In this episode of Interpreting India, Charukeshi Bhatt speaks with Pooja Bhatt, Associate Professor, Jindal School of International Affairs, O.P. Jindal University, on a piece of infrastructure that is easy to overlook and very difficult to protect: subsea cables. Stretching over 1.5 million kilometres across ocean floors and carrying nearly 99% of global data traffic, these cables underpin everything from financial systems and cloud infrastructure to the everyday digital services that billions of people rely on. For India, a fast-growing digital economy with expanding data center ambitions, getting this right is not optional.

This episode explores:
Why subsea cables remain far superior to satellites for global data transfer, and what India's current footprint in the global cable network actually looks like? How do cable consortia work in practice, and what are the tensions that arise when private companies and sovereign governments have very different priorities? How real is the threat from China's rapidly expanding footprint in the global cable network, and what does the debate around trusted networks mean in practice? What has the Quad delivered on cable connectivity and resilience, and what should India's next steps be domestically and regionally?

Episode Note

Pooja opens with a mismatch that frames the entire conversation. India consumes around 20% of global internet traffic but accounts for just 2% of global subsea cable infrastructure. Even with the expansion of landing stations currently underway, the gap between India's digital ambitions and its physical cable footprint is significant. Part of this is historical: cable infrastructure was concentrated in Mumbai and Chennai, and building it out is prohibitively expensive. Part of it is structural: the raw materials, the technology, and crucially the cable-laying ships that make all of it possible are controlled by a very small number of countries.

On the question of China's expanding footprint, Pooja draws out a tension that runs through the whole conversation: private cable companies are driven by cost and scale, and will naturally gravitate towards cheaper components and partners regardless of where they come from. Sovereign concerns around espionage, trusted supply chains, and national security are a different conversation entirely, and the two do not always find a common language easily. This is where the idea of trusted networks becomes important, frameworks built around like-minded partners who share a common understanding of hardware standards, legal norms, and jurisdictional protections. Australia's approach of using its Exclusive Economic Zone provisions to protect cable infrastructure is one model Pooja thinks India should take seriously and preliminary discussions suggest it already is.

On Quad, Pooja notes that the cable connectivity and resilience partnership launched at the Leaders’ Summit was significant, and there is work happening beneath the surface even if it is not attracting media attention. She concludes by suggesting that more clarity from the government on where India stands on subsea cables, which bodies are responsible, and the national approach will help the broader conversation, especially aiding relevant stakeholders reach out to the right people within the government. That clarity, she argues, is the essential first step.

Transcript

Note: This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain errors.

Charukeshi Bhatt:
Hello and welcome to a new episode of Interpreting India. From geopolitical complexities to economic uncertainties, India faces critical challenges in its quest for a more prominent role on the world stage. This season, we at Carnegie India continue to bring voices from India and around the world to examine the role of technology, the economy, and international security in shaping India's future.

I am Charukeshi Bhatt, and today we're looking at the invisible infrastructure that powers the internet: subsea cables. Stretching over 1.5 million kilometers across ocean floors, they carry nearly 99 percent of global data traffic, underpinning everything from modern financial systems and cloud infrastructure to the everyday digital services that we rely on.

In that sense, they're not just economic lifelines, but critical strategic networks shaping how countries connect, compete, and grow in the digital age. While these networks have existed since the 1850s, their importance and vulnerability have sharply increased. Alongside natural wear and tear and accidental damage, there has been a rise in deliberate disruptions, with incidents in regions like the Red Sea and the Baltic Sea highlighting how outages can cascade into major economic and public service disruptions.

For India, this comes at a moment of expanding digital demand, with data center capacity expected to grow dramatically in the coming years. As connectivity needs deepen, they will rest on secure and resilient subsea cable infrastructure, raising important questions about how countries like India engage with global cable networks, and how they balance economic and strategic priorities and concerns. We'll unpack some of the key issues around these cable networks in today's episode.

