Mauritius is central to India’s strategic maritime engagement and stays a key strategic accomplice, serving as a safety hub, commerce hyperlink, and diplomatic ally within the WIO area. It was in Mauritius that PM Modi first unveiled the maritime imaginative and prescient SAGAR (Safety and Development for All within the Area) in 2015, and on its tenth anniversary, the imaginative and prescient has developed into MAHASAGAR (Mutual and Holistic Development for Safety and Development Throughout Areas). This evolution underscores India’s dedication to regional stability and positions Mauritius on the coronary heart of India’s Arc of Safety and Development fostering a holistically safe and affluent Indian Ocean area.
With round 70% of Mauritians of Indian origin, India enjoys deep historic and cultural ties with the nation, transcending geopolitical boundaries. India has persistently supported Mauritius’ declare over the Chagos Archipelago whereas sustaining pleasant relations with each the UK and the USA, underscoring its multi-alignment and strategic autonomy in issues of core nationwide curiosity. Whereas Mauritius has persistently stood with India at numerous worldwide and regional boards, reflecting their shared pursuits, historic ties, and strategic alignment.
For India, the stakes are excessive. The WIO sits on the strategic crossroads of Africa, Asia, and Europe, and any instability within the area immediately impacts India’s commerce, investments, safety, and livelihoods. What makes this much more alarming is the rising spillover of conflicts into the maritime area. The WIO is on the core of India’s maritime safety technique, given its essential function in commerce, vitality safety, and strategic stability. With over 90% of India’s commerce and 90% of its hydrocarbon wants transported by sea, the WIO serves as India’s most significant maritime hall, facilitating greater than 50% of its complete sea-borne commerce and round 40% of crude oil and 70% of pure gasoline provides transiting by WIO. This makes the area central to India’s financial and vitality safety, reinforcing the necessity to safe maritime routes throughout the broader WIO as an financial and strategic crucial. Furthermore, the area is residence to a big Indian diaspora, with roughly 8.7 million in West Asia and 3 million in Africa, contributing over US$30 billion in annual remittances (3.3% of India’s GDP). This additional underscores the financial and strategic significance of the WIO for India.
Nevertheless, the WIO stays a high-risk maritime house, the place political instability, weak governance buildings, financial disparities, and sectarian tensions contribute to a fragile safety setting. These vulnerabilities create fertile floor for non-state actors and transnational organized crime networks to thrive, posing direct threats to India’s nationwide safety, vitality safety, and financial pursuits.
As an example, the Western Indian Ocean (WIO) faces a fancy net of safety threats that immediately influence regional stability and India’s strategic pursuits. Since November 2023, over 100 Houthi assaults within the Pink Sea, utilizing drones, missiles, and unmanned floor vessels (USVs), have disrupted free passage, forcing ships to reroute through the Cape of Good Hope—a problem additional exacerbated by instability in Mozambique. The 1993 Mumbai blasts (the place RDX was smuggled by the WIO) and the 2008 Mumbai assaults (the place terrorists infiltrated Indian territory through the WIO) demonstrated how state-sponsored maritime terrorism blurs the traces between conventional and non-traditional safety threats. This makes coastal safety a urgent concern, particularly as a number of terror outfits (Al-Shabaab-Somalia) and ASWJ/IS-Mozambique) proceed to destabilize the area. Provided that the WIO has already served as a conduit for terrorist operations in opposition to India, steady monitoring and vigilance by safety businesses within the area is extra essential than ever.
Moreover, piracy is resurging, with greater than 10–12 hijackings reported final yr, posing important dangers to maritime commerce and regional stability. Past battle, transnational organized crime is on the rise, usually fuelling armed conflicts. The WIO lies alongside the notorious southern route also called the “heroin freeway” or “smack monitor,” the place drug networks actively destabilize economies and societies. The state of affairs is so extreme that Seychelles has declared a heroin epidemic, with 10% of its inhabitants addicted, whereas in Mauritius 7.4% of adults (between the age of 18-59 years) are hooked on medication. India, too, is affected—in 2024 alone, safety businesses seized 7,000 kg of narcotics value $5–6 billion, highlighting the magnitude of the risk that’s aimed to destabilise financial system and society and fund terror operations. One other rising concern is Unlawful, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing, which prices round US$142.8 millionsof potential revenue loss yearly. China’s Distant Water Fleet (DWF), with over 17,000 vessels working within the WIO, is a significant contributor, accounting for 54.7% of world IUU fishing fleets. This not solely threatens coastal livelihoods and meals safety but additionally fuels regional instability pushing affected populations in direction of illicit actions. Given these escalating challenges, securing the WIO is just not merely an choice—it’s an absolute necessity.
