'DNA' exclusive II: Army chief on the China threat

The government believes it is more important to find how General VK Singh’s letter to the prime minister became public than addressing the problems highlighted by the general.

Apart from tanks running low on ammunition, an obsolete air defence and an infantry short of critical weapons, China — it seems — was at the forefront of the general’s mind when he wrote the letter on March 12.

The letter has specific references to the Indian Army’s lack of preparedness vis-a-vis China and it speaks volumes about the bureaucracy that is least bothered about modernising India’s defence. “China is unabashedly going ahead with developing infrastructure on the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR)”, but the Indian Army’s presence is “far from satisfactory”. In fact, the army chief took great pains to explain to the prime minister that “there has been no perceptible difference in the state of hollowness” in India’s military preparedness.

While the letter has no reference to any operational issues or secrets, it talks of an unspoken truth that has dogged the country and the military since 1962. The military then was woefully unprepared to tackle hordes of Chinese sweeping through Arunachal Pradesh, the eastern parts of J&K and considerable stretches of upper Assam. And the picture is still the same: the army is still ill-prepared. Experts believe the military disaster during the Chinese aggression in 1962 had a lot to do with Jawaharlal Nehru’s — the then prime minister — faulty “forward policy”.

The government might want to believe all is well on the eastern front but the army, aware of the ground reality, has been trying hard to get the Centre to sanction Rs12,000 crore so that our borders with China can be strengthened and a Mountain Strike Corps set up. But a stubborn bureaucracy has continually thwarted the army’s modernisation attempts.

While the defence ministry’s finance wing and the finance ministry rejected the idea of a new corp, the ministry of environment and forests rejected a proposal to create an alternative all-weather route from Siliguri to North Sikkim to rush troops to the Indo-China border during an emergency. The ministry’s contention: the proposed route passes through eco-sensitive areas. 

“There is therefore a need to accord approval on priority for the force and infrastructure accretions for the Northern borders,” Gen Singh said in the letter. The chief has pushed for action on three major policy issues:

• Facilitate land acquisition for developing roads that has stopped the army from deploying its forces effectively on the Indo-China border.
• Seek funds for developing strategically important railway lines so troops and equipment can be rushed to forward areas if there is a war
• Ensure that the Border Roads Organisation, which builds strategic roads along the border, is given modern equipment and the powers to overcome needless bureaucratic hassles that impede better road construction
• The army should have operation control over the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, a para-military force that has been guarding the Indo-China border since the 1962 debacle. The general says this proposal was “accepted at all forums”, but “there has been no progress due to the stringent stance of the ministry of home affairs.” Gen Singh wants the prime minister to resolve this long-pending issue.

Defence analysts are worried that all these proposals will rot in the cold storage once Gen Singh retires in May. And the Indian Army without modern guns, tanks without ammunition and no air support would be expected to do the impossible — win a war at any cost. 

“The Hon’ble PM is aware of the seriousness of the threats,” Gen Singh said in his letter, hoping that the PM would “pass suitable directions to enhance the preparedness of the army”.