South Asia, with its legacy of suspicion, mistrust, ethnic sectarianism, and political parochialism would have fallen off the global map had it not been for its large and growing populations. Its people are poor largely because they do not have access to commercial energy. This is, perhaps, the greatest challenge that governments of the region face.

Since antiquity the Indian Ocean has been the centre of human progress, a great arena in which many civilizations have mingled, fought, and traded on important trade routes criss-crossing the waters around India for thousands of years. The entry and exit is to this vast water body is through four ‘gates’ or choke points: the Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb; around South Africa’s Cape Agulhas; the Strait of Malacca; and past Australia’s Cape West Howe.