India and China continue to share a prickly relationship. The dip witnessed since Galwan has refused to level out. After exactly three years of the conflict, laboured posturing and diplomatic overtures both countries remain almost at the same point. The LAC remains tense, unpredictable and highly volatile. Both countries have refused to militarily backdown. Contrary to expectations at places only the positions held have been further strengthened.
The fact is as military posturing is concerned there is almost an endless scope for reinforcing and improving respective positions, infact it’s a continuous process. There is unlikely to be a willingness to backdown in front of aggressive deployment by the other side. The situation is precisely what leads to chain reaction and enhanced complications in the event of miscalculation.
China can continue to gloss over the scenario as ‘stable’ but the reality is very different. As highlighted by India ‘going back’ to status quo has No alternative for peaceful coexistence. China would want to maintain it’s forward deployments and force India backward on LAC, while expecting mutual relationship remains ‘unaffected’. That’s the best case scenario for China, but realities are different than desires. It strongly needs to learn honouring sensitivities of it’s neighbours. Mutual relationships are built on trust and not on calculations.
India clearly holds China accountable for the Galwan conflict and it’s subsequent actions. It has been categorical on resumption of status-quo across the LAC as an essential pre-requisite to get back to normalisation of relationship. India will continue to pursue actions to reflect an equivalent cost for China to bear. China surely can act naïve as if all is good, but better would be it gets the sense of disquiet in Delhi. The recent visit of chinese foreign minister Qin Gang to Delhi could have given the right momentum for this. But as the indications are, it seems another wasted opportunity.
