Watching turfs, on table and terrain

Very shortly later, Chinese prime minister, Li Keqiang, arrived in New Delhi on his first foreign trip  since assuming office in March and found himself traversing roads mostly empty, thanks to the super security cover provided for him, leaving millions of the capital’s commuters stuck in endless traffic jams miserable and cursing.  Leading a large delegation of Chinese business leaders, including bankers and executives from two Chinese telecommunications giants, Huawei and ZTE, Li was at his  keep the three-day trip focused on economic ties between China and India, which have grown rapidly over the past decade. The Chinese Ministry of Commerce said last week that bilateral trade reached $66 billion in 2012, setting a goal of $100 billion by 2015.

While it may sound hunky-dory that China has become India’s biggest trading partner, with two-way trade jumping from $5 billion in 2002 to nearly $75 billion in 2011 (although that figure declined to $61.5 billion in 2012 owing to the global economic downturn), the trade so far has been highly in China’s favor, which is another source of concern for India.

While Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, External Affairs Minister Khurshid and the diplomats involved in the negotiations may well have addressed all the contentious issues and the Chinese government-controlled media going to town cheering this meet as very successful-what with eight agreements signed-statements like premier Li’s: ‘India and China have differences, but our shared interests outweigh them’, have to be taken with a spoonful of salt. No doubt, Mr. Li has been on a great charm offensive, but all that he has said on this trip can only be assessed once implementation begins and remains sustained. With his next stop being Pakistan, it remains to be seen how the strategic/ border issues, particularly those of eastern Ladakh will be played out. And Premier Li’s repeated reference to India as a ‘strategic’ partner is indeed quite ironic.

China’s possession of nuclear weapons targetable to any part of India, its nuclear cooperation with Pakistan resulting in swelling of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, boosting nuclear proliferation in South Asia; China supporting Pakistan in supplying conventional weapons and never checking Pakistan for its anti-India activities; China supporting/supplying arms to  India’s north east and Left Wing Extremists; China competing for resources in third countries; China’s efforts to strengthen its relations with other countries in the Indian Ocean region;  the China-India ‘perception-based’ border dispute, which keeps  propelling its army/border troops to cross the LAC and intrude into India. China has kept the 4,057-km LAC live with incursions, albeit without firing any bullets. The stepping up was beginning with Finger, the northern-most point as named by the Indian Army in, Sikkim, by May 2010, motorised foot and amphibious armed patrols of the PLA intruded into the strategic Trig Heights and Pangong lake in eastern Ladakh, bringing the figure of transgressions to 30 in Trig Heights itself, thereby signifying a quantum jump up of 52 per cent from 27 per cent in 2009. Then there was a spree of painting ‘China’ on rocks in Mandarin and numerous air space violations also in the same area . While whatever intrusions there may have been in the Central and Eastern segments of the LAC, the same in the Western segment including Jammu and Kashmir’s Ladakh region are particularly worrisome for very obvious reasons.  

This should be particularly seen in the light of decades-old anti-India-based China-Pakistan relationship and joint military exercises, like Stride 2009, conducted in China’s northwest Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, at an unprecedented level of 50,000 troops and aiming to test its long-distance mobility;  ‘Sympathizing’ with India on water issues with assurances of not adversely affecting India’s water resources while relentlessly pursuing its own projects  of building dams is a mockery. In 2011 China said  that it was constructing a hydropower project at Zangmu and that there will be four more on the Brahmaputra, which would be all inside Chinese territory and being a run-of-the-river project, it would not involve storage of water. China also made it clear that it did not really have to share its plans with India, but was doing it out of a sense of ‘trust’. The 510 MW project, worth $1.2 billion, is being built by Gezhouba, one of China’s biggest dam-building companies.

Governments, particularly of countries with multiple threats, must never play the  ostrich in matters of national security. And in democracies like India, where control over the Armed Forces degenerated into total dominance coupled with contempt for them by the politico- bureaucratic establishment, national security has suffered great setbacks as valuable recommendations and advice on strategic matters was either not sought or, if sought or offered, it was disregarded.

The working arrangement for guarding land and sea borders of India has generally been that undisputed international boundaries are guarded by Border Security Force (BSF)/Ladakh Scouts/ Assam Rifles (AR) under command of the Army and Coast Guard under Indian Navy. In fact for Coast Guard, it was decided at the outset itself that it would be under Ministry of Defence, unlike BSF, AR ,which are under Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA). Of the two disputed borders, the Line of Control(LoC) with Pakistan and the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with China, while both should be directly manned by the Army, with BSF/AR or the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) in situ being under Army’s command and control, the LoC is being guarded by Army. 

New Delhi must not repeat the Himalayan blunders of trashing Army’s inputs and recommendations which led to avoidable humiliation in 1962. India’s political leadership and External Affairs Ministry must study many incidents on the LAC post 1962, particularly India’s retaliation at Sikkim in 1967 and the upping of ante in Sumdorong Chu in the 1980s. This recent intrusion is far out of the ordinary and must neither be taken lightly nor lull us into complacence after Mr. Li’s visit and particularly his hype. Because Sino-Indian history of the recent decades is replete with China proceeding with what and how it is benefited in trade, culture etc, while it actively pursues its predatory instincts on the ground.