Joining us today to discuss this topic is Dr. Pooja Bhatt, Associate Professor and Director of the Pankaj Kumar Jha Center for Security Studies at O.P. Jindal Global University. Dr. Bhatt is the author of The Nine Dash Line: Deciphering the South China Sea Conundrum, and was part of the Indian Navy history book titled A Decade of Transformation: The Indian Navy from 2011 to 2021, which was released by the Honorable President in 2022. She works extensively on maritime issues, particularly in the Indo-Pacific and the South China Sea, besides also writing on defense and Asian security architecture. Her work on undersea cables has been published by a DFAT Australia-funded project at the Australia India Institute and another co-authored one at the Institute for Security and Development Policy, Sweden.

Dr. Bhatt has previously been associated with the Policy Planning and Research Division at the MEA as a consultant, and at the Rashtriya Raksha University in Gandhinagar as a faculty member for Defense and Strategic Studies. Dr. Bhatt, we're delighted to have you on the podcast. Welcome to Interpreting India.

Pooja Bhatt:
Hi, Charukeshi. Thank you for having me, and thank you, Carnegie, for initiating this conversation on submarine cables, which I'm very happy to be part of.

Charukeshi Bhatt:
Thank you so much. So we'll dive right in. The Indo-Pacific is home to over half the world's internet users, and we have some of the fastest digitizing economies. We have some of the most strategically sensitive cable corridors in the region. Could you elaborate on the importance of subsea cables for the region from both an economic and strategic lens?

Pooja Bhatt:
Okay, I think this is a very good question and a foundational question to start this conversation on subsea cables. There are two or three things I would want to start with.

Firstly, subsea cables are nothing new. They've been in existence since the late nineteenth century, since the 1870s and 1880s. They have always been there. The only thing that has changed over the years is the kind of usage that we have seen in the past several decades. Our reliance on submarine cables has only become more and more important in the past few decades.

Secondly, why are submarine cables important for communication despite having multi-million-dollar satellite projects all over the world? Most countries have them, but there are two reasons. One is the latency that submarine cables provide, because the time that a satellite would otherwise take for information to be received and transferred back is quite reduced when you talk about transferring through submarine cables.

The second thing is the bandwidth that submarine cables provide. The kind of bandwidth you get from data transfer through submarine cables is many times more than what you get through satellites.

Thirdly, the redundancy factor that submarine cables provide. Even if one of the cables is cut, wires are spread out in such a way that even if one of them is damaged, the data can be quickly rerouted to an adjacent cable. So I think these are the factors that explain why submarine cables are so important in the present times, given our reliance on financial connectivity and internet connectivity globally.

Coming back to your major question of why this is so important in the Indian Ocean context, we need to realize, as you started this conversation with, that 99 percent of our global data is carried by submarine cables. So basically, you are dependent entirely on submarine cables for your international data traffic. In the Indian Ocean context, it is at least 95 percent, if not more, when we talk about data transfer.

Because our data sovereignty is reliant on it, our economic resilience is dependent on it, and the geopolitical influence that we are seeking through fintech and other Digital India programs is also reliant on submarine cables, it is very important for India. Having said that, until now, India had only seven landing stations, which are now going to be, I think, 18 or 19. Within the next few years, we will have 19 cable landing stations. So the multiplication of the infrastructure, as well as the data which is being laid, is immense.

Another point that is now added is the geostrategic importance of choke points, because most of these data cables pass through choke points. And as we have already noticed in the Red Sea crisis, important choke points can be controlled by one single hostile party. Overall, this is why the Indian Ocean looks so important: because we are covered with at least eight choke points, both toward the east and west of the Indian Ocean. Any such damage to our cable system or landing system can impact our economy, finances, and everyday internet connectivity in a big way. So I think that summarizes the need for the protection of submarine cables.

Charukeshi Bhatt:
Right, right. Thank you so much. It's interesting that you categorized the importance into, one, why there is a general preference for subsea cables over satellite communication, and then you enlisted the reasons for their geostrategic importance and also how almost the entirety of our digital ambition is underpinned by how secure these subsea cables are.

You mentioned that 99 percent of global data traffic travels through subsea cables, and we are increasingly a very fast-growing digital economy. I have some stats which say that India consumes about 20 percent of global internet traffic, but constitutes just 2 percent of global subsea traffic. Even with the 18 or 19 landing stations that we have, right now, I think we're close to 17, and then we'll reach 18 or 19 in a couple of years, even with that, we will only have 3 percent of cables land in the country.

