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Hephaestus :
There is no way that India (or any other country barring the US) can afford to have something akin to the USMC. You should have simply asked whether we should have dedicated marines, without bringing the USMC into the picture. Not many people realize this, but although the USMC is the smallest branch of the US armed forces, they are still bigger than most militaries on earth. For instance, the USMC is bigger than the entire british army. The combat power at their disposal is simply mind boggling - the have many medium sized carriers with hundreds of harriers (to be replaced by hundreds of F-35s) for themselves, they have more state of the art artillery than than the Indian army, and so on. By any parameter, the USMC is a more formidable force than most militaries on earth. They are a mini-military, sort of an army, navy and air force rolled into one.
Also, India will not, in the foreseeable future, require a force that does what the USMC does for USA. The USMC's "expeditionary groups" are usually the people who start off a war for their country. They do a combined arms attack on heavuily defended enemy shores, and pave the way for the other services to enter later. The marines love to say that they are the "First to go and last to leave". In their (USMC's) anthem/hymn, they take a dig at the other services thus:
"If the Army and the Navy,
Ever look on Heavens scenes;
They will find the streets are guarded,
By United States Marines."
India does not require a force along those lines, because we do not expect to wage expeditionary war in far off lands. Our potential threats are right next door. But India does need amphibious warfare capability, and that is being addressed presently, by the tri service command at Andaman and Nicobar islands. There is a lot of activity going on there since a few years, and it is speculated that they are raising an entire brigade of amphibious capable troops (in other words, marines).
We need marines to protect our island chains, and also for modest power projection. But it doesn't make sense to make them a separate service like the USA has, because there is no way that India can afford to arm such a service with organic aviation and transport assets, to make them an independent force. Besides, we do not need a corps sized amphibious expeditionary force. A brigade, or at most a division sized force is all we can or will have.
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Abingdonboy: I really think you are mistaken in saying that the SPB is slated to become India's marine infantry. That flies in the face of whatever I have gathered about India's future amphibious ambitions. From what I know, that will be a tri-service responsibility. And IMO, that makes more sense for a country like India, to have all three services contribute their part to an amphibious capability, than to have the navy have its own land warriors (which means acquiring tanks, IFVs, helicopters, airplanes, artillery and other assets, and training so many soldiers to use those). Of course I could be wrong, we all know for sure only what is available as open source info. But I would suggest that you talk again to the professionals you know, and verify that particular bit of info (about the SPB being the future naval infantry).