Mauritius sits at a essential crossroads in international politics, strategically positioned alongside the Sea Traces of Communication (SLOCs) and key chokepoints of the Indian Ocean, by which the majority of vitality shipments and international commerce flows. This geographical benefit makes Mauritius more and more important—strategically, economically, militarily, environmentally, and developmentally. Nevertheless, like different island states, Mauritius faces asymmetries in measurement, financial system, and capabilities. Regardless of these constraints, safety considerations create a robust foundation for bilateral and multilateral engagements between Port Louis and New Delhi, aligning their pursuits with these of India. For India, Mauritius supplies strategic depth within the area, making certain the unhindered maritime move of commerce and sources throughout peacetime and the power to interdict adversaries in instances of battle. Then again, small island states are combating for his or her survival, as was evident in a speech on the United Nations Common Meeting on September 22, 2022, the place Mauritius’ Prime Minister, Pravind Kumar Jugnauth, addressed the dire implications of local weather change and associated safety points for small island states. He said:
For small island growing states like Mauritius, local weather change is just not a distant risk—it’s a right away actuality that jeopardizes our very existence. Rising sea ranges, coastal erosion, and excessive climate occasions threaten our land, our folks, and our livelihoods. These aren’t summary challenges; they’re a matter of survival.
This underscores how weak these nations are to non-traditional safety threats, starting from piracy and IUU fishing to marine air pollution and local weather change. The maritime area is essential for island states, not just for nationwide safety but additionally for financial, meals, and environmental safety. Their core nationwide curiosity is to leverage oceanic sources for sustainable financial development by a thriving blue financial system, which should be developed in a safe and environmentally sustainable method. Nevertheless, capability and functionality constraints restrict their capacity to successfully harness the huge blue wealth at their disposal, making cooperation, collaboration, coordination, capability constructing, and data sharing important.
Mauritius, specifically, stands out amongst African nations for its democratic credentials, greatest ease of doing enterprise in Africa and 13th in world, sound human rights report, and one of many wealthiest international locations in Africa with low ranges of corruption, making it a sexy financial and strategic accomplice (as highlighted within the US Authorities Built-in Nation Technique, 2022). Through the years, Mauritius has emerged as a regional monetary hub and a gateway to Africa continent, taking part in an important function in facilitating funding and commerce throughout the broader WIO area. In the meantime, India’s historic and cultural ties with island states make it a pure maritime accomplice, seen as a benevolent and non-threatening energy. India’s status as a “most well-liked safety accomplice” and “first responder in regional crises” additional strengthens these partnerships.
India’s engagement with Mauritius is pushed by the necessity to improve safety and construct capability, each of that are important for sustaining regional stability. The WIO serves as India’s arc of safety and development, providing important vitality, commerce, and financial alternatives. Thus, making certain stability on this area is essential, as instability has direct financial penalties. In response to the World Financial institution, regional instability can cut back GDP development by 2-3%, whereas battle zones can expertise a 30-40% decline in Overseas Direct Funding (FDI). A safe WIO is, due to this fact, very important for India’s developmental agenda, vitality safety, industrial development, and international market entry. This underscores why India should stay actively engaged with small island states, as their function in shaping the area’s stability is essential to safeguarding New Delhi’s nationwide, regional, and international pursuits.
India’s oceanic technique prioritises constructive engagement, balancing safety and cooperation to make sure sustainable growth. This imaginative and prescient is realised by SAGAR, which has now developed into MAHASAGAR—two key initiatives shaping India’s maritime outreach within the wider area. SAGAR serves as a guiding imaginative and prescient for India’s maritime engagement, specializing in safety cooperation, financial growth, capability constructing, and regional connectivity. The developed and renewed imaginative and prescient of MAHASAGAR goals at holistic maritime safety, performing as an enabler for sustainable financial development whereas bridging capability gaps for each giant and small island nations, in addition to coastal states within the area and past. It seeks to construct a steady and affluent area primarily based on the precept of “fairness in growth” and expands upon SAGAR by integrating capability constructing and functionality enhancement, local weather resilience, digital connectivity, the blue financial system, defence cooperation and mutual safety for a shared future.