So there seems to be a mismatch between how much we rely on digital services and our digital ambitions, and then how much we participate and what our footprint is in the global cable network. Do you agree that there is a mismatch in how fast we're growing as a digital economy and how much we're participating in the global cable network?

Pooja Bhatt:
Absolutely. I think that's a very good way of putting it numerically, in terms of how, as a country, as a consumer country and a producer country of so much internet data, we do not have that much bandwidth when it comes to infrastructure. It was very limited to either Mumbai or Chennai ports, and that is where most of the submarine cable landing stations were.

Now, having realized that our consumption and production of internet data is so huge, and one cannot just rely on public infrastructure, a lot of private entities have actually now jumped into the entire thing. You have Airtel, Jio, and other companies now trying to build that up.

Having said that, it's not easy to develop that infrastructure. It's prohibitively expensive in terms of infrastructure building. The second thing is that the raw material for cable building comes from very few countries. The technology is also held by only a few countries. So presently, even if you want to expand your physical infrastructure of cables, you are dependent on other countries for raw materials and technology. Presently, it is either the UAE, Japan, or some of the European countries who are helping us out in that. But that is not a long-term sustainable model. That's why I think we need to internalize some of those models and start developing them within the country to overcome that mismatch between production, consumption, and infrastructure.

Charukeshi Bhatt:
Right. I'm interested in understanding what our current capabilities are, because it's clear that we're not dominant players in the industry, at least not yet. It's been SubCom, Alcatel, NEC, or HMN, and now even hyperscalers are participating in this industry. And with hyperscalers participating in the industry, the share of the pie shrinks further, and the opportunity to get hold of that share will also shrink because of the kind of capital that these hyperscalers bring with them.

But we do have, like you mentioned, Sify, Jio, Airtel, Tata, and other smaller partners. And they participate in the industry through the consortium model. So could you help us understand what a consortium is? How does it actually work in practice? What does it mean to be part of a consortium? And what's the ownership, investment, and control like when you're participating in a consortium?

Pooja Bhatt:
Most of these technologies when it comes to submarine cables are held by a few countries. As I mentioned, Australia is one of them, Singapore, and some of the American companies hold that kind of technological know-how, as well as the infrastructure that is required.

There are two or three reasons why consortiums exist. First of all, there are jurisdictional needs. If you're entering another country, you need to know the market, you need to know the consumption pattern and everything. Certain countries do not allow direct entry into their market, so you need to have a partner. That is one reason: jurisdiction.

Another is the capital-intensive nature of the entire business. It is, as I said, prohibitively expensive. No country or single company can afford to build an entire network on its own. Even hyperscalers try to look for smaller partners in terms of building that kind of partnership and reducing the risk patterns that can emerge from having these transcontinental networks.

It is also a win-win situation because domestic parties get international access in terms of communication. These are transnational, so you need to know the global systems as well. I think for all these reasons, consortiums make more sense for countries where certain parties are not as rich or, in terms of technology, are not at the high end. This helps them build that kind of network.

On the other hand, there is a mismatch in terms of the kind of share that they get. If you are talking about a consortium with hyperscalers like Meta or Amazon, they would have a different approach toward business style, which sometimes agrees and sometimes disagrees with present markets, whether you talk about India or the rest of the Global South. So we have seen certain frictions there. Overall, consortiums are important, but at the individual domestic level, how you deal with them is also a very crucial part of understanding the entire infrastructure.

Charukeshi Bhatt:
Right. And are these consortiums essentially regional in nature? Are the world’s oceans divided into segments by these consortiums? Is that how it runs? Or is it just interest-based or alignment-based? So we know that certain players are interested in the economy of a particular region, and so they form a consortium. How does this work?

Pooja Bhatt:
Most of the initial big existing ones are regional, because it's more about data traffic moving between two or three countries. As you mentioned, we had IAX, India Europe Express, SEA-ME-WE 6, and IAX. There are a lot of them that are basically regional in nature and operate on market needs.

But there are now hyperscalers that are going across transatlantic and transpacific partnerships and trying to build a larger network. So I think both models exist presently.

Charukeshi Bhatt:
Right. Another issue that you mentioned is how we're also dependent on components that form the undersea cables and the components that are used to lay these cables. There are a lot of dependencies in that.

