"We have no connectivity, whether it is roads or mobiles. It takes a mental toll. Even the evacuation of an injured soldier becomes a huge logistical challenge," an Army official said
KIBITHU/KAHO (ARUNACHAL PRADESH): 'Welcome to China' suddenly pops up on the screen of one's mobile phone, which has been dead for several hours, as one heads towards the border on a single, narrow and extremely bumpy road.
Displaying characters in Mandarin to indicate full connectivity, the phone promptly switches to Beijing time, which is two-and-a-half hours ahead of India. You then look across the Line of Actual Control (LAC) to see the sprawling Tatu military complex of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), which even includes a three-storey building, connected by a smooth, wide, seemingly metalled road.
"But we have no connectivity, whether it is roads or mobiles. It takes a mental toll. Even the evacuation of an injured soldier becomes a huge logistical challenge since the only road coming to Kibithu from Tezu is frequently blocked by landslides," says an Indian Army officer, keeping tabs on the PLA troops across the unresolved border in this 'east of the north-east' region.
"If the road is cut off during hostilities, we will not be able to move troops or equipment. The main operational challenge for us here is the lack of roads, bridges and inter-valley connectivity, not military equipment or manpower," he adds. In the entire Lohit Valley sector, for instance, there is no concrete bridge after Hawai, which is 76km south of Kibithu.
Consequently, the Army is forced to make do with rickety foot-suspension bridges over the Lohit river, called Ngi Chu across the LAC, and an optical fibre communication line, which was laid way back in 2003 and has to be "maintained" on a daily basis over a 280-km stretch.
This grim situation is repeated all along the unresolved 4,057-km LAC stretching from Ladakh to Arunachal Pradesh, with India's lack of border military infrastructure only serving to further compound the stark asymmetry with China in terms of military capabilities.