Green Ministry roadblock puts borders in danger

Thanks to the Environment Ministry’s obduracy, the construction of 73 strategic road links along the Indian side of the unresolved 4,056-km Line of Actual Control (LAC) with China has hit a bottleneck with delay in environmental clearances, critically undermining India’s capability to thwart any aggression in the eastern sector. 

As per the latest report of the Parliamentary Committee on Defence: “While the Ministry of Defence has recognized the need for development of infrastructure as well as operational capabilities to achieve desired preparedness, particularly in the context of the huge undergoing infrastructure construction activities of our neighbouring countries including China, the delay in forest and wildlife clearances has been an impediment in this regard.”

 (Photos taken by me in Sikkim)

In the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), China has built a road network of 58,000 km. These are all weather and double-lane highways reaching right up to the LAC. On our side, bureaucratic tangles in the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) have jeopardised the construction of roads along the Indo-China border, especially in the seven north-eastern states— where motorable roads do not exist beyond the state capitals. 

The defence ministry has been trying to expedite the processes but 172 environmental clearance  requests for various critical roads remain pending at the MoEF.The Border Roads Organisation (BRO) has been sanctioned construction of 73 strategically important roads along the unresolved LAC–divided into three parts, the Western Sector (Jammu and Kashmir), middle sector (Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh), and the Eastern sector (Arunachal Pradesh)—but only 12 have been completed. 

“There are 12 forest or wildlife cases pending for want of clearance from the MoEF for construction of Indo-China Border Roads (ICBRs) and 160 for other than the ICBRs,” the defence ministry apprised the Parliamentary Standing Committee. Many of these roads pass through Kaziranga National Park, Nameri National Park and Orang Wildlife Sanctuary.

The MoEF had introduced a Single Window Clearance System in June 2010 to fast track environmental clearance requests in defence projects, but the system remains sluggish.The Indian Army has already raised two mountain divisions specialising in high altitude warfare to be deployed in the north-eastern region, but the lack of roads means that most forward bases in Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh—where China has been making territorial claims —remain air-maintained even 65 years after Independence. 

The Indian Air Force (IAF) has been supplying men and material to Vijaynagar in Arunachal Pradesh–the easternmost part of the country situated between the tri-junction of India-China and Myanmar where people have seen many An-32 transport aircraft but not a Maruti 800.The essential supply to troops in the Tawang region of Arunachal Pradesh continues to be done in helicopters as the project to connect Tawang Road to the nearest roadheads of Balipara and Charduar is running way behind schedule. 

“China is more than 20 years ahead of us in terms of road networks along the LAC. While we are still struggling to pave a motorable road, the Chinese have upgraded their highways to double lanes and is in the process of extending the Qinghai-Tibet Railway up to Xighaze from where the nearest Indian railhead is Siliguri. On the Indian side besides the delay, the defence ministry does not even have a proposal to have a road constructed in Nagaland that shares 215 km long border with Myanmar,” an Army official said on condition of anonymity. 

China plans to extend its rail link right up to the Nepal border.As India seeks to deploy state-of-the-art weapons and platforms in the mountainous terrain, delays in construction of roads will make the maintenance of posts very difficult. BRO sources also attribute the delay in construction to other factors like topography, lack of adequate air support, and a crippling shortage of manpower in the organisation.