For example, the fiber optic cable is also made by very few selected players, mostly Japan and the United States, and now we are increasingly seeing China in the mix. Then there are repeaters, which basically amplify the signals received over multiple kilometers. They are built by an even smaller group of firms.

And then there is the biggest component, which is a cable-laying ship, which India does not own any of. So there are these dependencies. These issues are also brought up in highlighting concerns about sovereignty and security when it comes to subsea cables. Where are you sourcing these equipment and components of subsea cables from? With the increased participation of China, more and more concern has started being raised. A lot of countries, including the United States, have sounded alarms on how rapidly China's footprint is expanding in the global cable network.

How are these two issues of sovereignty and the China factor related, and how real is the threat that is coming out of China's increased footprint, particularly for India and its neighborhood?

Pooja Bhatt:
I think this is a very important question to be asked. I would say these two questions are questions of concern to two different parties.

First of all, most of the cable-owning and operating companies are private companies. For them, the scale of the business matters. So they will try to seek the cheapest raw materials and the cheapest ways of having the hardware installed. In that sense, they would rather go for a company in China than a company in the United States, which has more stringent frameworks for hardware development and maintenance.

What my conversations have revealed to me in the past few years is that companies are less likely to be concerned about sovereignty issues. They are more concerned with how to scale up the business and earn more money, which is a very typical commercial way of thinking.

The question of sovereignty, the question of espionage, and the question of using cables to undermine national security interests is a concern for sovereign nations. They are the ones that raise these concerns: if the cable material is coming from a particular country, are we sure it can be trusted?

That is why the entire debate around trusted networks came into existence in the last few years. We need to develop trusted networks where we know where the raw materials are coming from, what their standard of operations is, what their legal operational frameworks look like, and whether they have stringent frameworks to ensure that there is no espionage or activity that can impact national security.

So these two conversations come from two different ends. And that is the problem here. Even when submarine cables were attacked in recent times in Europe and elsewhere, the concern for the business community or the submarine cable community was more about how to build redundancy and how to build more submarine cables. They were not concerned that some espionage method may have taken place. Espionage was the concern of the countries affected by the entire thing. So yes, that is a problem. The same conversation takes place at two different ends and in two different forms.

Charukeshi Bhatt:
That's really helpful. Thank you, Dr. Bhatt. I wanted to dig a little deeper into the trusted networks point that you highlighted. There seems to be a need for countries to find like-minded countries they can trust, who also have a significant amount of capability when it comes to subsea cable infrastructure, and then build these shared networks.

I would like you to speak more about what these networks entail and what they constitute. Is it just agreements between governments, or would it also entail more? Because, like you said, private industry players largely run the entire subsea cable network, and they wouldn't be concerned with issues that sovereign states have to grapple with. But states will have to speak with the industry and somehow align them and bring them into the fold of trusted networks.

So one, if you could elaborate a little bit on what these trusted networks could entail. I have read some of your work on how India can partner with Australia, because it has the same concerns about China's presence in the Pacific and how quickly it is expanding its digital footprint, especially for Pacific countries. So if you could also speak a little bit about how Australia and India are positioned to build some sort of trusted network when it comes to subsea cables.

Pooja Bhatt:
There are, again, four ways of building trusted networks. First of all, you need to know your like-minded partners and their ambitions and interests so that you are aware of where you both stand in terms of submarine cabling, infrastructure building, and communication.

Therefore, you should be very clear about where one is procuring raw materials, how the process goes through, who the elements involved in it are, who the companies involved are, and whether they are trustworthy. That is the hardware and laying part of it.

Then we also come to the jurisdictional understanding of the issue. What we have understood is that different countries see their submarine cables going through different kinds of maritime domains. You have the high seas and you have jurisdictional waters. Different countries treat their jurisdictional waters, high seas, and exclusive economic zones, which are 200 nautical miles from the baseline, in different ways.

One of the suggestions that I thought was very interesting from Australia was how they have converted their exclusive economic zone to protect their submarine cables. The exclusive economic zone otherwise generally means exploration of economic resources, whether fishing or whatever. What they did was use that particular UNCLOS ruling for EEZs to protect submarine cables because it is economic infrastructure. You can very well protect that infrastructure within your EEZ, and that will allow you to have a certain kind of control within your EEZ.

