Ten years after the 26/11 terror attack, India’s maritime security is much stronger, with better inter-agency coordination and improved security structure. The Indian Navy was made responsible for maritime security overall, but no fool-proof and unambiguous command and control structure exists as yet. A decade after the shocking incident in Mumbai it is necessary to ask whether we have a better maritime security today than before. Has any progress been made? Good improvement is evident in several areas, but in some others it has been less encouraging. More needs to be done to achieve standards that will seriously deter threats from the sea in future.

Overall, the maritime security of the country, including of the island territories, is far better today than in 2008. After the attacks, the Cabinet immediately approved a new and overhauled maritime and coastal security. Although the new architecture did not entirely incorporate all the recommendations made by the Navy and Coast Guard, it was nevertheless a historic move that has forever changed the structure of maritime security in India.

The new security structure:

gave additional and new responsibilities to maritime agencies and police;

provided for the acquisition of additional assets (ships, aircraft, boats);

funded the creation of new infrastructure, such as coastal radars, Automatic Identification System[1] (AIS), National Command Control and Communication Network or NC3I, Joint Operations Centres and an information collation and fusion centre; and

mandated setting up of marine or coastal police in all coastal states, introducing better monitoring and identification mechanisms for fishing crafts and fishermen.
The Indian Navy was made responsible for the maritime security of the country, (which included both coastal and offshore security) but with an ill-defined authority over other maritime agencies, such as the Coast Guard, marine police, customs marine wing, maritime intelligence agencies and port authorities, of which there are nearly 17, both at the central and state levels.

There has not been an incident of successful breach of maritime security anywhere along the long coastline ever since. This is the best indicator of the success of the new security structure.

One reason for this transformation is improved inter-agency coordination and synergy. All the security agencies are also more serious and alert in responding to maritime security incidents. The persistent and systematic efforts and resolve of the Navy and Coast Guard, in pushing all other agencies to work in a coordinated manner through the regular conduct of state-wise, inter-agency coastal security exercises, called “Sagar Kavach”, has been instrumental in this.

The second reason is the Navy, which has performed well despite constraints. At the apex level in New Delhi, the National Committee for Strengthening Maritime and Coastal Security (NCSMCS), under the chairmanship of the cabinet secretary, with the Navy and Coast Guard chiefs, as also secretaries of several related ministries/departments and chief secretaries of states as members, has provided a forum to discuss points of discord and to resolve them, albeit through the long drawn out consensus-based approach.

This body, however, does not take executive decisions in operational situations; that job is left to the Navy, albeit with absolutely no authority, but with all accountability for a security lapse, should it occur. Several representations by the Navy to correct this have met with resistance from other maritime security agencies, such as the Coast Guard and marine police, as also disinterest from the government because of the misplaced fear of overreach by the Navy.

It is to the credit of the Navy and Coast Guard, and not so much the marine /coastal police (which is administered by the state concerned) that, despite absence of an enabling instrument for a fool-proof and unambiguous command and control structure, they have, through an agreed Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), evolved an effective coordination protocol to respond to an incident or crisis at sea. This is not the ideal arrangement to deal with incidents of national maritime security. An appropriate enabling instrument that provides authority and defines command and control is still required as is the case in say, France or Australia.

The third reason for the marked improvement in overall maritime security is the exponential growth in the number and quality of Coast Guard assets (ships, boats and aircraft), and increase in the number of Coast Guard stations and staff. Since 2008 the Coast Guard has added 78 ships, crafts and boats,17 aircraft, 20 new stations and inducted 6,000 personnel. This is unprecedented.

