A distress network for seafarers at sea: What Modi proposed at BRICS, and why India needs it

Ten Indians died in West Asia, 5 in the Black Sea. Modi's BRICS proposal for a seafarer safety network comes after nine months of attacks at sea.

At the BRICS Summit on Saturday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi proposed a shared safety net for merchant seafarers — the workers who crew the cargo ships, tankers and container vessels of the world's commercial fleet.

India supplies more of them than any country other than the Philippines, and at least 15 of them have been killed in two conflict theatres over the past nine months. (AP Representative)

India supplies more of them than any country other than the Philippines, and at least 15 of them have been killed in two conflict theatres over the past nine months.

"Seafarers contribute significantly to global trade, but they often lack support in difficult times," Modi said, proposing a Seafarers Emergency Support Network. It would, he said, "connect maritime authorities and missions in the respective countries" and provide "assistance with distress alerts, medical assistance, information to families, and evacuation."

He set the proposal inside a wider call for BRICS partners to build a Reform Roadmap on global governance by the next Summit, framing the network as an example of what global institutions should deliver on "speed, scale, and last-mile impact".

Why India is disproportionately exposed

Indian seafarers are now the second-largest national contingent in the world's commercial shipping workforce, after Filipinos, according to the BIMCO-ICS (Baltic and International Maritime Council) Seafarer Workforce Report 2026, released in June by the Baltic and International Maritime Council and the International Chamber of Shipping. India supplies 311,936 seafarers, 12.16% of a global workforce of 2.57 million. At the officer level — the senior ranks that navigate, command and run the engines — its share rises to 13.41%.

The West Asia toll

Ten Indian seafarers have been killed in West Asia since the conflict there began earlier in 2026, the minister of state for external affairs, Kirti Vardhan Singh, told the Rajya Sabha on July 30. Of 16 Indian nationals killed in the region, eight died in Oman, four in the UAE, two in Kuwait, and one each in Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Another 75 Indians have been injured, largely on land.

The ministry of ports, shipping and waterways records the strikes in daily bulletins. Most have hit merchant ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow chokepoint at the mouth of the Persian Gulf that Middle East oil tankers must pass through. Many attacks have been near the Omani coast, which flanks the strait's southern side.

On July 12, the Cyprus-flagged container ship GFS Galaxy was attacked near Omani waters and lost propulsion and steering; its hull and engine room were damaged. The Indian 3rd Engineer went missing and was later confirmed dead. Eight days later, on the night of July 20, three ships were hit off Oman within hours: the tankers Kavomaleas and Acheloos by missiles, and the Kuwait-flagged Kaifan by an unknown projectile at Limah Anchorage, where an Indian 2nd Engineer was hospitalised. On August 18, the Liberia-flagged bulk carrier Minoan Dignity was struck five nautical miles off Oman on an outbound transit; the chief engineer was killed, and the Omani Coast Guard assisted the surviving crew.

Through the summer, the ministry's daily status reports show, between 125 and 480 Indian seafarers were on Indian-flagged vessels in the Persian Gulf region on any given day, with up to 253 more in the Gulf of Oman. Those numbers count only ships under India's own flag. By August 18, shipping companies had pulled 4,144 Indian seafarers out of the region, and the ministry had logged 45 attacks involving Indian-flagged ships or foreign ships carrying Indian crew — up from 23 in mid-June.

The Black Sea theatre

The second theatre is the Black Sea, where merchant ships have come under attack in the Russia-Ukraine war. On July 18, the Omorfi was attacked in what the external affairs ministry described as Russian territorial waters. One of the three Indian crew members on board was killed. The next evening, the Golden Leo was attacked while departing the Ukrainian port of Odesa; of the five Indians in the 17-strong crew, four were killed, and one was hospitalised in critical condition. Indian missions in Moscow and Kyiv are following up separately.

Crucially, two BRICS members are significant players in both theatres: Russia, in the Black Sea, and Iran, in the Persian Gulf.

What already exists

Modi's proposal builds on an architecture already running across several ministries. To ensure the safety of Indian nationals abroad, Singh told Parliament in July, the government relies on a "structured, multi-layered mechanism, consisting of regular advisories, setting up additional emergency helplines and 24x7 control rooms, and evacuation operations as necessary". The Directorate General of Shipping runs a 24x7 communication centre. The Indian Navy has been escorting Indian-flagged tankers. The external affairs ministry's Rapid Response Cell coordinates with armed forces and other departments; the ministry has developed its own digital emergency response solution, now in final trials for use during evacuation operations.

The Directorate General of Shipping also launched e-Navik 24x7 in early September, a digital grievance redressal system for seafarers that assigns a unique ticket ID to complaints — on recruitment, wage disputes, abandonment, detention, death and missing seafarer cases, and other welfare concerns — routed through any channel. About 750,000 Indian seafarers are registered with the directorate, of whom around 320,000 are actively employed.

What the network will be measured on

Modi placed the seafarer network under what he called the second of three tests for the reform of global governance, after representation and before rule-making. "Humanity will only gain confidence in global institutions if they are capable of effectively addressing problems," he told BRICS leaders. "We must pay attention to the speed, scale, and last-mile impact of our collective response." On the record of the last nine months, those are the metrics on which the proposed network will be judged: how fast a distress alert moves in the first hour of an incident, whether a family in Kerala or Odisha learns of an attack from an Indian source before social media, and whether a network of maritime authorities can pull four compensation tracks into one before the next ship is hit.