MAHASAGAR thus varieties the muse of India’s DIME technique—Diplomatic, Informational, Navy, and Financial engagement instruments—by which India advances its imaginative and prescient of a free, open, inclusive, and rules-based Indian Ocean area. To place this technique into motion, India actively companions with like-minded nations like Mauritius and participates in a number of multilaterals groupings, such because the Indian Ocean Rim Affiliation (IORA), the Colombo Safety Conclave, Indian Ocean Fee, Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS) and Djibouti Code of Conduct- Jeddah Amendments (DCoC-JA), G-20 amplifying the voice of the International South and fostering deeper cooperation to deal with shared challenges and advance frequent objectives. As a part of these efforts, India focuses on growing the maritime policing and governance capabilities of island nations like Mauritius, making certain they will successfully safe their huge ocean territories. A steady and safe Indian Ocean is just not solely in Mauritius’ curiosity but additionally in India’s core nationwide curiosity, as instability within the area immediately impacts commerce, vitality safety, and territorial integrity.
Towards this backdrop, throughout Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s go to to Mauritius (March 11–12, 2025), India and Mauritius elevated their ties to an Enhanced Strategic Partnership, reinforcing cooperation in politics, the financial system, defence, and growth. This improve displays their shared objectives of regional stability and prosperity. The joint imaginative and prescient additionally highlights the event of a brand new runway and jetty on Agalega Island with Indian help, emphasising their essential function in offering emergency humanitarian help, notably following Cyclone Chido. Mauritius expressed gratitude for India’s well timed help, which included deploying plane and ships, reinforcing India’s place as a ‘First Responder’ for Mauritius. Moreover, “Mauritius welcomed India’s ongoing help in Agalega’s growth, aimed toward enhancing the welfare and well-being of its inhabitants”. India additionally helps Mauritius’ shared dedication to a free, open, safe, and protected Indian Ocean and assists in securing its Unique Financial Zone (EEZ). This consists of aiding the Coast Guard in maritime capability constructing and enhancing capabilities within the defence sector by offering army belongings corresponding to Dornier plane, Dhruv helicopters, and patrol boats, in addition to establishing the Coastal Surveillance Radar System (CSRS).
Moreover, India trains Mauritian personnel in counter-terror operations, conducts joint naval workouts to bolster the safety of Sea Traces of Communication (SLOC), and engages in anti-piracy operations and measures in opposition to Unlawful, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing. Moreover, India plans to develop safety infrastructure by establishing a Police Academy and a Nationwide Maritime Info Sharing Centre in Mauritius. The 2 international locations additionally signed agreements to cooperate in numerous safety sectors, extending to white transport, the blue financial system, and hydrography.
On the financial entrance, India and Mauritius signed the Complete Financial Cooperation and Partnership Settlement (CECPA) in 2021 for strengthening commerce in prescription drugs, textiles, and medical units, with bilateral commerce reaching $851.13 million in FY 2023–24. Mauritius stays a key supply of FDI for India ($177 billion since 2000), facilitated by the Double Taxation Avoidance Settlement (DTAA). Each nations have agreed to commerce in Indian Rupee and Mauritian Rupee, decreasing reliance on international trade reserves. India additionally helps infrastructure growth in Mauritius, together with tasks such because the Metro Specific, Supreme Courtroom, ENT Hospital, and housing developments. In 2025, India dedicated to developing Mauritius’ new Parliament, symbolizing democratic collaboration, in addition to a 100-km water pipeline and neighborhood growth tasks value 500 million MUR.
The newly inaugurated Atal Bihari Vajpayee Institute will improve the capabilities of Mauritian personnel by public service coaching, with 500 Mauritian civil servants set to obtain coaching in India over the following 5 years to enhance administrative competencies. India continues its ITEC coaching, digital cooperation (UPI, RuPay), AI-space analysis for local weather resilience, and hydrographic surveys linked to maritime area consciousness for the sustainable exploitation of blue wealth.
Mauritius is not only a bilateral accomplice however a particular strategic node in India’s broader oceanic technique, reinforcing the nation’s function as a key stakeholder within the evolving safety and financial structure of the Indian Ocean. The constructive transition from SAGAR to MAHASAGAR marks a strategic shift, addressing up to date challenges throughout safety, commerce, local weather resilience, and capacity-building. Modi’s go to reaffirms India’s dedication to fostering a steady, safe, and affluent Indian ocean area, with Mauritius as a central pillar of this imaginative and prescient given its strategic geography and historic linkages. Wanting forward, deepening cooperation in rising domains corresponding to undersea-digital and important infrastructure, deep sea mission, and regional governance will additional cement India-Mauritius ties, making certain that the partnership stays dynamic, future-ready, and aware of shared aspirations.
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