During the visit of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, that begins this weekend, India is expected to announce an agreement on the broad principles for a final settlement of the boundary dispute with Beijing. But does New Delhi know what it would want to do with the long Chinese frontier? Traditionalists in India want a “boundary of separation” with the Middle Kingdom. What Prime Minister Manmohan Singh should be looking for, instead, is a “boundary of contact” with China. The two notions about the Sino-Indian frontier are as different as chalk and cheese.As the boundary dispute begins to lose some of its political salience, the PM should boldly discuss with Wen the prospect of throwing open the 3,000 km long Sino-Indian border that stretches from the Karakoram mountains in the northwest to the Lohit Valley in the northeast. Ever since the Peoples Liberation Army entered Tibet 55 years ago, one of India’s highest national security priorities has been to get a settled and peaceful boundary with the northern neighbour. For a while in the ’50s, India assumed it had one. When it discovered that the assumption was mistaken, its drifted into a war with Beijing by 1962.In the last 15 years, India and China have brought peace and tranquility to these borders. Now they are negotiating a set of guiding principles for the boundary settlement. The principles, in turn, would hopefully generate the space for the politically empowered Special Representatives to negotiate the “give and take” on territorial claims. As the Special Representatives develop the political framework, the experts will slowly delineate a line on the map and eventually demarcate it on the ground.This Indian script on the boundary talks with China is at once clinical and prudent. So focused on drawing the badly needed final line between Indian and Chinese sovereignties, the script has no space for a long-term vision of the boundary we wish to have with China. The dominant view in Delhi seeks a frontier of separation with Beijing. It will at best permit a bit of border trade and some controlled movement across it here and there. A frontier of contact, on the other hand, envisages massive transit trade, easy movement of people and goods across the border, transborder energy pipelines and genuine contact and cooperation between the provinces along the linear boundary.For those who want a delimited but frozen frontier with China, the principle is a simple one that has animated Indian strategic thinking since the Chinese regained control of Tibet — you stay out from the southern slopes of the Himalayas and we won’t mess with you on the Tibetan plateau. In contrast, the enthusiasts for an open border argue that in a world where regional economic integration has become the norm, preventing the Chinese economic presence from seeping down the Himalayas is neither feasible nor desirable.An open border with China, they argue, will allow India to return to its traditional economic and cultural hinterlands in Tibet and Xinjiang north of the Himalayas. The close border school is built on a defensive mindset about “protecting” sub-Himalayan regions from Chinese influence. The positive open border school wants to re-establish India’s trans-Himalayan presence.When Atal Bihari Vajpayee went to China in June ’03, he signed an agreement on reopening border trade in Sikkim at the Natu La. For the official India it was a mechanism to formalise the long-delayed Chinese recognition of Indian sovereignty over Sikkim. That it had nothing to with trade at Natu La is palpable from the fact that nearly two years after the agreement we have not moved an inch towards implementing it. It has been a victory for the close border school. The open border school is a minority in Delhi. It, however, is gaining support in all the provinces along the Sino-Indian frontier. Chief Minister of Sikkim Pawan Chamling wants more than border trade at Natu La. He demands tourism as well as transit trade for the benefit of Sikkim.If a bus can run between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad across the Line of Control in Kashmir, Chamling wants to know, why can’t one operate between Gangtok and Lhasa? Similar questions are being asked in Ladakh. Why not a bus service between Demchok and Lake Manasarovar and Mount Kailash? Why can’t Delhi re-build the historic trade routes between Kashmir and Xinjiang running through the Karakoram pass? The chief ministers of Arunachal Pradesh and Assam want the reopening of the Stilwell Road to China through upper Burma.Most political leaders of the Northeast wonder why Delhi is opposed to sub-regional cooperation with neighbouring southwestern China. When they wake up some day, the leaders of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar might discover that Tibet is only a stone’s throw away and accessing it through Nepal is an old but smart idea. West Bengal’s Marxists might remember Kolkata, until a few decades ago, was the gateway to Lhasa and Tibet. When it comes to Pakistan, Delhi is decidedly in favour of the open border school. Free trade and overland transit rights to Afghanistan are at the top of Indian demands on Pakistan. Why can’t we adopt the same approach to China? Could India offer its ports to goods from western/southern China in return for gaining overland access to Yunnan, Tibet and Xinjiang and beyond to Central Asia?The pressures from the border regions will eventually compel Delhi to recognise that borders are ultimately about people. When it figures out the stakes for economic growth and the prospect for vote gathering in the frontier regions, the Indian political class might discover the virtues of open borders with China. Manmohan Singh can, however, choose to move away from the instrumentalist view of the border settlement with China and emphasise its potential to bring prosperity to India’s border regions. He should offer Wen Jiabao a joint infrastructure initiative to develop trade and transport corridors across the shared frontier.Given the nature of the beast, the bureaucracy will advise Manmohan Singh to wait until India gets its own act together and matches the massive Chinese infrastructural development across the border. Looking at it another way, a cross-border infrastructure initiative with China could be the long awaited strategic incentive to rapidly develop India’s frontier regions.
