The ‘infrastructure gap’

The bit of news that China is building a new bridge across Pangong Lake that will be capable of bearing heavy armoured vehicles, barely a few months after completing another bridge in the same region, which is claimed by India, is yet another provocation to which India seems inured. In fact, even the 2017 India-China standoff in Doklam was over a Chinese bid to build a road in that area, at the trijunction of India, Bhutan and China.

The ongoing India-China standoff in eastern Ladakh began in May 2020, following clashes at locations along the Line of Actual Control with China. On June 15 that year, 20 Indian soldiers and an unknown number of Chinese troops died in a violent clash in the Galwan Valley. Both sides enhanced their deployment by rushing in tens of thousands of soldiers as well as heavy weaponry. Fifteen rounds of talks over the last two years to end the standoff at various points in eastern Ladakh have managed to achieve disengagement in the Galwan Valley (July 2020), the North and South banks of Pangong Tso (February 2021), and Gogra (August 2021). India’s call for a quick disengagement at the remaining friction points in eastern Ladakh, such as Patrol Point 15 (Hot Springs), the Depsang Bulge and Demchok is yet to be addressed.

This is the official version. But with reports of China building a second bridge in Pangong Tso, it looks like there is many a slip between the cup and the lip.

Infrastructure development undertaken by China in total disregard of India’s territorial concerns can be traced back to the 1960s and 1970s, by which time China built the Karakoram Highway, which linked Xinjiang with northern Pakistan.

India was a bit late to grasp the full significance of the blow the highway delivered to its strategic interest by supporting Pakistani control of the occupied part of Kashmir and fortifying China’s position in Aksai Chin. It was not only a strategic transport route between China and Pakistan, even for transfer of arms and ammunition, including nuclear and missile material, but with the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), also a conduit for bringing Middle Eastern oil and other commodities into northwest China and potentially to support Chinese naval operations in the Arabian Sea. Pakistan ceded the Shaksgam Valley (or the Trans-Karakoram Tract) to China, a disputed territory claimed by India, in 1963 even as India and China signed a boundary agreement to settle their border differences.

Cross-border infrastructure projects are key to China’s BRI. To understand the enormity of it, it is not enough to say that by March 2022, 146 countries have joined it by signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with China. What takes the cake is that infrastructure investment along the Belt and Road is concerned with six economic corridors covering a large energy and resource-rich part of the world. While the proposed New Eurasia Land Bridge, involving rail to Europe via Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus and Poland is ambitious, the China, Central Asia, West Asia Economic Corridor linking to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Iran and Turkey will get China right in the midst of the energy hub of Central Asia.

The China Indochina Peninsula Economic Corridor envisages linking Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar and Malaysia -- Southeast Asian countries right in India’s backyard – and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor links Kashgar city in landlocked Xinjiang with the Pakistani port of Gwadar, a deep-water port used for commercial and military purposes, as an extension of the Karakoram Highway. The fate of the proposed China, Bangladesh, India, Myanmar Economic Corridor is uncertain in view of the deep distrust over security issues between India and China.

China, by dint of the railway link between Beijing and Lhasa, Tibet, was able to rapidly deploy troops to the latter when riots broke out in the region in 2008. Besides Beijing, long-distance buses as well as trains link Lhasa with Guangzhou, Chengdu, Shanghai, Chongqing, Xining, and Lanzhou. Kunming, capital of Yunnan Province, coming up as a key regional hub connecting the province with existing rail networks to Southeast Asia. Should China’s proposed extension of this line to Yatung, just a few miles from Sikkim’s Nathu La, and subsequently to Nyingchi, north of Arunachal Pradesh, at the trijunction with Myanmar become a reality, China will have great strategic advantage over India.

The simple point is that China’s capacity for rapid infrastructure development (besides the huge financial resources at its command) is something that India lacks. China might well weaponise it against India. Across the LAC in the Tibet region, China is constantly upgrading its road, rail and air connectivity as well as 5G mobile network, besides building border villages (employing nomadic communities living along the Himalayan frontier) close to the LAC that can be used for dual purposes so as to increase its capacity to mobilise its military.

On the Indian side, a dedicated agency, the Border Infrastructure Management Authority (BIMA), which will be responsible for the development of road, rail, water, power and communications infrastructure along the borders, including the frontier with Tibet, is on the anvil. But it looks like it’s a bit late in the day. In the 2022-23 Union budget, the government also increased the capital outlay for the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) by 40%, including a six-fold increase in allocation for Arunachal Pradesh's Border Area Development Programme which, one guesses, is in response to China's infrastructure capacity enhancement across the border in Arunachal Pradesh.

India is desperately seeking to close the “infrastructure gap” with China by developing its own cross-border transport corridors. Its plan to connect the capitals of all states in Northeast India with a national rail network, and to integrate the border region with the rest of the country, and to construct and restore road and rail links between Northeast states and border areas in Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, and Myanmar, is yet to materialise fully. India must rethink its decades-long policy of neglecting infrastructure along the border with China.

(The writer is a Kolkata-based commentator on geopolitical affairs, development and cultural issues.)