Setting up of a chain of coastal radars and AIS stations along the entire coastline and in the island territories has complemented Coast Guard accretions. The effectiveness of this chain in detecting and identifying errant and delinquent vessels at sea has been invaluable. There have been several instances of vessels infringing regulations of safety (i.e. collisions) and security (i.e. carrying out illegal activities). These have been successfully traced, many hours or even days after the incident, with inputs entirely from the coastal radar and AIS chain.
The real strength of this radar and AIS chain lies in the state-of-the-art-software, which collates and fuses the terra bytes of live data from these sophisticated sensors, every second, to produce a comprehensive pan- national situational awareness picture of the ocean space around the entire coast of India and the islands. This indigenous software, developed by Bharat Electronics Ltd (BEL), has repeatedly proved itself and has been the key to the tremendous success of the surveillance mechanism of the entire coastline.

The radar and AIS chain has limitations in monitoring fishing boats because of their small size. Yet monitoring these boats and their crew is crucial for security as the perpetrators of 26/11 had exploited this weakness when they arrived through the sea route. Some success in this area has been achieved.

The fisheries departments of the various states were required to contribute towards maritime security by capturing the biometric data and other details of approximately 20 lakh fishermen and lakhs of fishing boats of all types in all coastal states. They have now instituted a mechanism to issue ID cards to these 20 lakh fishermen across the country as also ID card readers (to read these cards), which can be used by the Navy, Coast Guard and police vessels. This is a notable accomplishment of the fisheries departments of the states and has facilitated a mechanism to check the identity of crew of fishing vessels at sea.

It is by no means perfect and major problems remain, such as crew not carrying their cards, boats refusing to be checked and employment of unidentified migrant labour from other states or countries, such as Nepal and Bangladesh, in fishing boats without ID cards.

Besides, the ambitious project to fit all fishing boats with equipment for satellite- based identification and tracking of the boats at sea, has still not seen satisfactory progress. Strict enforcement of these regulatory measures is fraught with political implications as the fishing community everywhere is reluctant to comply with rules that are perceived as unnecessarily restrictive of their freedom at sea.

The slowest progress is seen in the areas where it is most required, which is the setting up of the coastal or marine police wings in each coastal state. All the agencies have, over the last ten years, shown improvement in their cooperation and coordination responses, except the coastal or marine police, whose performance has remained below expectation.

Steps taken to set up the marine police wings have not been satisfactory in most cases. The Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) had approved financial assistance to states for procurement of police patrol boats, construction of piers and jetties and other basic maritime infrastructure. States were required to follow up on issues such as proper and sustainable recruitment, training, and deployment and maintenance of assets, provided initially through central funding, but nearly all have failed to do so. Boats are improperly maintained and anywhere from 10-50% of them remain unserviceable in the states. Little or no funds are budgeted for the day-to-day expenditure of running and maintaining the boats.

Recruitment of a dedicated cadre of marine police is non-existent. Repeated offers by Navy and Coast Guard to induct retiring sailors who are well trained and motivated, have not been taken up seriously by the states. All coastal police still rely on the Navy and Coast Guard for their basic training.

The problem lies in the temporary (barely two- or three-year) attachment that police personnel have with the marine wing. Indian Police Service (IPS) officers, assigned additional responsibilities of administering the marine police, are posted erratically, and that too, for very short and unpredictable periods of time. With no continuity
of police personnel, the performance of coastal police across India has fallen short of expectation. In addition, the police hierarchy is deeply opposed to the additional responsibility thrust upon them by way of the CCS mandate of 2009.

There is now a rethinking of the existing three-tier maritime security architecture, comprising the Navy, the Coast Guard and coastal/ marine police, the first two reporting to the Defence department and the latter coming under the purview of the Home ministry and the states. Some within the Navy question the need for it (the Navy) to continue as the agency responsible for overall maritime security.

The Coast Guard has grown substantially in the last ten years, is better equipped, and has developed SOPs and established effective mechanisms and linkages with other agencies involved in maritime security. All these features, they believe, have provided the Coast Guard the capability and capacity to take on the responsibility for national maritime security, leaving the Navy to revert to its original responsibility of ‘maritime defence’ of the country.

