New border pact with China is meaningless
The excitement in South Block over the Border Defence Cooperation Agreement that India signed with China on Wednesday notwithstanding, the deal does little to secure our national interests along the 4,000km long disputed border. Designed in the mould of previous border agreements from 1993, 1996, 2005 and 2012, to maintain peace and tranquillity along the line of Actual Control, the new BDCA will quite possibly be as ineffective as its predecessors — if not worse, as it imposes increased restrictions on the ability of Indian troops to respond to Chinese aggression in the border areas. The 10-article agreement, which was the high point of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's recently concluded trip to China, is built on the principle of ‘equal and mutual security’. This in itself is not particularly problematic but it becomes so when viewed against the backdrop of the previous agreements — as Article I of the BDCA entails — which make clear that the conditions for such security also have to be mutually agreed upon. In other words, will India now need Chinese clearance if it, for instance, wants to land a plane in Daulat Beg Oldie or even undertake a non-military exercise such as building a road in the border areasIJ Add to this the fact that, given advanced Chinese transport infrastructure in the region, Beijing does not need to station thousands of troops ion its side of the border. But India enjoys no such advantage and thereby must maintain a larger presence — to which China can object.
The biggest problem for India lies in Article VI of the BDCA, which states that “the two sides... shall not follow or tail patrols of the other side in areas where there is no common understanding of the line of Actual Control”. Why New Delhi would have agreed to such a condition, especially after the Depsang incident, is anybody's guess. In April, Chinese troops had moved as far as 19km into the Indian side of the lAC, put up bunkers and stayed there for a fortnight. They left only after a huge diplomatic effort was mounted to avert what could have otherwise spiralled into a military engagement. During the period of transgression, tailing by Indian troops — of the kind that the BDCA now prohibits — was a key tactic used to see out the Chinese. In fact, tailing, to enforce one’s ‘perception’ of the lAC, is common strategy. In effect, thus, the agreement ties the hands of Indian troops and severely restricts their abilities to flush out trespassers in the event of a provocation from the Chinese.
The problem with the mechanism that the BDCA has put in place for enhanced cooperation between Indian and Chinese troops along the border is that it presupposes that ‘incursions' along the lAC are not deliberate and can be resolved through dialogue alone. Hence, there is a range of steps to improve strategic communication such as the proposed setting up of a hotline and frequent meetings between military personnel on both sides, as well as confidence-building measures such as joint celebration of festivals to make troops comfortable with each other. These steps will help defuse the situation if the supposed intrusion is accidental. However, if it is deliberate and intended to be provocative, such as the Depsang incident was, they will fall flat on their face.