'China border more active, needs sustained troop deployment', says Jaishankar

India's border with China has become "more alive" and requires a substantially greater commitment of troops on a sustained basis, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on Saturday, highlighting the government's efforts to strengthen infrastructure and military preparedness along the Line of Actual Control (LAC).

Speaking at an interactive session at the HT Leadership Summit, Jaishankar said India had significantly enhanced its ability to deploy and sustain troops along the frontier since the deadly clashes in Eastern Ladakh's Galwan Valley in 2020.

His remarks came amid continuing efforts by New Delhi and Beijing to normalise bilateral relations following the prolonged military standoff in Eastern Ladakh that had severely strained ties between the two countries.

"Just think about the last few years. How often do you now read - a new tunnel has been built, some new bridge has been built, another airfield has been commissioned. You're getting this news with greater and greater frequency," Jaishankar said.

"What has happened today is the border with China has become more alive in a way. It has required a much greater commitment of troops on a sustained basis," he added.

The minister said infrastructure developed over the past decade had enabled India to maintain substantial troop deployments in difficult border terrain.

"The fact is that the work we had already done allowed that kind of numbers to be deployed out there, and the work we continue to do will maintain those numbers," he said.

𝗕𝗼𝗿𝗱𝗲𝗿 𝗶𝗻𝗳𝗿𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗽𝘂𝘀𝗵

Jaishankar asserted that infrastructure development along the China border had remained neglected for decades before receiving greater policy attention and financial resources over the past ten years.

"I would say when it comes to the border, I would honestly make this point, and I think there's a lot of data and evidence to back it up, which is that the border infrastructure was really neglected till about a decade ago. I mean, people spoke about it, people drew up plan," he said.

He maintained that improvements in roads, tunnels, bridges and airfields could be assessed through year-wise infrastructure development data.

"If you actually go on the ground and see year-by-year how many kilometres of roads, what was the tunnelling, what was the positioning, I think anybody, and certainly anybody associated with the armed forces dealing with that sector knows the truth," he said.

"It's really been in the last decade that that kind of attention, resources, policy push has been given," Jaishankar added.

The External Affairs Minister said these investments had produced a "very marked" improvement in India's troop deployment capabilities along the sensitive frontier.

India and China began efforts to repair their strained relationship following a meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Kazan, Russia, in October 2024, after the military face-off in Eastern Ladakh ended.

The discussions covered bilateral and international issues, including trade imbalances, terrorism and fair trade practices on multilateral platforms.

𝗘𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗼𝗺𝗶𝗰 𝗴𝗮𝗽 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗖𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗮

Responding to a question about the economic asymmetry between India and China, Jaishankar said the gap had widened because India failed to capitalise on opportunities for industrialisation during the 1980s.

He recalled that the two economies were approximately the same size when then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi visited China in 1988.

"On the economic side, the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, this was the time the world was industrialising, developing countries were industrialising. Remember, when around the time when Rajiv Gandhi went to China in 1988, the Indian and Chinese economies were about the same size," he said.

However, China accelerated its modernisation and industrialisation efforts during the 1980s, while India failed to make comparable progress, he said.

"But the fact was that China, in the 1980s particularly, made a huge push towards modernisation and industrialisation. I'm sorry to say India in the 1980s simply missed the bus," Jaishankar said.

He added that although India introduced economic reforms in the 1990s, those changes were not consistently implemented across sectors.

"Now in the 1990s, we did some corrections, reforms, but we did not carry through the reforms sector by sector and keep building and raising it," he said.

Jaishankar clarified that his assessment was not intended as a political criticism but reflected the economic challenges India must address.

𝗡𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗶𝗰 𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗰𝗵-𝘂𝗽

Highlighting the Modi government's focus on manufacturing and industrial development, Jaishankar said India needed to adopt a different strategy to narrow the economic gap with China.

"The fact is, there were decades where we missed out; now we have to play catch up; you can't play catch up by following the same track. You have to do leap-frogging," he said.

He stressed that India should focus on developing strengths in selected sectors rather than attempting to match China across every economic and technological field.

"We'll have to build up our particular strengths to deal with this asymmetry issue," he said.

"In asymmetry, you don't go toe-to-toe on every issue. You pick the issues where you feel you have the ability to make a big change. That's really what we think we're doing right now," Jaishankar added.