Examine India's SAGAR doctrine in the context of expanding membership of the Colombo Security Conclave.

Announced in 2015, SAGAR — "Security and Growth for All in the Region" — frames India as a net security provider and development partner in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), rather than a hegemon [1]. The steady widening of the Colombo Security Conclave (CSC) from a trilateral arrangement into a six-member grouping is the clearest institutional test of that doctrine.

CSC's expansion trajectory

• Formed in 2011 as a trilateral maritime security mechanism of India, Sri Lanka and the Maldives, with Mauritius joining as the fourth member [2].
• Bangladesh and Seychelles, long-standing observers, were inducted as full members at the 7th NSA-level Meeting in New Delhi (20 November 2025), hosted by NSA Ajit Doval; Malaysia attended as a guest [3].
• Cooperation runs through five pillars: maritime safety and security; countering terrorism and radicalisation; combating trafficking and transnational organised crime; cyber security and critical infrastructure; and HADR [3].

How expansion advances SAGAR

• Consent-based leadership: growth by voluntary accession, not treaty obligation, validates SAGAR's promise of collective, sovereignty-respecting security.
• Capacity-building: recurring Table Top Exercises — such as the 4th edition hosted by the Indian Coast Guard (North East) at Kolkata in 2023, and the recent exercise concluded at Eastern Naval Command, Visakhapatnam — build interoperability cheaply, without the sensitivities of live deployments [4].
• Strategic depth: a wider membership dilutes competing extra-regional influence in the IOR and complements Neighbourhood First.

Limitations

• CSC has no charter or secretariat; consensus-driven, non-binding decisions slow implementation.
• Domestic political churn in island neighbours can stall commitments; India's own capacity gaps in surveillance and coastal policing constrain delivery.

Expansion therefore shows SAGAR maturing from declaratory vision into working regional architecture, though institutionalisation lags ambition. Strengthening CSC with a permanent secretariat, funded capacity-building and white-shipping information sharing — consistent with SDG 14 and India's MAHASAGAR outreach — would convert goodwill into durable regional public goods.