Introduction
Launched in conjunction with India's UNSC 2028–29 bid, SHANTI (Securing Holistic Advancement through Norms, Trust and Integrity) serves as India's normative maritime governance framework. The Bay of Bengal, accommodating approximately 25% of global trade, functions as the primary operational theater where this vision is realized, aligning regional development with broader maritime security.
Significance in the Act East Policy
The Bay of Bengal serves as the physical and strategic bridge linking peninsular India with Southeast Asia, reinforcing the operational imperatives of the Act East Policy.
- Geostrategic Anchor: The Andaman & Nicobar Islands provide a pivotal operational springboard toward ASEAN, overseeing critical maritime choke points such as the Strait of Malacca and securing vital international sea lines of communication.
- Institutional Synergy: SHANTI acts as a normative catalyst for regional multilateral bodies like the BIMSTEC Secretariat in Dhaka. It broadens cooperation across the littoral beyond traditional commercial exchanges—currently valued at approximately $73 billion in intra-regional trade—into non-traditional security cooperation.
Significance in the Indo-Pacific Strategy
Within the Indo-Pacific construct, the Bay of Bengal operationalizes India's evolution from localized deterrence to collaborative regional stewardship.
- Paradigm Shift in Maritime Posture: Resolving the conceptual divergence between acting as a 'net security provider' and a 'cooperation facilitator', the framework builds upon SAGAR (2015) and MAHASAGAR (2025) to anchor India's role as a trusted partner and common security stakeholder.
- Operationalizing Regional Resilience: It addresses common regional vulnerabilities—including illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing, humanitarian crises, and climate hazards—underpinned by practical operations like the inaugural BIMSTEC joint maritime exercise.
- Rules-Based Maritime Alternative: It counters unilateralism and opaque, debt-driven infrastructure investments by promoting transparent, consensus-driven governance anchored strictly in international frameworks such as UNCLOS.
Conclusion
By operationalizing normative frameworks like SHANTI within the Bay of Bengal, India bridges its continental Act East objectives with its oceanic Indo-Pacific ambitions. This approach shifts maritime diplomacy from competitive balance-of-power rivalry toward collective, trust-based resilience across the global maritime commons.