The debate around the incursions of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) into vast tracts of eastern Ladakh has been, like much else in India today, a partisan and polarised discourse. In the three years after the May 2020 skirmishes on the Line of Actual Control (LAC), political parties and politicians from Leh to New Delhi have been preoccupied with the polemics, while the minuscule borderland nomadic and settled communities, who are the most distressed by the Chinese aggression, have been all but forgotten. As in most borderland matters, the larger nationalistic polemic is marked by dissonance and denial because of ignorance about the plight of civilians on this side of the LAC. State egos have greater salience and are simpler to advertise. The military confrontations, therefore, hog the limelight.
But if we were to dig a little, it becomes quickly apparent that there are at least three layers in the cacophonic patriotism about China’s incursions and their utility for political ends. Broadly speaking, civilian livelihoods at the boundary and interstate territorial interests form the first two layers. The third layer comprises the compulsions of domestic politics. To halt the PLA’s incursions into Indian territory, New Delhi must address all three layers. There is little evidence to show that it is doing so in Ladakh, let alone the tiny nomadic communities along the LAC or, at the other end of the spectrum, in New Delhi’s ongoing dialogues with Beijing.
Many analysts have noted and commented on the Chinese build-ups along the Himalayan range from Demchok to Arunachal Pradesh. But there has been no substantive debate about it in Parliament, which seems to operate in an atmosphere of “alternate reality”. Regardless, this much we know: that between 2010 and 2012 the PLA’s arrival at the boundary in Ladakh was well-planned, rapid and deep. Roads were constructed, several Chinese airports were built just across the border in Tibet’s Ngari-Khorsum, construction for residential quarters undertaken, and nomads on the Tibetan side of the LAC were encouraged to settle along the border.
To illustrate what that means: during a 2012 visit to Demchok it took me 20 minutes in a vehicle on our side of the LAC to reach the end of a ravine that ran for seven kilometres. In contrast, it took two PLA vehicles less than eight minutes to travel that same road and reach the same spot on the opposite side, having started after we were well past the halfway mark. India has since redoubled its efforts at road and infrastructure building, but it is still playing catch-up, and the efforts are almost exclusively defined by military parameters.
A valid question about this asymmetrical military buildup is: why the lopsidedness? All too often India’s first Prime Minister is uncritically blamed for it. But that was six decades ago and an excuse belied by the stalemated boundary talks over several rounds between the PLA and the Indian Army. The last round being the nineteenth, held on August 13 and 14 and on August 18.
Buffer zones now negotiable territory?
The security studies analyst Pravin Sawhney has pointed out that India’s vulnerability is demonstrated by the way that the talks on the LAC have concluded in the last dozen years. They invariably end with two narratives – Indian and Chinese. Also, the PLA has consistently succeeded in pushing itself further into Indian territory in various ways, including by stipulating “buffer zones” which were previously on the Indian side of the LAC but have now become negotiable territory. Sawhney claims that India has lost 2,000 square kilometers or more of its territory to incursions by the PLA because New Delhi does not have the political will for a fight. More worryingly, he discerns a pattern: just as the Central government did not want a confrontation with China in 2018, in anticipation of the 2019 election, it wants to avoid a confrontation in 2023, and this time because of the 2024 election.
The claim by Sawhney regarding the depth and width of the incursions is corroborated by nomads and settled populations along the LAC. In a recent interview with this writer, Konchok Stanzin, the outspoken and articulate former Executive Councillor who still represents Chushul in the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council of Leh, said that he had pleaded, without response from the powers that be, that among the problems of the civilians in the Changthang is an absence of transparency in fund allocation and disbursement for the nomadic and the settled communities of the Changthang. He said this was because military and civilian government authorities “do not consult and discuss such crucial issues as, among others, the loss of traditional grazing ground to the PLA and the lack of adequate communications infrastructure for civilians, who are the most impacted by the PLA’s hostility”. Stanzin also pointed out that funds demarcated under the Border Area Development Fund, a scheme that was begun in 2000, were received in Ladakh as late as 2014. These funds, he continued, often did not reach the boundary areas “for reasons that are difficult for me to understand”.
