Governing Ocean Health as Economic Infrastructure: Policy Integration and Institutional Challenges in India’s blue economy

The blue economy has emerged as a central policy framework for promoting ocean-based economic development while ensuring environmental sustainability. However, the extent to which existing policy frameworks effectively integrate ocean and coastal health into economic decision-making remains limited, reflecting broader challenges in governance, policy coordination, and institutional design. This article examines India’s blue economy through a marine policy lens, focusing on how governance structures, policy instruments, and institutional arrangements shape the treatment of ocean health within economic planning.Using a narrative review approach, this study advances a conceptual reframing of ocean health as economic infrastructure, arguing that ecosystem degradation constitutes a form of infrastructure failure with cascading economic, financial, and social risks. Drawing on interdisciplinary literature and national policy analysis, the paper evaluated sectoral dynamics across fisheries, ports, tourism, and coastal livelihoods, alongside emerging approaches to climate resilience, financial innovation, and marine governance.The analysis identifies key governance challenges, including fragmented institutional mandates, weak policy integration, and limited incorporation of ecological risk into financial and planning systems. These constraints undermine the effectiveness of blue economy strategies and expose ocean-dependent sectors to long-term systemic risk.The paper contributes to marine policy debates by demonstrating that achieving a sustainable blue economy is fundamentally a governance challenge requiring integrated policy frameworks, strengthened institutional coordination, and the incorporation of ecosystem-based risk into decision-making. While grounded in India, the findings offer transferable insights for coastal and ocean-dependent economies seeking to align economic development with long-term ocean sustainability in the Indian-Ocean region.