Three-day Indo-Pacific Regional Dialogue begins today; Rajnath Singh, S Jaishankar, Hardeep S Puri to address sessions

New Delhi: Indo-Pacific Regional Dialogue (IPRD), the apex international annual conference of the Indian Navy, is scheduled to be held as a three-day online event that commences Wednesday and will last till 29 October. According to a press statement by the Ministry of Defence, the Dialogue is being held every year since 2018. This year’s IPRD will focus on eight specific sub-themes under the broad theme of “Evolution in Maritime Strategy during the 21st Century: Imperatives, Challenges, and, Way Ahead”.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Minister of External Affairs S Jaishankar and Petroleum Minister Hardeep S Puri will address the sessions.

Panel discussions on these sub-themes would be spread over eight sessions on three successive days thereby providing ample scope for varied perspectives to be considered. The aim is to encourage a free flow of ideas and views. The eight sub-themes are:

• Evolving maritime strategies within the Indo-Pacific: Convergences, divergences, expectations and apprehensions
• Adaptive strategies to address the impact of climate change upon maritime security
• Port-led regional maritime connectivity and development strategies
• Cooperative maritime domain awareness strategies
• Impact of the increasing recourse to lawfare upon a rules-based Indo-Pacific maritime order
• Strategies to promote regional public-private maritime partnerships
• Energy-insecurity and mitigating strategies
• Strategies to address the manned-unmanned conundrum at sea