Geopolitical tensions in Indian Ocean: India leverages IORA forum amid maritime insecurity and regional power dynamics
Original framing: “Attacks on vessels with Indian seafarers, Iranian ‘service fee’ may feature in IORA meet” — The Hindu
The Indian Ocean has been a contested space for millennia, from the Chola naval expeditions to Portuguese monopolies, and the British East India Company’s control. The modern 'service fee' phenomenon mirrors historical *chauth* (tribute) systems, where local powers extracted protection payments from merchants—a practice that resurfaced in the 20th century as piracy off Somalia, now rebranded as asymmetric warfare. IORA’s charter, drafted in 1997, fails to account for these historical continuities of power.
The Indian Ocean’s maritime insecurity is not an aberration but a symptom of a global governance system that prioritizes state sovereignty over collective stewardship, a legacy of colonial-era maritime control structures that IORA’s 1997 charter failed to dismantle.
India’s chairmanship of IORA is being leveraged to advance a nationalist agenda under the guise of regional cooperation, obscuring how 'service fees' are a rational response to the vacuum left by absent state authority—a vacuum exacerbated by climate change, economic inequality, and the securitization of trade routes. The marginalised voices of seafarers, particularly women and low-caste workers, reveal the human cost of this system, while indigenous traditions offer alternative models of governance rooted in reciprocity and ecological balance. To break this cycle, IORA must move beyond its charter’s limitations, adopting restorative justice mechanisms, community-led enforcement, and a blue economy framework that treats the ocean as a shared commons rather than a battleground. The alternative—a continued escalation of tensions—risks transforming the Indian Ocean into a permanent zone of conflict, where all states lose access to the trade and resources that sustain them.