Delays in indigenous shipbuilding are significantly hurting India's maritime dominance ambitions.

While India has made major strides in developing its domestic shipbuilding industry, persistent delays in key projects are creating critical gaps in its naval capabilities and making it difficult to keep pace with the rapid naval expansion of rivals like China.

Key Causes of Delays-

Several factors contribute to the time and cost overruns that plague India's indigenous shipbuilding projects.

• Design and Technology Issues: Frequent design changes, late finalization of drawings, and the progressive receipt of binding data on new systems often cause significant project delays.

• Import Dependency: Despite the "Make in India" initiative, a substantial portion of critical equipment and systems for warships, particularly weapons and sensors, must still be imported. This makes projects vulnerable to supply chain issues and international procurement complexities.

• Bureaucratic Hurdles: A slow and cumbersome defense procurement process, coupled with financial and bureaucratic delays, can hinder the timely execution of projects.

• Infrastructure and Skill Gaps: India's shipyards, both public and private, sometimes lack the modern infrastructure and advanced shipbuilding practices found in other major naval powers like Japan, South Korea, and China. This can result in lower productivity and longer construction timelines.

The Impact on Maritime Dominance-

These delays have a direct and negative impact on India's ability to maintain maritime dominance.

• Widening Gap with China: China's People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) is expanding at an unprecedented rate, commissioning new warships and submarines at a pace that India simply cannot match. The long construction timelines in Indian shipyards mean that India is falling further behind, making it challenging to counter China's growing presence in the Indian Ocean.

• Fleet Strength and Readiness: Delays in indigenous projects, such as the Project 75-I submarine program, are creating dangerous gaps in India's naval fleet. With a significant portion of its conventional submarines nearing the end of their service life, the delay in acquiring new ones is a major concern.

• Strategic Vulnerability: The inability to rapidly build and deploy a sufficient number of modern warships and submarines leaves India vulnerable to a two-front naval threat from China and Pakistan. This undermines India's strategic vision of being the "net security provider" in the Indian Ocean region.

• Increased Costs: Delays in shipbuilding projects inevitably lead to significant cost overruns. This forces the Indian Navy to spend more to acquire the same number of platforms, which can strain an already constrained defense budget and affect other modernization efforts.