The opposing view maintains that the Navy, being the premier maritime agency, is better placed to ensure both maritime defence (required in conflict, crisis or against a specific threat in peace) as well as maritime security (an everyday, 24×7 activity for maintaining good order at sea), as it has been doing since 26/11. They believe the status quo is preferable because though the Coast Guard has grown exponentially and will continue to expand in future, it will, on its own still not be able to handle all types of crises or incidents that routinely occur at sea. For example, if an incident occurs beyond the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), which is the limit of the Coast Guard’s mandate, the Navy will have to step in.

Even some incidents that occur within the EEZ (such as, the tracking and sinking of the drug boat off the Gujarat coast in January 2015 or the capturing of sea pirates in the Lakshadweep Islands in 2011) still require pooling of assets by both Navy and Coast Guard for success of the operation. This is typical of developing countries, whereas in the more developed nations, like the U.S., the Coast Guard’s capacities give it a larger, more independent ambit.

Currently though, without an explicit authority given to the Navy to discharge its responsibility, the existing arrangement is unsustainable. An earlier proposal made by the Navy in 2008 (but not accepted by the government) for a Naval “Maritime Security Advisor” was made precisely to meet this requirement of an apex command and control authority. Of all the issues that are periodically examined by the NCSMCS at New Delhi, this perhaps ought to deserve the highest attention.

Strengthening India’s maritime security is still a work in progress, but it is far better today than it was in November 2008. It has been a challenge to reach this level of efficacy. Improving it is necessary, and much depends on how the central and state governments address the weak links. These include: an ineffective marine police; a fisheries sector where implementation of rules on the monitoring of fishing boats is weak; and the lack of an apex authority for maritime security.

The state governments ought to take both the police and fisheries sector issues more seriously and implement the measures which have been repeatedly pointed out to them in the debrief of more than 100 coastal security exercises, conducted under the Sagar Kavach programme, across the country over the last ten years. The central government must examine afresh the issue of having an apex authority and SOPs for effective command and control and issue necessary guidelines at the earliest.

The G20’s response to the economic crisis was effective, the expansion of its scope was logical. This week’s
Summit in Argentina is an opportunity to build consensus and deliver on concrete economic policy design.

As the G20 leaders gather on July 7-8 in Hamburg, Germany to take the temperature of the global economy, critics and supporters have amplified their concerns and hopes from the forum.

Supporters say the G20 played a critical role in responding to the trans-Atlantic financial crisis that began in
2008. They state that its role as the “world’s economic steering committee” remains vital for leading the world
back to economic prosperity.

The critics, on the other hand, have been harsh on the unchecked expansion of the forum’s scope. It now goes much beyond its original mandate of fixing the global financial architecture to issues like climate change, sustainability, development, healthcare, migration, and even terrorism – much like the United Nations.

Both arguments have merit. As the forum enters the eighth year of its formation in a world that is in geopolitical turmoil, it is appropriate to assess what has worked, what has not, and why.

The G20 is best known for coordination of the macro-economic response to the trans-Atlantic crisis, especially the years between 2009 and 2011. The coordinated action by the 20 countries helped to inject liquidity into markets, recapitalise the IMF, and bail out Systemically-Important Financial Institutions, i.e. the major western banks. It ensured that western economies in financial crises would be carefully attended to in the operating theatre, then in the ICU, and on the way to recovery.

The coordination was also hailed as the exemplar of collaboration between developed and developing countries. This is true given that the G20 is the first global economic body since Bretton Woods in which developing countries have as equal a say in designing the rules of global economic engagement as do the developed countries. The annual rotating presidency ensured that each country could bring in its area of concern and priority. For instance, Turkey introduced a focus on Small and Medium Enterprises in 2015. China prioritised innovation in 2016. And Argentina, the president-elect of the G20 in 2018, is likely to highlight food security and employment.

The rotating presidency also forced developing countries to build capacity to contribute to the global economic governance process for the year. An internal Gateway House study revealed that Turkey had conducted over
150 high-level meetings during its G20 presidency, including ministerial, official and sub-forum meetings all combined.

