What India needs to do in the Indian Ocean

India, with its Indian Ocean partners like Singapore and Oman, is hosting the Eighth Indian Ocean Conference (IOC) in Muscat this weekend. Foreign ministers from around 30 countries in the region will be converging at the conference to discuss the future of this most happening region. Oman, the host, like India, has been a major seafaring nation and has maintained linkages with India for over five millennia. Both countries are strategic partners and work closely in many areas of development in the region. The 16th-century Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, after observing the calm waters of the Pacific, called it "mar…