From The Editor / The Legitimate
More than three months have passed the standoff between India and China continues at Line of Actual Control in the cold desert Ladakh region. Despite conflicting and disturbing reports emerging from the remote region, there seems no back off from either side and both have locked horns. Since the region is far away from the general public and have limited or no access to such confrontation zones, a lot more is written at a national capital in Delhi regarding the prevailing crisis.
Some reports even claim that large swaths of the dessert have already been occupied by the People’s Liberation Army and have cut off India’s access to the DBO. But India on the other hand strongly defends its position and says no compromise would be made on the nation’s dignity and national security. And it will continue to build the infrastructure on its side of LAC. In recent days, both the countries have built up its military infrastructure and hundreds of troops by both sides along with artillery, gunship helicopters, tanks are mobilized to the trouble spot. New Delhi is hoping on diplomatic channels to defuse the crisis since at military level no breakthrough is achieved so far.
Dwelling here into the developments doesn’t mean I am cooking up the minds of our readers with the same kind of information that already hundreds of other media outlets have been forcing into their minds. Even this article is not written as an expert or scholarly piece on the India-China relations. Neither have we possessed that deep knowledge to enlighten our valuable readers with the commentary on the Ladakh region. The region that everybody knows posses a deep strategic importance in South Asia. While border standoff between the dragon and elephant in the region is a common phenomenon for decades, however, it came into limelight after Narender Modi took over in New Delhi as Prime Minister in 2014. India after 2014 has laid an aggressive claim on Pakistan Occupied Kashmir and recently redrew the map of the Ladakh region reclaiming Aksai Chin presently under the occupation of China.
In both the regions, China is holding strong strategic and economic interests in Gilgit Baltistan, Aksai China and Pakistan Occupied Kashmir with its massive 62 billion dollar investment in CPEC. Given this investment, China and Pakistan have forged a strong socioeconomic relation that is certainly not favoring India’s interests in the region.
Meanwhile, writing more on the ground situation in Ladakh may not be advisable here since I have not been to the place to that extent. But the recent incursions by China along LAC bring fore an important narrative about the same. In the last several decades, India has exhausted its wealth and resources against Pakistan, the country that is comparatively three times smaller in size. India always matched its military capabilities with Pakistan, often allowed its political and diplomatic relations to be judged with the country. Hundreds of think tanks, research groups, track-2 diplomacy was established only either to teach Pakistan a ‘lesson’ or normalize its relations with the country. Half a million troops in Kashmir are locked up either on its borders defending against Pakistan or in the hinterland to deal with the militancy. China never stayed in the priority list of south Block. Today India is facing a stronger and bigger enemy on its borders but those suggesting South block are the same lot who have been policymakers to the country on Pakistan. There are either no or very poor experts on China although it has hundreds of think tanks and policy groups exhausting huge precious resources of the country. Delhi’s mantra has always been looking for the convenient options.
It prioritizes the conflicts and misplaces the priorities that follow the faltering expertise. It gives temporary pleasure to the successive regimes. But in the long run, it aggravates problems instead of addressing them. A senior journalist Arun Joshi nicely sums up, “Had we studied even one-tenth of China than Pakistan, today China would not have been breathing down our neck.”