For countries such as India, which, for decades, have been at the receiving end (‘rule-takers’) of global policies set by institutions like the IMF and the WTO, this opportunity is invaluable. India is in the running to be the G20 president in 2019, and will have a chance to be a rule-maker – a golden opportunity for it to captain the global economic governance process in the future. As Raghuram Rajan, the former governor of the Reserve
Bank of India, stated at a T20 forum hosted by Gateway House in Mumbai in 2015, “He who holds the pen
writes the rules.”

More importantly, issues that are vital to India like trade in services, are put forth for global study and discussion and will encourage more global economic policy research in the country.

The G20 successfully controlled the damage from the 2008 crisis. And it rightly turned its attention to the chronic problems that had petrified the global financial system. Here the G20’s effort in making the multilateral organisations evaluate global inter-disciplinary economic problems was successful, but less acknowledged. The joint research conducted between 2011 and 2013 by the “standard-setting bodies”, such as the Bank of International Settlements (BIS), the Financial Stability Board (FSB), the IMF, Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the World Bank, International Organisation of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) and the OECD, on the increasingly unreliable and muddled functioning of global credit rating agencies, energy and financial benchmarks, food price and energy price volatility, and shadow banking, is seminal to this day. It made the G20 a global star, recognised as an “agenda-setting” governing body, above and more visionary than the standard- setting bodies.

Over the years, and under pressure to diversify from the elite concerns of big financial institutions and western economies and to address the larger socio-economic needs of the masses, the forum began to include issues such as climate change, infrastructure development, economic inequality, jobless growth and development challenges – issues particularly important for the developing countries, and not an illogical evolution.

Unfortunately during the last two Summits, the G20 focus areas of migration and terrorism became a further departure from global economic issues. Issues on the “finance track” – typically led by finance ministries and central banks – were overtaken by the prioritisation of issues on the “development track”, typically led by officials outside finance ministries.

To that end, Germany’s call this year for focusing on UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has come both to the forum’s advantage and detriment. Surely, prioritising SDGs is a better way to consolidate the myriad issues already on the agenda, especially given that SDGs are on the UN’s agenda.

But is it really the G20’s agenda? SDGs have brought in even more issues than were previously on the table (e.g. water, education, gender, sanitation). The group’s core issue i.e. the financial architecture, can now, at most, be directly attributed to only one of the 17 SDGs (#8 Decent work and economic growth).

If the G20 stands for everything, then, as Rohinton Medhora, president of Canada’s Centre for International
Governance & Innovation said at the Think Tank 20 Summit in Berlin in June, it basically stands for nothing.

This then, is the G20’s midlife crisis. The forum lacks the sharp focus and energetic execution that once brought it recognition. The very job it was hired for, i.e., multilateral agenda-setting, is now under question by political developments in the U.S. and Europe.

The G20 should be used better. It is now a mature institution, with a depth of economic governance experience. The G20 must retain its expanded vision of addressing the large socio-economic issues. But its work agenda must revert to its laser-focus on improving global economic policy design. For instance, the world still needs holistic metrics to measure economic success because GDP captures neither social well being nor
ecological sustainability. An appropriate plumbing is required for channelling funds into infrastructure – like targeted solutions for financing a decentralised solar energy model.

The G20 Leaders’ Summit starting on July 7, is an opportunity for the G20 to do what it’s good at: addressing the systemic, chronic economic issues of the world.

Several senior European politicians on Tuesday raised the possibility of new sanctions against Russia to punish it for capturing three Ukrainian vessels at sea, an incident the West fears could ignite a wider conflict.

A Russian minister said further sanctions would solve nothing and that the incident should not be used to derail the Minsk accord, which aims to end fighting in eastern Ukraine between Kiev's forces and pro-Russian separatist rebels.

