NEW DELHI: On February 1, the Indian Coast Guard will celebrate its 47th Raising Day. Despite being an old maritime force, there has been inadequate focus on its diverse functions and how they are different from what the Navy does. “The Navy is required to be silent and invisible but visibility is key to the Coast Guard’s operations,” says Vijay Chafekar, former Additional Director General of Coast Guard. India’s maritime domain is dense; the task of the Coast Guard is to deter threats in territorial waters as well as reassure legitimate users of the seas, he told StratNews Global Editor-in-Chief Nitin A. Gokhale on ‘The Gist’. He also gave a lowdown on the other functions that the force does and how it has been modernised after the 2008 Mumbai attacks in which the terrorists came via the sea route.
