NEW DELHI: The standoff due to incursion by PLA (People’s Liberation Army) troops into Depsang area of Ladakh in 2013 lasted three weeks but had a lasting effect on India about the need to prepare better to counter Chinese aggression along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). At that time, there was just one Army division, and that too a truncated one, looking after the eastern Ladakh frontier. Air Force deployments were mostly aimed at catering to Siachen. Infrastructure in the forward areas was poor, which was also the case in Arunachal Pradesh, along the eastern frontier with China. But now, a decade later, things have changed dramatically, be it infrastructure or troop deployment, as StratNews Global Editor-in-Chief Nitin A. Gokhale explains in this episode of ‘Simply Nitin’.
