PARANOIA: Reports of ‘Doklam.2’ are untrue. Our foreign policy is too ‘militarised’.

MK Bhadrakumar

THE Press Trust of India featured a stunning report on October 5, quoting sources, that China maintains a sizeable presence of its troops near the site of the Doklam standoff with India and has even started widening an existing road at a distance of around 12 km from the earlier face-off site. Sources confided that “China has been slowly increasing its troop level in the Doklam Plateau which could further escalate the current situation as India has reasons to be concerned over it.” Even as the nameless sources whispered softly, the Chief of Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal BS Dhanoa, also admitted publicly on the same day: “The two sides are not in a physical face-off as we speak. However, their forces in the Chumbi valley are still deployed and I expect them to withdraw as their exercise in the area gets over.”These reports meshed with what the Army Chief, Gen Bipin Rawat, insinuated exactly a month earlier on September 6: “As far as the northern adversary (read China) is concerned, the flexing of muscle has started. The salami slicing, taking over territory in a very gradual manner, testing our limits of threshold is something we have to be wary about and remain prepared (sic) for situations emerging which could gradually emerge into conflict.” It doesn’t need much ingenuity to figure out that there has been some orchestration behind these synchronistic statements. Interestingly, the official Russian news agency Sputnik, too, reported from Delhi on October 5 that a “Chinese troop buildup” in Doklam has “kept the Indian military on its toes, forcing it to stall the annual winter retreat from north Sikkim.”All in all, a strange thing is happening. The military, whom we expect as people who are precise and business-minded and from whom we get definite answers, is posing riddles. Fortunately, the Ministry of External Affairs promptly clarified on October 6: “We have seen recent press reports on Doklam. There are no new developments at the face-off site and its vicinity since the August 28 disengagement. The status quo prevails in this area. Any suggestion to the contrary is incorrect.” The General, the Air Chief, the “sources” — and Sputnik — were apparently put on the mat.The sensational reports regarding fresh Chinese deployment to Doklam were timed to coincide with Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar’s visit to Bhutan for consultations on October 5 and the scheduled visit by the new Defence Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, to the Sikkim region the next day as part of her familiarisation tour of border areas. As Vladimir Lenin once asked: “Who stands to gain?” This is of a piece with General Rawat’s recent demand for an increase in the defence budget to enable the Army to fight two-and-a-half wars simultaneously.The Chinese reaction to the hullabaloo is insightful. Beijing took a detached view. Surveying the media frenzy about a Doklam.2 in the offing, Chinese commentators made three pointed observations. First, unsurprisingly, an assurance was held out that China does not plan to precipitate a conflict; it was clarified that, in fact, India is not a “major focus for China’s international strategy” currently. Nor is there any conceivable reason for China to regard India as its rival and, therefore, India has no need to work up such paranoia. Second, Beijing appreciated Sitharaman’s open display of goodwill toward the PLA soldiers on October 7 while visiting the Sikkim border and regarded her friendly gesture as an articulation of her hope for peace on the India-China border and her aversion toward a fresh standoff.     Third, and most important, in Beijing’s reading of the tea leaves, Sitharaman’s goodwill gesture faithfully reflects the “realistic and responsible attitude” of the Modi government. Beijing anticipates that a “new era of crisis management” is possible in India-China relations following the Doklam standoff. However, alas, while the two leaderships are exploring more cooperation and their focus and priority should be on avoiding friction and conflict, there is dissonance within India on this account. It is not only that the Army has corporate interests in bargaining for bigger budget allocation, the Indian public opinion too is distrustful of China’s intentions – although only a maverick section of extreme nationalists demands military confrontation with China. Therefore, the path ahead is challenging for the Indian leadership “to fix the stagnated ties” with China.It is difficult to quarrel with the above assessment of the Modi government’s policy predicament vis-à-vis China. The government is riding a tiger. It is not possible to disown the Himalayan blunder of mid-June to walk into the standoff at Doklam. But the saving grace is that the Indian public, willingly, suspends its disbelief and accepts the denouement of end-August as “victory”. However, instead of moving on, a contrived attempt is being made by interest groups to recreate time past. There is a big question involved in all this, which must be asked upfront: Can we really afford to fight “two-and-a-half wars”? The grim realities speak otherwise.In the 2017 Global Hunger Index released last week, the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute ranked India 100 among 119 countries, three places down from its last year’s position at 97. It means, shockingly enough, that more than a fifth (21%) of the children in our country are wasted, with stunted growth. India shares its 100th position with Djibouti and Rwanda. China is ranked at 29. Again, Shenzhen city in China’s Guangdong province used to be a market town to the north of Hong Kong 40 years ago and today its GDP alone equals three-fourths of India’s. And, in the Xiongan New Area to the south of Beijing, China is just launching another mammoth Shenzhen over an area that is a third bigger than Delhi state. By the way, China added new steel-making capacity in 2016 alone, which equals half of India’s entire production. TN Ninan wrote recently:“China expects to create 11 million urban jobs this year; for India, don’t ask.”Clearly, China has no reason to view India as “rival” and has nothing to gain out of another war. China belongs to a different league than India’s and is fixated on the obsessive thought that by the centenary year of the communist revolution in 2049, it should transform as a moderately prosperous country. Aren’t we missing the plot? Doklam is a wake-up call that our foreign policy is far too militarised and has jettisoned its core agenda of creating a peaceful external environment for India’s rapid development through the crucial make-or-break period of the coming 15-20 years.The writer is a former ambassado