That is very innovative thinking. One of the ways that I was thinking about was: why not have other countries, where EEZs are very prone to external party interference, go for a similar kind of legal framework under the larger international framework? That is a legal way of doing things: you talk to your partners and try to build similar jurisdictional norms for your region.

Third, I would talk about the repair system, which you also discussed. Most countries don't have repair ships, and repair ships are very expensive. The entire training process is known to a very small number of people. We don't have enough people. How do you train people to repair these ships and lay cables? Every component of it can be an area where countries collaborate and cooperate with their trusted partners. This trust will only develop when you know your like-minded partner has a similar wavelength of thinking on the issues as you do.

Charukeshi Bhatt:
Right. About the regulatory framework and the supporting policy framework, what Australia has done with its EEZ is really impressive. I think it has three zones, and it is one of a kind when it comes to legislative frameworks for subsea cable protection around the world. India can take a leaf out of that book. But in your conversations with stakeholders in India, has this ever come up? Has the Australian approach been considered? I know that India and Australia cooperate under the Quad, and I’ll come to the Quad separately also.

I’m aware that there were a set of guidelines released by TRAI a couple of years ago, and there were quite a lot of reforms suggested when it came to how we look at cable infrastructure. So was there ever a discussion about learning from Australia or collaborating with them within the Indian stakeholder ecosystem?

Pooja Bhatt:
Yes. Around the time I had written this paper, I think I did it in 2021 or 2022, and after that, we had this closed-door session with some senior officials in India who are closely associated with telecommunications, TRAI, and all that. I think that idea was already being discussed. There was some kind of thinking that had already been initiated a few years back that the Australian model can be very well replicated.

In terms of the policymaking side, I think there is already thinking about how we operationalize these kinds of legal jurisdictional issues. On the other hand, the business community is more concerned about replicating the redundancy part. So how do you put more submarine cables in place to provide that kind of redundancy? There are two different conversations going on at the same time presently.

Charukeshi Bhatt:
Thank you for that. Since we have brought Australia into the conversation, I also want to now move to the Quad, and that will help us look at the issue from a regional perspective.

The Quad launched the Partnership for Cable Connectivity and Resilience in 2023. It was a big thing because four major democracies of the Indo-Pacific acknowledged that cable infrastructure is a strategic priority in the region. Then Australia followed it up by launching a Cable Connectivity and Resilience Centre, which I think is funding a lot of cable networks in the Pacific, including in Micronesia, Kiribati, and Nauru. I think the Connectivity and Resilience Centre is playing an active role there. There was also a tripartite agreement that the United States, Japan, and Australia announced.

But India, for some reason, in my understanding, has been a silent participant or has been relatively quieter when it comes to the cable agenda. It did not endorse the New York Principles when they came out, but there was a joint statement with the United States that came out in 2024, which India was a part of. Like you mentioned, there have been these policy dialogues where consideration has been given to reforming and learning from Quad partners when it comes to subsea cables.

How do you look at the work that has taken place under the Quad? Despite there being these four anchors in the Indo-Pacific, the work they have undertaken on subsea cables is not as impressive as it should have been or could have been, given that Japan and the United States lead when it comes to technical capabilities, Australia is leading in the legislative framework, and India is one of the fastest-growing digital economies. They have unique capabilities, but there has not been enough. In my understanding, the work does not speak to the credentials of the grouping. So how do you look at the Quad's approach, and what are some of the highlights that you think the group has been able to achieve?

Pooja Bhatt:
I think this is a multi-layered question. First of all, we have to see the situation of the Quad itself in the present geopolitics. India was supposed to host the last Quad summit, and we couldn't do that because of the geopolitical tensions going on. I think that speaks a lot for how several of the initiatives that started with so much fanfare would not be achieved. We should not be disappointed by this because I think everything else has been impacted under the Quad.

Having said that, the kind of partnership that the Quad initiated, the Cable Connectivity and Resilience Partnership that was initiated by the Quad Leaders’ Summit, and the kinds of centers that we just spoke of, including the one in Australia, show that work is going on under the table, even if it is not given that much media attention at the moment.

There is a certain kind of movement in terms of every country now trying to build its own infrastructure for submarine cable protection. With the entire U.S.-Iran conflict and the Ukraine-Russia war that we have seen recently, countries have realized how self-reliance in certain technologies is also important, as much as it is important to have connectivity partners.

