The Navy’s Information Management and Analysis Centre (IMAC), the nodal agency for maritime data fusion will soon become a National Maritime Domain Awareness (NMDA) centre.

Try this question:

Q“To be secure on Land, we must be Supreme at Sea”. In this context, discuss why India is primarily a Maritime Nation?

What is IMAC?

• The IMAC monitors movement of more than 120,000 ships a year passing through the Indian Ocean.
• The cargo carried by these ships account for 66 per cent of world crude oil, 50 per cent of container traffic and 33 per cent of bulk cargo.
• Thus, IMAC performs a very crucial role in collecting shipping information, analysing traffic patterns and sharing the inputs with the user agencies.
• It tracks vessels on the high seas and gets data from the coastal radars, white shipping agreements, Automatic Identification Systems (AIS) transponders fitted on merchant ships, air and traffic management system and global shipping databases.

Transforming to NDMAC

• The IMAC will soon transform into a national NMDA centre, wherein it will be a multi-agency centre.
• The NMDA project was launched in accordance with the vision of PM on SAGAR (Security and Growth for All in the Region).
• Approved by the Defence Acquisition Council in 2012, the IMAC became operational in 2014 and is located in Gurugram.
• It is the nodal centre of the National Command Control Communication and Intelligence System (NC3I), which was established to link the Navy and the Coast Guard.

Why such a move?

• India has a coast line of about 7500 km and an Exclusive Economic Zone(EEZ) of over 2 million sq kms.
• In addition, we are endowed with abundant oceanic wealth comprising a large number of island territories and vast sea bed area, over 97 % of our national trade is carried by sea routes.
• It is therefore, imperative that we modernize the Navy which always has to be in a high state of preparedness.

Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024

Attend Now