Rumel Dahiya replies:India shares land borders in the North East with Bangladesh, Myanmar, China, Bhutan and Nepal. The terrain is mountainous which requires a higher density of troops for defence. Presently, only six mountain divisions are deployed in the North East. Considering the length of the land border to be defended and the involvement of the Army for internal security duties it was felt that the force levels have to be augmented.

India does not covet the territory of its neighbours. However, it must be prepared at all times to defend its own territory against any hostile neighbour. Since its formations on the Western borders will take time to redeploy in case of war in the North East, it was assessed that additional formations will have to be raised and located in the North East itself. The formations being raised are neither China specific nor earmarked for an offensive inside China’s territory. However, these could be employed both for defensive and offensive operations depending upon the requirement.

It is true that China has upgraded its communication and logistic infrastructure in TAR tremendously, which gives it a capability to move a large number of offensive formations to the Indo-Tibet border in a relatively short period and sustain them logistically over a long period. The terrain across the border also facilitates this movement and sustenance. Although relations with China are improving gradually, but the build of Chinese capability and the opacity of its decision making process and rapid pace of military modernisation lead to suspicion about its intentions.

Looking at the military balance, even after raising the two mountain divisions, the numerical superiority in manpower alone will still be favourable to China by a factor of at least 1:2, if not more. And since the military balance is not a factor of number of troops alone, the overall superiority in combat potential will continue to be enjoyed by China till India upgrades its infrastructure, improves long range fire power, C4I2 capability, its air power and missile capability. It is felt that the two divisions being raised will merely suffice to plug gaps in India’s defensive deployment in the North East for the present.

Ramesh V. Phadke replies: Obviously not. "No Chinese strategy is ever short term and hence area denial is also not short term. In fact, China's westward expansion and its quest to control the whole of South China Sea, has far bigger consequences as they would slowly, gradually but surely severely constrain the elbow space that India has or needs to conduct its foreign relations. India would find itself in what I can only term a 'grid lock'.

Udai Bhanu Singh replies: The Indian Navy (IN) has both security and economic interests in seeking out port facilities in countries like Vietnam and Cambodia. IN regularly holds naval exercises (Milan) with other navies (including from Southeast Asian countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore and Thailand). IN ships frequent Vietnamese ports like Ho Chi Minh City and Haiphong; recently, between May 30 and June 2, 2010, INS Ranjit and INS Kulish docked in these ports. India has an arrangement with Vietnam for this purpose. Usually, advance information is sought for berthing facility and logistic supplies. It forms part of IN’s diplomatic exercise in peace time. (Interactions such as these at their basic level may be viewed as a CBM and at their most intense as an alliance partnership). It is assumed that the commitments that nations make for war time eventuality would be of a different order.