India’s border with China has become significantly more active in recent years, requiring a sustained and much larger deployment of Indian troops along the frontier, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar has said.

Speaking at the HT Leadership Summit, Jaishankar highlighted the substantial improvements made to India’s border infrastructure and military preparedness, arguing that these investments have enabled the country to maintain a stronger presence along the Line of Actual Control (LAC).

According to the minister, the frequency with which new strategic projects are now being completed demonstrates the scale of progress achieved in recent years. He pointed to the construction of tunnels, bridges and airfields across border regions as evidence of a broader effort to improve connectivity and military mobility in difficult terrain.

“What has happened today is the border with China has become more alive in a way. It has required a much greater commitment of troops on a sustained basis,” Jaishankar said.

He added that previous infrastructure investments had already created the capacity to deploy large troop formations to forward areas, while ongoing development projects would help sustain those deployments in the years ahead.

His comments come as New Delhi and Beijing continue efforts to stabilise bilateral relations after years of tension following the military confrontation in Eastern Ladakh that began in 2020. The standoff, which included the deadly Galwan Valley clashes, triggered one of the most serious downturns in India-China relations in decades and prompted both countries to reinforce military positions along the frontier.

Jaishankar noted that relations entered a new phase following the meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Kazan in October 2024, after progress was made towards ending the prolonged border face-off.

The discussions between the two leaders covered a broad agenda, including trade imbalances, cooperation on international issues, counter-terrorism concerns and the need for fair trade practices within multilateral frameworks.

The external affairs minister argued that India’s border infrastructure had been neglected for many years before receiving focused political attention and investment.

“I would say when it comes to the border, I would honestly make this point, and I think there's a lot of data and evidence to back it up, which is that the border infrastructure was really neglected till about a decade ago,” he said.

While acknowledging that plans had existed on paper, Jaishankar suggested the pace of implementation remained inadequate for decades. He said anyone closely associated with the armed forces and the border sector would recognise the dramatic increase in road construction, tunnelling projects and strategic positioning efforts over the past ten years.

“It’s really been in the last decade that that kind of attention, resources, policy push has been given,” he stated.

As a result, India’s capability to rapidly deploy and sustain troops along the China frontier has seen what he described as a “very marked” improvement.

Addressing the economic dimension of India-China relations, Jaishankar reflected on the widening gap between the two economies. He observed that India and China had economies of comparable size around the time of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s visit to China in 1988.

However, he argued that China’s aggressive push towards industrialisation and modernisation during the 1980s fundamentally altered the balance. According to Jaishankar, while China invested heavily in manufacturing and industrial capacity, India failed to move at a similar pace during that period.

“But the fact was that China, in the 1980s particularly, made a huge push towards modernisation and industrialisation. I'm sorry to say India in the 1980s simply missed the bus,” he said.

Although India introduced important economic reforms in the 1990s, Jaishankar argued that the country did not pursue structural reforms consistently across sectors, limiting its ability to match China’s industrial expansion.

“I don't want you to think of it as a political point,” he remarked, while referring to the government’s ongoing efforts to strengthen manufacturing and industrial growth.

The minister said India is now attempting to bridge the gap through targeted initiatives designed to accelerate development rather than merely following traditional growth pathways.

“The fact is, there were decades where we missed out; now we have to play catch up; you can't play catch up by following the same track. You have to do leap-frogging.”

He further argued that managing economic asymmetry with China requires a selective strategy focused on areas where India can achieve meaningful advantages rather than competing directly across every sector.

“In asymmetry, you don't go toe-to-toe on every issue. You pick the issues where you feel you have the ability to make a big change. That's really what we think we're doing right now,” Jaishankar said.

The remarks reflect New Delhi’s broader approach of simultaneously strengthening border security, expanding strategic infrastructure, modernising military capabilities and accelerating domestic manufacturing as part of its long-term effort to manage competition with China while pursuing a gradual normalisation of bilateral relations.

PTI