“The disengagements that have happened and the buffer zone that has been created are about 6 kilometers inside Indian territory,” Pravin Sawhney, a former Indian army officer and defense analyst said.
Sawhney also pointed out that Chinese troops remain on land claimed by India in other critical areas of the Himalayan border region, including the Depsang Plains adjoining the Siachen Glacier, a militarily sensitive region bordered by India, China and Pakistan.
“We have witnessed and lost access to our traditional grazing area, and now nomads have to move around over 15 kilometers to feed their livestock,” said Konchok Stanzin, who represents a border constituency on a local council. “The government should provide compensation to keep alive nomads’ culture and tradition in eastern Ladakh.”
“Between 2012 and 2020, there were four different occasions when the PLA came in and took over Indian territory along the border and each time while India disengaged and withdrew its troops, China did not reciprocate,” Aparna Pande, research fellow and director at the Hudson Institute’s Initiative on the Future of India and South Asia, said. “This time, India has disengaged but the extra troops will only be withdrawn if, and when, China does the same.”
“If [China] wants to stage another provocation, it can do that, and New Delhi has little capacity to deter it,” Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Asia program at the Wilson Center, a Washington-based research group, said. “In fact, even with the recent disengagement, there are some indications that there are still some Chinese troops hunkered down on Indian territory.”
India’s involvement in the Quad is an annoyance for China,Yun Sun, a senior fellow and co-director of the East Asia Program acknowledged, but “until that involvement translates into material impact on the border, I don’t think China will take actions to push back.”
Author: Saikat Bhattacharya
