, The Naval Senior Officers' Conference, which commenced in New Delhi today, was inaugurated by the Chief of the Naval Staff Admiral Arun Prakash. Apart from addressing a host of other issues, there are three discernible themes that provide the underpinning to this year's SOC.
The first of these is safety consciousness. The Navy is acutely conscious of the stringent demands in an extremely complex, technologically advanced and very expensive equipment intensive environment for a high standard of human interface – whether by way of operators, maintainers, or logistic personnel. Several innovative and far-reaching measures have been initiated to ensure that safety remains foremost in the Navy's consciousness and to arrest any nascent tendency towards neglect in this regard. Taking into account the mishaps in recent times, the Navy Chief Admiral Arun Prakash stressed, “The safety roadmap will ensure that our operations are not only effective, but also conducted safely.”
The second theme revolves about the completion of the Navy-wide effort (that was begun a few years ago) to provide a firm intellectual and theoretical foundation upon which the edifice of a resurgent Indian Navy, shaped to address the realities of the twenty-first century, would be built. This 'foundation' comprised three capstone documents. The first was the “Maritime Doctrine”, released in 2004, which is essentially a 'doctrinal primer'.
The second was the “Maritime Capability Perspective Plan”, a classified blueprint of the force-level structure of the Navy for the next decade and a half. This was reviewed and accepted by the Commanders' Conference that was held from the 4 May this year.
The final segment of the 'trilogy' entitled “Freedom of the Seas: India's Maritime Strategy”, which is a classified document, will be released by the Raksha Mantri, Mr Pranab Mukherjee during the SOC on 17 Oct. These three documents represent the triumvirate of current naval thinking and their publication marks three extremely important milestones along the development path being traveled by the Indian Navy.
The third theme of this year's SOC is the bold acceleration of the process-of-change undertaken by the Indian Navy. Parivartan, as the Navy likes to call it, clearly enunciates and guides the overall direction and orientation of the process of 'Difficult Managing Change'. For this purpose, the Navy has published a set of three guidance-documents.
The first – and the overarching one – is entitled the “Vision Statement of the Indian Navy”. The second is an introductory-primer entitled “What Does Transformation Mean for the Indian Navy?' which provides the contextual meaning of term 'Transformation', and identifies the drivers of 'Transformation' vis-
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