By Prateek Joshi
Recently, a research paper by a senior police official in Ladakh claimed that the Indian Army had lost 26 of 65 patrolling points lying between Karakoram Pass and the Chumar region in eastern Ladakh along the 775km Line of Actual Control (LAC) with China. These areas, the official claimed, were earlier controlled by India and had turned into “informal buffer zones” and said that the tactic of PLA to grab land inch-by-inch was known as “salami slicing”.
The patrol posts (PPs) where Indian security forces (ISFs) were supposed to lose their presence were reportedly PPs 5-17, 24-32, 37, 51-52 and 62) and this was “due to restrictive or no patrolling by the ISFs” (read the army). The areas mentioned in the paper were on expected lines—Chusul, Demchok, Kakjung, Gogra Hills, Depsang Plains. These are the areas which have witnessed growing encounters withChinese forces all along the unfenced LAC.
These are serious observations, and these findings were filed in the annual DGP meet held in January, which were attended by the Prime Minister and the Home Minister. At one level, the report expresses a security manager’s frustrations over China’s better defence-preparedness vis-à-vis India’s frontier defence policy; at another, it looks as if there is not enough conversation or exchange of views taking place among institutions that should cooperate among themselves to strengthen our defences.
First thing first, such discussions could well have been behind closed doors and kept away from public glare. How was it thoughtlessly allowed to float around and show an important security institution in bad light? Barely a month after Chinese assertions in Arunachal (in December 2022), such reports bandied publicly can only cause a lot of harm to our already ‘compromised security policy’, as the report connotes.
The view that emerges from the police officer’s presentation is that since 1962, India has been progressively losing areas under its control and the buffer zones created by India’s loss of presence are being acquired by the Chinese. It is also being said that China is employing high technology to monitor our troop movements and the pace of investment in terms of technology and infrastructure deployment on the Indian side has been rather slow and piecemeal, compared to infrastructure upgradation on the Chinese side. Such outspokenness by a senior police official has set the cat among the pigeons. There are many who have started questioning the overall strategy India has towards the LAC with China.
Looking at the ground situation, however, the view entails careful analysis. Is it true that India is losing its control over unfenced areas along the LAC that it has traditionally claimed? Or is it a case of overenthusiasm that India ought to have exercised a more muscular border-guarding policy to either deter the Chinese from making advances and making counter-claims or ensure that the official cartographic claims matches the presence of our foot-soldiers on the ground?
The reality is that the Chinese have changed their claim line since the early 1950s and post-1962, they have made further west-ward shifts over their own previous line in their depiction of the LAC, forcing India to adopt a more robust border security policy, which is now in vogue along the Indo-Tibetan frontiers in Ladakh. That India has not conceded any territory around areas where it has its PPs and has rather chosen to confront and challenge claims cannot be overstated, especially after Dokalam(2017) and Galwan (2020).It has made sacrifices in terms of loss of lives and secured India’s frontiers. The same can be told about the efforts of all other sister border-protection agencies. Unlike what is being claimed in the report stated above, the Indian Army guards every inch of the territory it has been officially required to protect from external ingress.
At another level, such a view may also rise from interagency and inter-departmental competition to prove each other’s proficiency in fulfilling their mandates.However, pointing fingers at a particular agency is not only counter-productive but also harmful from an overall national security perspective.
For a sensitive frontier like the one in Ladakh, sharing borders with China and Pakistan, the presence of multiple paramilitary and intelligence agencies is quite natural. It is expected that the resulting inter-departmental coordination in a sensitive area like Ladakh throws up its own share of challenges.However, selective presentation of facts or mi-interpreting facts do vitiate the atmosphere. Moreover, it even has political fallouts.
Unlike China and Pakistan, where information-flows and security issues are kept outside the purview of public consumption, border incidents and subversive cross-border activities do influence political climate in India. They have a long-lasting impact on domestic politics and public memory. Against such a backdrop, leaking of such a potentially inconclusive report without proper debate could have had major political implications. Fortunately, the trust that the people have with the country’s security forces has precluded the possibility of a national debate over this issue so far.
In the last few years, developments on India’s western and northern borders have occupied greater space in political and social media discourses. On the one hand, it is a welcome step towards sensitizing the citizens on India’s military preparedness, while on the other, there is a risk of compromising national security when the nation’s premier security institutions peddle contradicting information. This is going to pollute the discourses on national security in India, which is becoming more and more polarized than ever before, with defence and foreign policy analysts positioning themselves along ideological lines rather than basing their observations on the facts.
The primary victims of such information breaches are the populations living in India’s border areas, who are forced to live with a perpetual sense of anxiety. This is not to question their patriotism but rather it points to the uncertainties they encounter in their daily lives on account of their living along the border. Initiatives like the Border Area Development Program (BADP) and the spread of connectivity projects to the remotest corners of the country were conceived to instil a sense of assurance among them that the state is not throwing them to the mercy of the adversary. This was made possible through inter-departmental coordination. However, acts of point-scoring, like the one at hand, will only make matters worse and give rise to anxiety and concern among them, making it easy for the adversary to strike.
Such bean-counting and uncharitable reconstruction of the ground reality about sister establishments is hugely counterproductive from the point of view of the national security of India. References to security lapses by sister institutions smack of inter-agency envy and rivalry, which certainly militate against the spirit of national security. Such inter-agency discoordination and mutual mudslinging will only encourage external forces to attempt more sinister propaganda against India than ever before.
Wisdom calls for taking candid conversations beyond the public glare where issues like this can be thrashed out in an atmosphere of trust and confidence. Such dialogues can also lead to the germination of innovative ideas which can be put to practice through inter-department coordination which will certainly make the country better prepared for defence and deter intrusive actions of external enemies.
(The author is a doctoral candidate in Oxford University and a student of the history of evolution of India’s borders.
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