KEEPING THE COAST CLEAR

India needs a proactive coastal security mechanism to ensure that the 26/11 attack is never repeated 

- BISWAJIT DASGUPTA

People live on land and are well versed with the way security works where there is ground under one’s feet. The sea is an alien environment.

There are no roads, physical borders, traffic signs or police on the beat. The philosophy of operations and hence, concepts of security, on land and on and over the sea are vastly different. Over land, it is all about preserving territorial integrity, denial of space to inimical elements and access control. Over the sea, it is about freedom and unhindered access. The sea is a ‘common good’ for all of humanity and hence the rules are different.

Land has well-defined borders, marked and guarded. Even where they are not so clear, there is a sense of territorial ownership, albeit opportune, in concepts such as the Line of Control, Line of Actual Control and Working Boundary. At sea there are no such things. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) segregates maritime zones broadly into four categories. For the moment, it will suffice to understand that there is something called a ‘baseline’ along the coast from where measurements are taken.

*Internal waters are those that lie landward of the baseline.

*Territorial waters extend till 12 nautical miles from the baseline over which the coastal state exercises national