Wednesday, November 11, 2009

How India must face the Chinese threat : Rediff.com India News

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    • nvited by Islamabad, the Chinese moved into Pakistan occupied Kashmir [ Images ]. With growing irrelevance of Pakistan as a nation State, this area in times to come will become Chinese occupied Kashmir. Similarly, China fabricated its territorial claim on Bhutan and is working to eclipse the prevailing Indian influence there.

      Is New Delhi prepared to defend its strategic frontiers in Bhutan unlike our timid response in Tibet [ Images ]?

    • To power itself out of the largely self-inflicted external-internal encirclement New Delhi should work out a comprehensive counter-strategy with an offensive orientation. For an enduring win against the heavy odds, the national goal should be to emerge as the single most dominant power in Asia by 2020.

      This aim envisages an economically powerful India backed by extraordinary military capabilities and reach, and formation of potent international alliances that help defend multi-cultural democratic values under adverse conditions in Asia.

    • However, to be the pre-eminent Asian power, it is essential that New Delhi first set its own house in order by reclaiming the space lost within to the non-State actors.

      Lack of skills and direction, self-serving gimmicks and dwindling integrity in the civil administration ended up in handing over the control of 40 percent area to the Maoists and ten percent on the borders to the insurgents.

      It is vital that the State recaptures this space in the shortest possible time frame and establishes its authority up to the borders. Otherwise, India will be the next State after Pakistan to be consumed by civil war.

    • Fourth, the Indian Army can select and train a few officer cadets every year for the Indian Police Service at its Officer Training Academy in Chennai on the same tough pattern as the military officer cadets. This will rapidly induct precision of military thinking and sinews that the civil administration urgently requires to fulfill the task at hand.

      The success of expanding Chinese strategic reach in Asia is due to the singular fact that, unlike other Communist parties, the Communist Party of China from its inception has the advantage of precise military thinking in the party, as the People's Liberation Army officers are integral to it. The above suggestions are particularly relevant to pacifist India, as military thinking in most of the other cultures is a natural component.

    • n addition, remove all man made barriers like inner line permits etc to allow inter-mingling of citizenry, and establishment of businesses and industry in the northeast and Kashmir and other states.

      While the terrorist, jihadi and the infiltrator forcibly change the demography, citizens are not allowed to settle and buy land in many areas of the Union. Such contradictions besides being illogical defy national integration, consolidation and fusion of the nation into one entity. However, we should avoid forced settlements like the Han Chinese in Tibet or Pakistan in the Shia-majority Northern Areas.

    • Hence, it is in India's national interest to synergise with the West in Af-Pak to benefit from resource rich Central Asia and deny the centuries's old route of invasion to the adversary.
    • Bharat Verma is the editor, Indian Defence Review