India Tries to Catch up

As Prime Minister Narendra Modi heads to China this weekend, he will be conscious of the fact that apart from the burgeoning trade deficit, the gap between India and China in military terms is also huge and therefore any talk about equivalence between these two large neighbours, is just that: talk.

A couple of decades of sheer neglect of the military as well as infrastructure development along the northern frontiers means that Indian military planners are now struggling to play catch up. Fortunately, after years of neglecting the defence along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), the Indian army and the air force have recalibrated their strategy, giving a hard push to improving its war-fighting capabilities against its more powerful neighbour.