Russian assets have come under pressure on financial markets amid concerns that possible new sanctions could hurt the economy, though the rouble on Tuesday clawed back some earlier losses as investors bet any sanctions would not be swift.

Russia opened fire on the Ukrainian boats and then seized them and their crews on Sunday near Crimea - which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014. Moscow and Kiev have tried to pin the blame on each other for the incident.

President Vladimir Putin told German Chancellor Angela Merkel by phone on Monday that Moscow was ready to provide more details to bolster its version of events. Moscow says Kiev deliberately provoked it in order to trigger a crisis.

Merkel, who also spoke on Monday with Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko, called for de-escalation and dialogue.
The United States urged European nations on Tuesday to do more to assist Ukraine in its standoff with Russia. Ukraine has introduced martial law for 30 days in parts of the country it deems most vulnerable to an attack
from Russia. It has said its ships did nothing wrong and that it wants the West to impose new sanctions on
Moscow.

Some of the 24 Ukrainian sailors held by Russia for straying into Russian waters appeared on Russian state TV on Tuesday admitting to being part of a pre-planned provocation. Kiev denounced what it described as forced confessions.

A court in Crimea ordered seven of the Ukrainian sailors to be detained for two months pending a possible trial. It was expected to order the other sailors to be detained for the same period in separate hearings on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Their vessels were captured by Russian forces at sea near the Kerch Strait, which is the only outlet to the Sea of
Azov and controls access to two major Ukrainian ports.

A Reuters reporter at the Crimean port of Kerch where the vessels are being held saw masked armed men on board one of the ships removing boxes of ammunition.

Two Russian police officers with automatic rifles stood on the pier where the Ukrainian vessels were moored. The vessels bore traces of collisions and big holes in places.

NEW SANCTIONS ON RUSSIA?

Senior German conservative Norbert Roettgen, a close Merkel ally, said the European Union may need to toughen its sanctions against Russia, imposed partly over Moscow's annexation of Crimea.

Karin Kneissl, foreign minister of Austria, which holds the EU's rotating presidency, said the EU would consider sanctions depending "on the exposition of facts and the further conduct of both parties".

Poland and Estonia, both hawkish on Russia, expressed support for more sanctions.

Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Bartosz Cichocki told Reuters the incident in the Kerch Strait vindicated
Warsaw's call for a more unified Western stance toward Russia.

"Russia remains wrongly convinced that the reaction of the West isn't unified... because in energy matters there is one stance and in defense matters there is another," he said, noting that some EU states such as Germany backed the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that increases Europe's reliance on Russian gas.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert also raised Nord Stream 2 on Tuesday when asked to comment on the Ukraine-Russia spat, saying some European nations should review their support for a project that "helps the Russian government".

Nauert also said Europe could more vigorously implement existing sanctions against Russia over its actions in
Ukraine.

"The United States government has taken a very strong position in... support of Ukraine. We would like other countries to do more as well," she told a regular briefing in Washington.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko, speaking during a visit to Berlin, said more sanctions against his country would "not help to solve any problem at all".

He suggested Kiev provoked the incident to derail already halting implementation of the Minsk accord in eastern Ukraine, and said Moscow had a keen interest in ending that conflict after absorbing more than a million refugees from the region.

EU foreign ministers are due to discuss the crisis on Dec. 10. EU leaders are expected later next month to agree to extend existing sanctions on Russia, diplomats said.

Russia's FSB security service released video footage on Tuesday of the captured sailors saying they had ignored Russian orders to stop. At least one appeared to be reading from a script. Ukrainian politicians said the sailors were coerced, rendering their confessions meaningless.
The FSB said it had information showing the sailors' mission had been pre-planned by the Ukrainian government and that two intelligence officers from Ukraine's SBU security service had been on board to coordinate the provocation.

Vasyl Hrytsak, the head of the SBU, confirmed that his officers were on board to support the military and said one of them had been seriously wounded after Russian aircraft fired missiles at the Ukrainian vessels.