Lets be brutally honest here. The Chinese came prepared for the long haul. They had everything in place to build things very quickly. They have been preparing for this for a long time. Some say even right after Dokalam. We had no idea what the hell was going on in the first place. And by the time we mobilized, they already had strengthened their positions. No one was ready for the backstabbing of the Chinese. But the good part is now they are going to lose more through readjustments everywhere. Cos we are prepared now. Fully. Being a pessimist and having a meltdown even when a Chinese soldier farts does not help anyone.
Let us first be brutally frank in understanding the difference between India and the Chinese approaches to managing LAC.
From the Chinese perspective, PLA is the sole and supreme agency in managing Tibet. All others like their diplomatic Corps, Economic wings, Tibet administration etc are in aid of PLA in Tibet. PLA has a unique relation with CPC . PLA has a controlling stake in CPC as also CMC. Hence, it can influence the decision making right from Top to the execution level. PLA thus an along-term perspective, institutional memory and continuity in the subject matter.
On the other hand, our borders are straggly a cake which everyone wants to have but no one wants to really eat. MHA feels that they are the sole owner of borders and some strange, nonexistence international norms and practices are tom tomed to support such a practice. MHA strangely calls it border management. Then MoD is also responsible for borders especially for India's territorial sovereignty and integrity. MoD calls it Defense of Borders. Here a straight away distinction has been introduced in management / policing and Defence of borders, Very wrong and unfounded perceptions exist for doing that such as the economy of effort and cost involved wherein Police Forces draw significantly larger emoluments than Army.
Then there is IB and other intelligence agencies there who spy more on their own Army rather than the enemy. On top is MEA Mandarins who feel India's external Borders are under their jurisdiction and poke their noses in every conceivable slit.
The borders of India is thus a very hotchpotch and a bugger's muddle, a vagabond's Mela where who comes and who goes, who does what and who fails to do - nothing is fixed, nothing is known, there is no inter-agency coordination, there is no singularity of policy, direction and no unity of command. In fact the concept of unity command has been outrightly rejected by bureaucracies and political leadership has so far is unable to take political decision .
In a country where CSG has to be convened to decide if the Indian Army can be permitted to build some bunkers on a hill can not expect its agency on the ground to have any functional autonomy, initiative, strategy or tactics.
It is this flawed approach of the Union Govt which plays in the hands of Bureacracry and unable to exercise political control over competing bureaucracies that have let our Armed Forces down time and again. Right from Kashmir operations, 1962, 1965 or Kargil or Chinese intrusions - all are simply bureaucratic muddles. Abject interference by Civialn Babus and abject failures of Police agencies including intelligence that has been wreaking havoc on our Defence of the country and Armed Forces.
74 years of Congress rule of the country has thoroughly muddled the National Security structure so much so that no is responsible, nobody knows what is happening and no singular agency is there to decide what should be happening.. So places like Ladakh are big mela where ITBP goes right when the Army wants to go left. Intelligence agencies go down to Patal Loka and MEA goes to heaven.
How can they ever deal with an agency like PLA. Impossible.
