INDIA, US DIFFER OVER N-ACCORD

• Differences between India and the US over the implementation of the historic civil nuclear energy accord came to the fore at the energy dialogue held between the two countries
• The Indian side at the dialogue was led by: Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia
• The US team was headed by: Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz
• This was the first high-level contact between the two countries after the unsavoury incident in December in which Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade was arrested in New York in a visa fraud case, leading to tension between them.
• The US insisted that India bring its civil nuclear liability law in line with international conventions while New Delhi hoped a way could be found to address Washington’s concerns within the ambit of the existing act.

FORWARD POLICY

•  Military circles in India often debate that the India-China conflict was caused due to wrong forward policy and its wrong implementation by India.
•  The report uploaded by Neville Maxwell narrates how it all started on August 26, 1959, when the Chinese overran an Indian Army post at Longju in North East Frontier Agency (NEFA) in October and in the same year; a post at Kongka la in Eastern Ladakh had been overrun. Both times China claimed the posts were in Chinese territory even though these were inside the Indian Territory.
•  India responded to Chinese actions with a forward policy. The 3,488-km-long boundary is not demarcated and once China invaded Tibet in the late 1950s, a peaceful border had become live. The dispute of boundary demarcation is pending since 1846 when the British signed the Treaty of Amritsar with the Dogra rulers of Jammu and Kashmir and went about demarcating the eastern limits of Ladakh. The Tibetans, who were sometimes backed by the Chinese, stalled the demarcation in five separate attempts made by the British between 1846 and 1914.
•  India, in 1961, advocated a policy which entailed patrolling as far forward as possible from India’s present positions. This was to be done with a view to establishing additional posts that would then stop the Chinese and dominate the heights. The report raises the question if India was in a position to implement the ‘forward policy’ with the kind of resources and poor logistics it had. The report blames the Army headquarters of ‘deliberately’ carrying out the policy in a wrong manner without the government backing.