8 years on, coastal security systems remain work in progress

The 26/11 sea-borne terrorist attack on Mumbai resulted in a revamp of coas-tal security management across peni-nsular India. The Indian Navy (IN) became the nodal agency with support from the Indian Coast Guard (ICG) and state marine police forces to secure the country’s maritime zones. The Centre’s coastal security scheme initiated in 2005, added coastal police stations and surveillance infrastructure to secure the coastline. The ICG’s budget was hiked to add manpower, patrol vessels, surveillance assets and interceptor boats.

Additionally, radar stations and surveillance infrastructure were established along the coastline and Joint Operation Centres began to monitor maritime activity in the near-seas, even as information banks and intelligence networks were created to detect any signs of subversion along the coastal waters. Meanwhile, the fishing community was co-opted to act as the ‘eyes’ and ‘ears’ as a force multiplier to protect the country’s littorals regions.

However, eight years later, the country’s coastal security systems still remains work in progress. Despite success in some key areas, there remain critical gaps. As two recent Comptroller and Auditor General audits reveal, flaws in the coastal security architecture threaten to unravel the recent progress.

From under-utilisation of patrol boats to delays in the creation of shore-based infrastructure, manpower shortages and unspent funds, the audit report underscores the dismal state of coastal policing in the country’s near-seas. Meanwhile, despite investment of considerable resources, energy and capital in coastal security, the IN and ICG have done their best.

A major dilemma is e-surveillance and boat identification to actively track individual fishing boats through onboard transponders. In contrast, state maritime board officials, especially Gujarat, favours satellite tracking systems. This is not motivated by operational considerations but political ones -- because the fishing community as a vote bank does not want the prying eyes of security agencies which could use the signals from their onboard transponders to track illegal fishing activity. 

Today, the challenge of coastal security is for the state police forces to patrol the waters between the coastline and 12 nautical miles where small boats, which have the potential to transport terrorists or contraband, sail in large numbers. Both the ICG and the IN lack the capability to check these small boats due to their numbers.

The state marine police forces are not adequately oriented owing to lack of boats, personnel and training to their new roles which create gaps in coastal security management. 

Partially, the problem is the uneven nature of the coastal security narrative – in which the priorities of each maritime agency have tended to vary, as also their comprehension of progress. With an inherently expansive vision of maritime security, the IN views big-ticket initiatives as the essential building blocks of the security architecture. These include joint exercises in the Arabian Sea, installation of coastal radar chains, the National Command and Control Communications Intelligence Network, Maritime Domain Awareness plan and the Information Management and Analysis Centre.

The IN considers these high profile projects as the real measure of success in coastal security. Consequently, IN operational commanders tend to perceive the coastal security glass as “half full”. In comparison, the ICG leadership prefers a conservative estimate of coastal security, and caution against an overestimation of progress made. While acknowledging improvements in the security architecture – particularly inter-agency cooperation -- ICG commanders emphasise the structural nature of security challenges, which they insist cannot be addressed through high-technology initiatives alone.

From their perspective, coastal security remains unsatisfactory because of the failure of near-coastal patrols – particularly the inability of state marine police to keep track of coastal fishing activity as also their unwillingness to integrate fully into the coastal security chain. The poor performance of the state marine police forces  is symptomatic of their state governments’ larger apathy towards coastal security. Except Tamil Nadu, which had to cope with the erstwhile LTTE Sea Tigers, the other coastal states have ignored the needs of littoral security.

Also, the absence of an apex maritime authority owing to the involvement of multiple maritime agencies requires a full-time coastal security manager. Today, the National Committee for Strengthening Maritime and Coastal Security effectively coordinate matters related to coastal security, but it remains an ad-hoc arrangement.

Unfortunately, the Coastal Security Bill, with a proposal to form a National Maritime Auth-ority, has been caught in redtape since 2013.

Periodic joint exercises
Importantly, security presence in the littoral seas has increased with periodic joint exercises between the ICG, state coastal/ marine police forces, Customs and Central Industrial Security Force -- which also involves the fishing community – a noteworthy development. Most operational drills, however, have tended to focus on the terrorist infiltration threat.

While the emphasis to prevent the recurrence of a 26/11 type incident is understandable, other threats such as arms and narcotics smuggling, human trafficking, illegal unreported and unregulated fishing, climate-induced crises and maritime pollution have received less attention. It is wrong to assume that satellite surveillance is the answer to all the ills that plague the near-seas.

The importance of operational intelligence sharing, the physical preparedness of personnel and ships to tackle a diverse array of threats, besides attention to human intelligence, is unwittingly discounted.

For the IN and ICG, however, the biggest upside has been their improved interoperability. The enhanced synergy in the operational domain has also reflected in their interactions with other maritime agencies -- notably the coastal police.

India’s maritime security agencies are coming to realise that the coastal security transformation is likely to be a complex and long-drawn affair.

With a diversity of challenges and multiplicity of agencies involved, a “business as usual” model is unlikely to succeed. Not only do the deficiencies that plague the system require cooperation, coordination and an alignment of vision, but also it should be a unity of operational action. Today, the only reason a 26/11 has not recurred is because efficacy of coastal security systems have not been tested seriously. 

(The writer is Senior Research Fellow, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi)