There is no peace without border agreement with China: Army Chief

Ground Report | New Delhi: border agreement with China; Indian Army Chief MM Naravane on Thursday said incidents along the border with China would continue until a long-term solution in the form of a border agreement between the two countries.

Speaking at the 116th Annual Session of the PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry, General Naravane said it is important for the armed forces to build capabilities, which is a regular and continuous process. “For us, this translates into maintaining the right proportion between the state-of-the-art, contemporary, and legacy systems on our list. With the cycle of new and disruptive technologies getting smaller and faster, avoiding technological obsolescence is a major challenge,” he said.

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“There are still archaic rules and procedures that defy logic and differ from modern best practices. This needs to be addressed,” he said. While the emphasis is on ease of doing business, he called on the industry to "proactively pursue reforms". Processes that do not match contemporary times and our vision of the future should "be ruthlessly swayed to modern best practices", he said.

“The L1 system is one such legacy of the colonial era which has lost its relevance in the system which emphasized on indigenisation. After all, why does price decide our choices, when money is destined to be pumped back into the domestic economy. The time has come for us to focus on quality and adopt the T1 methodology as per our capacity development aspirations.

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Indian and Chinese armies have been stationed on the border since the standoff in eastern Ladakh last year. In June last year, soldiers of the two countries clashed in Galwan Valley, in which 20 Indian Army personnel were martyred and at least 4 Chinese soldiers were killed.

He said such incidents would continue to happen until they were resolved for a long time and this could be resolved through boundary settlement. This is necessary for lasting peace on the northern (China) border.

On Wednesday, China accused India of continuing the forward policy. Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying, in a reply to India, said that the Indian side has long continued its 'forward policy', and illegally crossed the LAC to encroach on Chinese territory, which Tension in the China-India border situation is the root cause.

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