Column | Inequality With China Is A Fact To Be Managed, Not A Fate To Be Accepted, Says Major Gen Sudhakar Jee (Retd)

Barely six weeks after Chinese President Xi Jinping flew into New Delhi for the BRICS summit and held talks with Prime Minister Naren­dra Modi, the director general of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police Force, Shatrujeet Kapoor, confirmed that Indian and Chinese troops are still having face-offs at several places in Aruna­chal Pradesh. The border, it seems, never got the memo about the thaw.

Reports from the Taksing area of Upper Subansiri district speak of Chinese troops pitching tents six to seven km inside the line of actual control (LAC), although officials have not spelt out the locations. This author, who commanded a brigade in Tawang and an infantry division in eastern Ladakh, has faced the same adversary across two very different mountains, and both taught him one lesson—this is a contest of staying power.

Let’s start with the uncomfortable numbers because pretending they do not exist helps nobody. China’s declared defence budget this year is about $277 billion, against India’s $86 billion, but many analysts suspect Beijing’s real spending is much higher.

Its economy is four to five times larger and its roads and airfields on the plateau let the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) move troops in days rather than weeks. India spends about two per cent of its GDP on defence, with salaries and pensions swallowing 44 per cent of that.

Beijing also plays a long game, planning a roughly 60,000-megawatt dam on the upper Brahmaputra and renaming places in Arunachal as if a map could settle a claim. Such patience is a reminder that the contest is not about firepower.

A richer neighbour is not an invincible one, though. The PLA last fought a full-scale war in 1979, and its top brass is being purged—Zhang Youxia, the highest-ranking general after Xi, and General Liu Zhenli were expelled from the party and the military last month—hardly the best backdrop for a long, messy fight in the high Himalayas.

What Each Side Brings

Comparing capability is not about counting tanks; it is about who can do what, where and for how long. A soldier raised in the hills and seasoned by Siachen and Ladakh acclimatises faster, moves lighter and tires slower than a conscript brought up in the plains, and Galwan in June 2020 showed what that difference is worth.

The Indian Air Force has a quiet advantage too as it can fly from lower bases while the PLA air force must operate from high plateau airfields where thin air limits fuel and payload. China’s edge lies elsewhere—long-range rockets, satellite surveillance, drones in bulk and a logistics network that improves every year.

India’s answer is a leaner, networked army of Rudra brigades, Bhairav battalions and Ashni drone platoons. But a formation on paper still needs trained men on the ground and that is where the Agnipath scheme arithmetic begins to pinch.

Face-offs are not decided by drones or budgets, but by who is standing at the patrolling point when the other side arr­ives. In Arunachal, where over 1,000 km of the LAC run through jungle, ridge and cloud, that means soldiers who know the ground in their legs.

The December 9, 2022, clash at Yangtse in the Tawang sector is the template—a large PLA patrol tried to alter the status quo and it was Indian soldiers, already on the ground, who turned it back. No drone strike or budget line did that job; the men were simply there.

That’s why the 25 per cent retention ceiling under the Agnipath scheme deserves a hard second look. An Agniveer spends a good part of his first year training in acclimatising and leaves just as he turns into a seasoned mountain soldier—rather like raising a racehorse and sending it to pasture before the season begins.

The services themselves have asked for more, with reports in July saying the Navy wants about 75 per cent retained and the Army and the Air Force about 50 per cent. No decision has been ann­ounced yet and the air force has reportedly kept 712 of its first 2,850 Agniveer Vayu recruits—exactly 25 per cent.

This author would treat 50 per cent as the floor for the Army, and not the ceiling, who would man the formations facing China—above all in Arunachal—with the retained cadre. The army is reportedly short of around 1.8 lakh personnel and no amount of technology fills a vacant post on a ridgeline.

The mistake in the debate so far is treating retention as a single figure. General-duty roles can live with a lower share, but trades that cost years of training and crores in investment—radar and air-defence operators, electronic warfare and cyber specialists, signallers on encrypted networks, drone and aircraft technicians, submariners—should see retention climb towards 100 per cent.

Losing such a trained operator after four years is not turnover; it is a write-off. The Navy’s request for 75 per cent rests on exactly this logic and the Army and the Air Force should apply it trade-by-trade rather than as one blanket number.

Managing, Not Matching

So how does India manage China with what it has? By refusing to play on Beijing’s terms: no pretence of matching its budget and no compromise on the one asset that India already holds an edge on, the mountain soldier.

Four things matter: seasoned troops on the LAC, drones and surveillance that end the surprise, roads and tunnels such as Sela Pass that keep Tawang connected through winter and talks that never stop. The first corps commander-level meeting in the eastern sector, held at Wacha-Damai in the Kibithoo sector just before Xi’s visit, shows the channel works, but the continuing face-offs show it is not enough by itself.

China will always have more money. India can have more patience, more mountain craft and a soldier who stays long enough to master it.

This old soldier has no illusions about how unequal this frontier is, but inequality is a fact to be managed, not a fate to be accepted.

(Views expressed are personal)

Maj Gen Sudhakar Jee (Retd) is a former Colonel of the Mahar Regiment and distinguished fellow, CLAWS