Geography of Indian Ocean

While bringing out the Indian Ocean Atlas which contains nineteen multi-coloured maps on different themes ranging from physiographic characteristics of the Indian Ocean and its bed to its role in shaping the economy, trade and commerce of the littoral countries, under the back ground of their socio-historical past has now become a mouth piece of every individual scientist who even by default browsed the atlas and came across the maps included in the atlas. To make the glimpses of the maps more meaningful literally, we simultaneously decided to bring out the literature part of the atlas separately, in the form of a book entitled "Geography of Indian Ocean". It is needless to say that all the chapters included in the book are coterminous with the titles of the maps complied in the atlas. As such, the chapters are, in general, describes and analysis what we have shown in the maps cartographically, statistically and aesthetically. The chapters, as highlighted above covers aspects of physical oceanography, which helped in building the ancient civilization on the landmass bordering the Indian Ocean. The landmass, subsequently, took the shape of present day political set up and forty-six countries came into being in and around the Ocean. The future of these countries in terms of their economic diversification and development lies on the health of this vast ocean, which not only provides rains to the Monsoon Asia but also sustains millions of people who earn their livelihood from this ocean. As such, our foremost endeavor should be to keep the environment of the Indian Ocean free from pollution and devote ourselves in scientific research by abiding India's fascinating puranic legacy of Samudra Manthan to enrich the economic base of the countries in general and India in particular. The present volume will serve the very purpose meaningfully and give a fresh impetus to the scientific community for further research on geographical aspects on Indian Ocean, which we could not cover in this volume due to its limited scope.