India & China : It is a challenge to the Leadership which is capable of handling problems

T J S George
26.11.2006
For some 200 years ending AD 90, Vietnam was Chinese province. In early 15th century it was again re-conquered by china and it again drove the invaders out. As late as in Deng Hsiaoping's time, there was yet another unpublished border war. It was again Vietnamese forces that prevailed.
How did they do this? The straight answer is: Unity. Nothing in history matches the power of Vietnamese nationalism and no national leader, not excluding Mahatma Gandhi, united his people as effectively as Ho Chi Minh did. Before the force of that united national resolve, the Chinese, then the French, then the Americans with history's most powerful was machine, had to flee.
Of the many factors that enabled China to defeat India in the 1962 war, perhaps the most important was the absence of unity in India. Generals disagreed among themselves. The army disagreed with the Air Force. Cabinet colleagues disagreed with the Defence Minister who disagreed with the politicians. India's backroom battles led to its front line defeat. China remains conscious of this Indian weakness.
China is of course a highly pragmatic country. It will do its best to build up relations with the big consumer/investment market that is India. But on its terms. Behind the modern sophistication of China's announced world game is the unalterable resolve to be Asia's leading power. It already has a clear lead and will gain further ground if only because China looks a hundred years ahead while our leaders cannot see beyond the next election.
See what China has already achieved. Borders neatly defined with every neighbour except India. The engineering feat of a train to Tibet achieved. Road networks expanding across the Indian border regions. Relations established with anti-Indian elements in Burma and Bangladesh. And of course powerful links, including nuclear, forged with Pakistan.
What have we got to show against this? There is not a single neighbour with whom we have good and healthy relations. We have no policy in Kashmir where things have gone from bad to worse. We have no policy towards containing Bangladeshi infiltration which now threatens to reverse the population pattern in several border regions. We have no policy for the critically important northeast states which we treat as a law and order problem. An editor in Assam has warned that it will be difficult to hold on to the northeast after another ten years. To this day people in Nagaland and nearby states see India as a foreign country, which Indians call them Chinese.
There is a grievous disconnect in India between the attainable and the attained. Sure, China has grievous problems too : Dangerous regional imbalances, dangerous gaps between rich and poor, rising demands for political freedoms. But they have a leadership that has proved itself capable of handling the problems.
Can we say the same about our leaders? Their main concerns are caste killings in Bihar, kidnappings in UP, minority persecution in Gujarat and water wars in the southern states. This India will not recapture the glory of its past or fulfil the promise of its future. It's only good for 10 percent rate. For whom ? For what ?