It is a train-versus-plane contest on the Arunachal border between Chinese Tibet and India. Even as China inaugurated its first bullet train track in Tibet running between capital Lhasa and Nyingchi city close to the Arunachal border, India has operationalised a Rafale fighter squadron in Hashimara in West Bengal.
The significance of the move and the counter-move is not lost on the strategic community in both countries. If Indian strategic thinkers had been apprehensive that the train could bring in several rapid-induction PLA brigades from mainland China for deployment on the Arunachal border, Chinese analysts believe that India could disrupt any such troop movement by simply bombing out the track.
Indeed, the 435-km rail track opened a week before the centenary of the Chinese Communist Party, is billed as an engineering marvel, with 47 tunnels and 120 bridges, and running over high mountains on several stretches. The line, when completed, will terminate in Bayi town near the borders of Arunachal. Incidentally, China has been making claims over Arunachal, calling it South Tibet.
The line will be linked to the Sichuan-Tibet railway line which is a major construction project under the 14th five-year plan of 2021-2015.
While the rail line, along with several other rail and road-building projects, is being touted as part of plans to build Tibet's economic infrastructure, strategic thinkers in India have been seeing red. The line, some of them believe, can bring in troops and military equipment rapidly from mainland China to Indian borders.
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Roads and rail lines are being built all across Tibet -- the rail lines from the mainland have already reached the Chumbi Valley (where the Indian army still enjoys immense tactical advantage) bordering Sikkim and in Nyingchi across Arunachal. The Yanga-Nyingchi railway to the Arunachal border, the Shigatse-Yadong railway to the Chumbi Valley and the Shigatse-Gyirong railway to the Nepal border have been or are being completed this year.
Unable to build a road for road and track for track, India has been building military infrastructure that could neutralise the threat. Squadrons of Sukhoi-30MKI have been moved to Hashimara, Chabua and Tezpur in recent years, and Brahmos cruise missile to an unknown spot. They are now being joined by a Rafale squadron (Number 101), initially with five jets. The remaining 13 planes will arrive early next year.
“Much of the fears about the rail line are misplaced,” said an officer at the Indian Army's Kolkata-based eastern command. “Any large-scale troop movement by the Chinese, through the rail line or the roads, would be immediately picked up by our satellites, and we will be able to neutralise the threat.”