TROUBLED WATERS

Sir Olaf Caroe, the former British civil servant in India, was not much off-centre when (in the mid-1940s) he pro¬pounded the doctrine of ‘Wells of Power’. He emphasized West Asian oil which was absolutely essential for the Western powers and hence should be shielded from the Communist Bear, This, coupl¬ed with the fact that the Indian Ocean does not, like its bigger counterparts, the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans, extend northwards into the cold cli¬matic regions, saddles it with paramount strategic signi¬ficance. Further, its seabed is rich with millions of tons of polymetallic nodules such as manganese, nickel, iron, copper, cobalt, vanadium and molybdenum; its littoral states produce about ninety per cent of the world’s rubber, tea and jute, sixty per cent of its tin and oil and have sizeable deposits of gold and diamonds, while its continental shelves provide good fishing grounds. Add to this the global ‘Marx-land vs Freeland’ dispute, against the backdrop of the American domino theory and the regional Sino-Soviet rift, and the picture becomes clear. Sadly, the battleground has been the arena of the non-aligned, developing, and least developed countries.