Abhinandan Mishra
With the 9th round of talks between the representative of the Indian army and his Chinese counterpart too failing to resolve the India-China border stand-off on Sunday, there is nothing left but to speculate on how and when will the situation at India's Eastern border return to 'normalcy' as it was in April 2020 before the Chinese troops entered into 'disputed' territories and occupied them.
While the talks are continuing and will continue, the bigger picture that is probably being ignored is how India, in all practical purposes, is now engaged in a '2 front war' with Pakistan on the West and China on the East.
As of today, more than 50000 Indian troops, excluding multiple precious 'assets' are deployed at its Eastern border in a state of 'combat readiness'. This in simple terms means the troops and the machines are just one step away from indulging in armed combat. The same, as is the common knowledge, is the situation on the borders that it shares with Pakistan.
What does this imply for India if this standoff with China continues for perpetuity?
The first implication of this will be that China would officially emerge as India's ‘enemy number 1’, as the then defence minister George Fernandes had called the country in 1998.
All future Indian defence procurements, strategic policies, trade agreements, diplomatic ties will be based on this template. So far, a majority of such decisions are taken while keeping Pakistan as our main adversary. It is pertinent to mention at this point that India last year has already passed a law that calls for government permission before FDI coming from bordering countries (China) is allowed into India.
There is no match between China and Pakistan when it comes to military and economic power. While India could manage by spending a modest amount of its resources on defence procurement as its focus was Pakistan, the same will not hold true once it accepts China as its primary adversary. The bigger, larger the opponent, the more resources one has to spend to counter him. Now, India will procure the artillery, the aircrafts and the infantry equipment while keeping what China has, which are definitely better than what Pakistan has. And they will cost more.
Wars and war like situations are only beneficial to the arms manufacturers, not to the citizens for which the wars are being fought. The India-China stand off will force Indian policy makers to take out capital and time meant for other needs like health, education and infrastructure and divert them to defence. And they cannot be blamed for it.
This will delay, if not stop, India's effort to increase the quality of life it offers to its citizens and hurt the economy as infrastructure in inland areas will suffer, temporarily, as the focus will be more on augmenting the infrastructure at the border areas.
The two front war scenario, in which one of the opponents is a country which is on the cusp of being a super-power, will force India to strive for coming more closer to and become dependent on other super-power (U.S) and cultivate relationship with other strong regional allies like Australia, Japan and Vietnam. This is inevitable, any country in place of India, too would have to do the same.
Pakistan's (mis)-adventurism is likely to increase in the coming months as a bullish China, that will keep needling India. China knows the advantage of having Pakistan as its ally in the war against India. If Pakistan was not Pakistan, and it was a friendly neighbor like Sri-Lanka, India's only concern would have been China. So China needs Pakistan as much as Pakistan needs China to stop India from becoming 'big'.
Please understand that a 'disruptive' activity like the 9/11 attack, Mumbai attack, Pulwama bombing changes the priority, focus, concern of any country within a matter of seconds. A welfare state, a state whose primary activity should be to strive to make life better for its citizens, suddenly becomes an aggressive entity, keen on avenging and securing itself.
India's two-front challenge is truly here, and it came just like that, without any explosion.
The writer is a New Delhi based journalist with over 10 years of experience in reporting on topics related to politics, state craft and security.
Twitter- mishra_abhi
Mobile- 9650375758
No comments:
Post a Comment