Screaming Skull
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This post is only for members' information. I don't want to hijack the thread. But for all those members who think that this move by the Chinese will hurt India, take a look at what we are doing.
Amazing isn't it? China decides to build a base in the southern coast of Sri Lanka and India simply diverts the entire international shipping route to pass through its own territorial waters.
What does India gain? Tremendous foreign exchange as transit fees and a strategic stranglehold on all the cargo moving through the canal. Other benefits are mentioned in the article.
Sethusamudram: Strategic Asset
The much-delayed Sethusamudram project, a navigable channel around the southern tip of peninsular India, has been cleared by the Union Cabinet but this strategic asset will need to be protected not just against a tsunami wave but also frogmen of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) who control the northern province of Sri Lanka.
Yet the advantages are manifold in terms of distance, time and financial prospects of a cheaper trade route and if adequate protection is incorporated to handle the natural calamity and the incipient threat of terrorist attack it will be a worthwhile investment.
At the moment Indian shipping has perforce to circumnavigate the island of Sri Lanka, a 424 nautical mile journey that takes about 30 hours to traverse at average cruising speed of commercial shipping which adds up to expenditure on fuel, crew man-hours and turnaround time of vessels both freighters and passenger liners.
The Sethusamudram entails dredging the Palk Strait to allow for two-lane traffic for ships of draft of 65,000 deadweight, which would correspond to a medium-sized container ship or tanker. It is intended to create a channel 14.5 meters deep and 300 metres wide connecting the Arabian Sea to the Bay of Bengal within sight of landfall at Kanyakumari.
To chew out a passage through the causeway created, according to mythology, by Hanuman and his monkey brigade for passage between the mainland and “Lanka” where Ravan had confined the kidnapped Sita, the Government has sanctioned a Rs 2427-crore corpus to create a 167 km channel that will change the nature of trans-oceanic shipping in this part of the world on a sub continental scale.
Apart from the commercial aspect, the proposed channel will improve tremendously the power projection capabilities of the Indian armed forces not just in the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal but deep into the Indian Ocean as well as far as the Antarctic ice fields.
It will make possible the quick transfer of warships and personnel between the Southern Naval Command at Cochin and the Eastern Naval Command at Vishakhapatnam as well as the Coastguard installations on both Indian seaboards.
A case in point was the Indian military intervention in the Maldives when elements of the Sri Lankan militants sought to overthrow the Gayoom government and set up a support base in the island-nation for operations within Sri Lanka. At that time the Indian Air Force airlifted a commando force which nipped the invasion in the bud and the Indian Navy intercepted a ship and captured the group that was preparing to install itself as the government in the Maldives.
Tactically, it means that India will be able to bring to bear in any interdiction mission within 1000 km of its coastline a larger, more compact, strike force in both attack and defence. This will be more particularly true when India acquires the second aircraft carrier and possibly a third indigenously-designed “sea control ship” to be built at the Cochin shipyard.
The ability to deploy a carrier-led task force will make for a sea-control mechanism comprising aircraft, surface ships and submarines altogether a very formidable means of power projection. Since every task force will include landing ship tanks (LST) the ability to effectively patrol and protect the offshore island territories of Lakshwadweep in the Arabian Sea and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal and the exclusive economic zones surrounding them will be improved exponentially.
Under the Law of the Sea Convention the creation of 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zones where the coastal nation can exploit the fishery and undersea metallic and fossil fuel reserves makes for huge areas that require patrolling to prevent poaching and foreign intervention.
For long India has been plagued by foreign fishing vessels poaching in Indian waters. This will end; and the ability of the Indian Navy and the Coastguard to control smuggling will also be tremendously improved given that nowadays the concept of unified command would bring about a concentration of all fighting elements—aircraft, ships and submarines – of both the Navy and the Coastguards to achieve given missions to counter threats to Indian maritime interests.
To be able to ensure that this maritime security apparatus is functional 24x7x365 days arrangements will have to be put in place to prevent a natural disaster like a tsunami from affecting it. Recently, the sudden rise in the sea level did tend to raise concerns among an already traumatized population along the coastline as far away as Kerala.
That the Government of India is acutely aware of the dangers that a tsunami can pose was reflected in President A.P.J Abdul Kalam’s visit to Russia where the foundations for mutual cooperation in both earthquake studies and the tsunami predictions were laid. Simultaneously, prospects for cooperation with the US and Japan, both of whom have voluminous files on the tsunami experience, are being explored.
Both prediction and amelioration of the effects of tsunami on an enclosed seaway like the proposed Sethusamudram are an important input in the planning and execution of the channel. It will raise some daunting engineering problems but these will need to be incorporated in the plans so as to prevent a future disaster.
It would be appropriate that all systems proposed to be able to predict the size and direction of an undersea earthquake and its attendant tidal wave should be connected to forecasting its effect on the relatively narrow passageway that will be the Sethusamudram. It should not be allowed to be closed by any ship that may capsize under the rigours of a tidal wave. Salvage equipment – ship borne cranes and a floating dry-dock -- will have to be an integral component of the controlling authority of the seaway.
The other incipient danger is from a hostile LTTE. Recently, the Government of India expressed its concern over LTTE airbase at Wani which could be used to launch unconventional attacks using micro light aircraft against shipping and land targets across the Palk Straits. This is a fledgling element at the moment.
The LTTE has said that the airbase is not intended to pose a threat to India but given the Indian experience of the LTTE and its proclivity to use suicide attacks to achieve its political ends it would be in the fitness of things that the Government of India accesses this new military element in the region and take appropriate steps to handle it if the need arises.
The real and present danger is from the highly experienced and motivated diver brigade of the LTTE which is equipped with fast Gemini speedboats carrying crews well versed in underwater sabotage.
The outer limit of the Sethusamudram will skirt the northern territorial waters of Sri Lanka which is under the military influence of the LTTE. Ships will pass close to the island of Kachhativu which was ceded to Colombo under the Indira-Srimavo pact though Indian fisherfolk are allowed to use it as per their traditional rights. This is a segment of the Palk Strait that is amenable to interference by inimical forces.
Therefore, it would be incumbent on both the channel authority as well as the Ministry of Defence to predict and cater for any and every possibility of a hostile interference with shipping in these enclosed waters.
Undersea metallic nets, like those used for harbour defence against intruding submarines, with sensors that could detect diver activity intended to subvert or interfere with the shipping could be put in place simultaneously with the completion of the channel. It will be an expensive investment but it will be well worth the trouble given the volume of traffic expected to use the channel every day and the strategic nature of this maritime asset.
Amazing isn't it? China decides to build a base in the southern coast of Sri Lanka and India simply diverts the entire international shipping route to pass through its own territorial waters.
What does India gain? Tremendous foreign exchange as transit fees and a strategic stranglehold on all the cargo moving through the canal. Other benefits are mentioned in the article.
