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<JournalTitle>ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF SOCIAL AND STRATEGIC STUDIES</JournalTitle>
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<Volume-Issue>Volume 7 Issue 2</Volume-Issue>
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<IssueTopic>Multidisciplinary</IssueTopic>
<IssueLanguage>English</IssueLanguage>
<Season>Aug-Sep 2026</Season>
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<Year>2026</Year>
<Month>09</Month>
<Day>30</Day>
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<ArticleType>Security Studies</ArticleType>
<ArticleTitle>Convergence of SAGAR and BIMSTEC: Enhancing Maritime Security and Trade in the Bay of Bengal</ArticleTitle>
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<ArticleLanguage>English</ArticleLanguage>
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<FirstPage>279</FirstPage>
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<Author>
<FirstName>Radhika</FirstName>
<LastName>Das</LastName>
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<DOI>10.47362/EJSSS.2026.7202 </DOI>
<Abstract>Abstract The Bay of Bengal is emerging as a strategic maritime corridor central to Indo-Pacific trade, security, and geopolitical interests, accounting for approximately four percent of global maritime transit. With the rising significance of the Blue Economy, India launched SAGAR (Security and Growth for All in the Region) in 2015 as a strategic vision to ensure a free, open, and secure maritime environment across the wider Indian Ocean Region, one that operates without a formal institutional structure and depends on bilateral initiatives and naval deployments. The Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multisectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC), by contrast, is a structured intergovernmental organisation with a permanent secretariat, working groups, and legally binding agreements, whose seven-member mandate is narrower in geographic scope, spanning both littoral and landlocked states of the Bay of Bengal. This asymmetry between SAGAR__ampersandsign#39;s broad, non-institutionalised maritime vision and BIMSTEC__ampersandsign#39;s bounded, institutionally structured mandate is often glossed over in existing scholarship, which tends to treat the two frameworks as straightforwardly complementary without critically interrogating where their scope and capacities diverge. This paper takes up that gap directly: how far can SAGAR__ampersandsign#39;s strategic priorities actually be operationalised through BIMSTEC__ampersandsign#39;s institutional architecture, and at what point does the two frameworks__ampersandsign#39; differing character start to limit that convergence? The analysis is qualitative and document-based, drawing on official policy statements, summit declarations, and institutional records, and reading them through Spykman__ampersandsign#39;s Rimland theory and Shultz__ampersandsign#39;s non-traditional security paradigm. Read this way, SAGAR and BIMSTEC line up on several fronts __ampersandsignmdash; joint maritime ventures, naval cooperation, counter-piracy work, action against illegal trafficking of marine resources, and efforts to address maritime terrorism. The two frameworks also reinforce each other on the trade and connectivity side, through infrastructure projects, regional trade links, and blue economy initiatives such as the Sagarmala programme, the Kaladan Multimodal Transit Project, and the ongoing BIMSTEC Free Trade Area negotiations. That said, the convergence has real limits: geopolitical rivalry, China__ampersandsign#39;s expanding footprint through the BRI, infrastructural gaps, and policy divergence among member states all still stand in the way.</Abstract>
<AbstractLanguage>English</AbstractLanguage>
<Keywords>Keywords: BIMSTEC, SAGAR, Maritime security, Blue Economy, Bay of Bengal, Geopolitical Rivalry</Keywords>
<URLs>
<Abstract>https://www.ejsss.net.in/ubijournal-v1copy/journals/abstract.php?article_id=16389&title=Convergence of SAGAR and BIMSTEC: Enhancing Maritime Security and Trade in the Bay of Bengal</Abstract>
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<References>
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<ReferenceslastPage>19</ReferenceslastPage>
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