In that regard, every country is trying to build hardware infrastructure, software infrastructure, legal infrastructure, jurisdictional infrastructure, and operational infrastructure. I think each of the countries is trying to build these.

If you see why India did not participate in the U.S.-Japan-Australia conversation on submarine cables, one reason is the kind of standards these countries were seeking. As we discussed, the United States already has this entire existing infrastructure of submarine cables, as do Australia and Japan. So they already have high standards in terms of how it has to be done. India is still catching up. You cannot commit to something which you do not currently have in place.

One of the reasons I would assume India shied away from being part of such a conversation at this stage is that it is trying to set its own house in order. Overall, maybe once the war scenarios mellow down a bit and we are in a much better space, and maybe if the Quad is speaking again at a leader level or ministerial level, which we should expect in some time, maybe a year or so, I think we will bring that focus back to quadrilateral cooperation on submarine cables. Until then, there will only be bilateral conversations or domestic conversations taking place. Every country is trying to use this time to build its own networks.

Charukeshi Bhatt:
That's helpful. Beyond the Quad, you mentioned that there are conversations that are not yet public but that are still taking place, and that's reassuring. You also mentioned that bilateral conversations are taking place between countries, and there is also keenness among countries to build their own capabilities domestically.

If India were to look beyond the Quad, what are some areas or partners in the region that it could look at? I know that India and Africa have the same trajectory when it comes to economic growth and how digital services have expanded. Could Africa, as a continent, partner with India on subsea cables? I don't know if there is a real opportunity there, because African players in the subsea cable network are again fewer than India.

Pooja Bhatt:
Absolutely. That is the reason we do not have that kind of communication yet. The entire communication presently on submarine cables is driven by the amount of data being transferred in particular nodes. The more complex your nodes are, the more communication you are having.

Because India has more data cables and nodes transferring through ASEAN countries and Singapore, as well as Australia, our communication with them is more. Therefore, the chance of a bilateral or regional partnership with ASEAN countries, Australia, and Pacific countries is still more than when we talk about Africa.

Though Africa is a great market, for very practical reasons, India does not have that kind of submarine cable infrastructure presence in Africa. To start that conversation, you need to have that kind of infrastructure presence. To have that kind of infrastructure, you need to show the need that data transfer between India and Africa has. I think that kind of need has started to show up now in communication: why these countries and continents need that kind of data transfer and more infrastructure.

That communication will only help in promoting the infrastructure, because no country is building the infrastructure; it is private players who are building the infrastructure. So you need to communicate to private enterprises that they should build networks to African nations so that we can have this kind of digital communication on submarine cables, protection, and regional governance. It all follows one step after another.

Charukeshi Bhatt:
Right. I think it might take place in a couple of years or at least within the next decade, because India and Africa are the two regions receiving the most data center investment. A lot of cable networks, especially hyperscalers, because of investments being made in data center capacity in these two regions, are starting to build. There is the Waterworth project and the 2Africa project. There is the Umoja project that basically contours the entire continent of Africa. So I think with these cables, there will be more opportunity for India and Africa also to speak on cable connectivity between these two landmasses.

Conversations in the tech space have looked at a lot of South-South collaboration when it comes to AI infrastructure, and if we were to extend AI infrastructure to subsea cables, I think it follows from that. But I wanted to ask you: how does the international legal framework deal with subsea cables? I understand that UNCLOS does not explicitly mention what you should be doing with subsea cables and how countries should protect them. There are references to protecting economic activity in your EEZ, but that also applies to fishing. Then there are certain obligations when it comes to the high seas.

How do international frameworks look at subsea cables? And what is the role of the ITU advisory body on subsea cables? Then there is the ICPC. What are these bodies exactly? Do they speak to these consortia? Do they speak to private industry? Are they advising governments? What is the role of these bodies?

Pooja Bhatt:
In terms of international and regional governance, as you rightly mentioned, largely the maritime domain and everything in it is governed by UNCLOS. UNCLOS does provide some starting conversation because we have to understand that UNCLOS was also adopted in the 1980s and negotiated before that. So that was not the high time for submarine cable conversations.

