11th Infantry Brigade was defending Walong under numerous handicaps. There being no road beyond Tezu which is 230 km south. There was a severe shortage of artillery, rations, ammunition, winter clothing and defence stores at Walong.This inscription at a war memorial in Arunachal Pradesh’s sleepy town of Walong explains why the Indian Army was forced to retreat from the eastern-most locations along the McMahon Line during the 1962 India-China war. Over five decades later, concrete roads have been built up to the border.And, now, if the government has its way, railway tracks will be laid up to Tezu and Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh and Leh in Jammu & Kashmir, thereby providing a leg up to mobility of troops and ammunition in the north-eastern state that borders China.“The defence ministry and we have been planning to work together to bring in better [rail] connectivity to the Northeast,” railway minister Suresh Prabhu told ET Magazine in his Rail Bhawan office earlier this week.Last month, defence minister Manohar Parrikar revealed that the Railways would set up a station in Arunachal Pradesh near the India-China border, and a memorandum of understanding (MoU) would be signed between the two ministries to execute the project. China claims Arunachal Pradesh as a part of south Tibet and objects to building of new infrastructure there. India refutes the claim as absurd.

Catching up with the Dragon

As ET Magazine has learnt, the defence ministry may fund four railway projects in the areas bordering India and China totalling a railway line of about 1,400 km that may cost up to Rs 1.4 lakh crore if a simple calculation of Rs 80 crore to Rs 100 crore per km of railway construction in hilly terrain is factored in. The costs may go up depending on the number of tunnels on the route, something that will be known only after detailed surveys and finalisation of alignments.A railway ministry official says on the condition of anonymity that preliminary surveys have been already undertaken on four routes — Murkongselek to Rupai (both in Assam) via Pasighat, Tezu and Parasuramkund in Arunachal Pradesh; Misamari (Assam) to Tawang (Arunachal Pradesh); North Lakhimpur to Silapathar (both Assam) via the t own of Along in Arunachal Padesh; and Bilaspur (Himachal Pradesh) to Leh via Manali.“We are expecting the ministry of defence to release about `345 crore soon for detailed investigations and finalisation of alignments,” says the official. “Money is not any constraint here. The real challenge will be to execute these projects in the Himalayas in a time-bound manner,” says another official in Rail Bhawan.When contacted, Sitanshu Kar, principal spokesperson of the ministry of defence, said he has nothing more to add to what his minister Parrikar had said last month.To be sure, India lags China in building infrastructure, including a rail network, on the Northeast border. An aggressive China has already inched closer to the Indian border in Sikkim when it completed building a 258-km rail line between Lhasa and Shigatse (Xigazê).The Tibetan city of Shigatse is to the north of Sikkim. But what seems to have worried New Delhi more is China beginning surveys for a new 435 km-long railway line from Lhasa to Nyingchi, a small town bordering Arunachal Pradesh.Monika Chansoria, senior fellow and head of the China-study programme at the Centre for Land Warfare Studies in the Capital, says New Delhi’s decision to expand the railway network to the India-China border is a welcome, albeit dilatory move.“The already operational infrastructure on the Chinese side including rail links has added to the strategic and tactical mobility, given that the transportation capabilities of the PLA [China’s military] were rather limited until a few years back, remaining heavily reliant on ground assets, and primarily tactical in reach,” she says.

China’s hyperactive infrastructure building on their side of the border has forced India to take corrective steps on its own hills.



For example, Arunachal Pradesh, the largest among the eight Northeastern states, and a state that borders Bhutan (160 km), China (1,080 km) and Myanmar (440 km), has less than 15 km of railway lines till date.



So, it’s not surprising that three out of four proposed rail projects, which are likely to be funded by the ministry of defence, will be rolled out in the strategically located Arunachal Pradesh.



One of those lines, the 378 km-long Misamari (Assam)-Tawang (Arunachal Pradesh) one, for example, will be a key line strategically, as it would cater to the mobility of the armed forces stationed at a base near Misamari (near Tezpur, Assam) that’s headed by a lieutenant general, an officer just one rank below the Army General.

This may be one of the very few times that the defence ministry is set to join hands with the Railways to lay tracks.The last time this happened was for the Sakri-Nirmali rail line, a Rs 350-crore project in Bihar that provides an alternative route to Northeast India; the project was partly funded by the ministry of defence during the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA government.The project included construction of a rail-cumroad bridge on the Kosi river at Nirmali, connecting Darbhanga in Bihar with New Jalpaiguri, a gateway to Assam and the Northeast. No deadline has been set as yet for the current projects.The preliminary surveys have been undertaken and are under examination, according to railway officials looking into this matter.“The projects are at an advanced stage, and work will formally start once an MoU is signed between the defence ministry and the railways”, says one of the officials.Suresh Prabhu, minister of railways, sheds light on the projects in the Northeast.Our idea is to bring in total rail connectivity to the state capitals of the Northeast. We have progressed well in that direction. And for the first time we had an emotional connectivity and not just physical connectivity with the Northeast when we held the Railway Week there (in Guwahati in April). The Railway Week was never organised in that region before. Imagine, it has been happening for the last 70 years, but has never been held in the Northeast.The defence ministry and we have been thinking about working together to bring in even better (rail) connectivity to the Northeast. I will give details at an appropriate time. We (Railways) are already near Itanagar (the capital city of Arunachal Pradesh). We will definitely do work on our own as well as work with the ministry of defence to build a railway network in the region.(As railway minister) I have travelled to a number of places in the region. Recently, I went to Arunachal Pradesh, up to Tawang (bordering China).