“As a maritime nation—predominantly, India is a maritime nation—and in the current VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity) environment, where conflicts erupt at the drop of a hat and have the potential to explode and escalate into multidimensional and full-scale wars, these words are very important,” said Commodore P. R. Hari, Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) of GRSE.
Given the current global geopolitical situation, Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers (GRSE) is focused on India’s strong maritime legacy, which makes the nation confident in taking on challenges. The Central government has rolled out a slew of initiatives, including the revitalisation package secured under the mammoth ₹69,725-crore programme, primarily for infrastructure capability enhancement, he said while speaking at THE WEEK-GRSE Sagar Sankalp national maritime defence dialogue in Kolkata.
The Government of India envisions India being among the top 10 maritime nations globally by 2030 and the top 5 by 2047, which is an ambitious mission. Currently, the global fleet share that India holds is about 1.2%, and in global shipbuilding, the share is around 0.16% to 0.17%. Therefore, there is an urgent need to ramp up our shipbuilding capability.
The need of the hour is an ancillary industry to support shipbuilding, which is heavily dependent on supply chain building; hence, urgent steps are required to ramp up production capability to meet the demand. Another aspect is that the skill set available in India is only just adequate to meet existing demand, which needs to be increased to meet future requirements.
GRSE’s success story is warship building, starting with INS Ajay, India's first indigenous warship built way back in 1961, which was a 35-metre-long seaward defence boat. “Taking the cue from the success of warship building, it is imperative that the entire shipbuilding industry rises to the occasion and leverages the capability that we have gained in warship building to boost the non-defence segment,” said Commodore Hari.
A total of 275 warships have been built by Indian shipyards, and in the last 10 years, 67 ships have been delivered to the maritime forces. Fifty-five platforms are being built by Indian shipyards today for the maritime forces.