Despite that, it was prophetic in its nature. It was talking about how countries can lay submarine cables within their jurisdictional waters and the high seas, and how they can protect them. It gives a very broad framework for conversation. However, it is not very pointed on how countries should go about protecting them, what the various modes are, and whether high seas can be governed by individual countries, which otherwise they are not. That information is not given.

So this is open to interpretation by countries. Countries should come in and start discussing how to use UNCLOS not only at the domestic level, but also for conversation on the conservation of submarine cables at the regional level with other countries and at the global level. This provides very fertile ground for conversation among countries.

Coming to the already existing organizations that are talked about, ICPC and the ITU advisory body, these are formed out of consortiums. If you see ICPC, it is entirely an intergovernmental organization where more and more private players are parties than governments, or very few governments are party to it. In fact, from India, when I last read, only Tata Communications was a party to it, not even the Indian government, unlike Japan and the United States, if you see the list of party members to ICPC.

So when you don't have adequate representation of your government within these kinds of institutions that solely govern submarine cables and related infrastructure, you don't have much say. One thinking point here should be how we increase our participation in these kinds of governance-level bodies, which are directly and indirectly impacting us, and now are directly impacting us.

Then the ITU advisory body, from what I read, is more prescriptive in nature than about giving any kind of safeguard mechanisms. They say submarine cables should be protected and provide a broader framework. But they are very clear that if there is a submarine cable issue involving two or more countries in a conflict, they will stay out of it. So, you understand, right? There are bodies, but if you unpack those bodies, they are not sufficient for the protection of submarine cables at the present moment.

Charukeshi Bhatt:
Right. Countries will have to come up with their own domestic legislative frameworks, drawing from whatever rough contours the advisory committee or these bodies provide.

That brings me to the last question for the podcast. We've gone over the entire range of issues when it comes to subsea cables: why they’re important, what the current level of participation by Indian players is, what is holding them back, what the biggest threat is when it comes to subsea cables, and why we should be looking at like-minded partners.

We've also established that it will be incumbent on governments to take this up and support cable infrastructure in the country and in the region. So, if you were advising the Indian government today on just one single thing that would propel the domestic subsea cable industry, what would be the one thing that you would highlight as a priority, or as the first step, or as an enabler right now to accelerate our participation?

Pooja Bhatt:
I think this was the same advice I gave a few years back, and I'm sure it is somewhere in the line. We cannot speak of it because submarine cables are critical infrastructure, and we don't get to know what is happening about it.

One crucial starting point is to define submarine cables clearly. Where do you stand with your submarine cables? What is your jurisdictional understanding of submarine cables? What is your operational infrastructure for submarine cables? How are you going to protect them?

Make it very clear at the domestic level what your infrastructure and thinking related to submarine cables is, and what the bodies involved in protection, laying, and the entire process from zero to ten are. Everything has to be taken care of. These clarifications have to be very upfront because then it is clear.

What we have realized is that when foreign parties come, they are basically scrambling to know which is the right body they should speak to when it comes to submarine cabling, protection, and other issues. That infrastructure is not present right now, perhaps because we are yet to understand the importance of submarine cables, or we are doing it at a very clandestine level. The conversations are not taking place at a very general level. People are not aware.

So, I think that kind of conversation should be the starting point: where do we stand with our submarine cables, and which bodies are going to take it on? Once that is in place, you can take it further from there.

Charukeshi Bhatt:
Right. So, a more forthcoming approach, disclosing what the approach of the government is, and some sort of transparency by sharing information with relevant stakeholders so that they also know who to approach and who to speak to.

Pooja Bhatt:
Absolutely.

Charukeshi Bhatt:
That's really helpful and insightful. Thank you so much, Dr. Bhatt, for a very insightful and informative conversation. With that, we come to an end of this episode.

I'd like to thank you for taking out the time for speaking with us. We'll be back in two weeks with a new episode. To our listeners, if you want to make sure that you don't miss any of Interpreting India's episodes, be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. To learn more about our research and our team, you can visit us at carnegieindia.org. You can also find us on social media on X, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Thank you once again, Dr. Pooja.

Pooja Bhatt:
You're welcome. I’m very happy to discuss this issue today with you, Charukeshi. Thank you, Carnegie, for having me today.

Charukeshi Bhatt:
Thank you. To our listeners, thank you for joining, and see you next time.