As per the data made available by telecom ministry in Parliament, there are no mobile towers installed within 10 kilometre distance of the India-China border in Arunachal Pradesh. The data shared recently by Telecom Minister Manoj Sinha is glaring example of the government of India’s failure to develop the border areas. While 1,373 mobile towers has been installed along the India-Bangladesh border, 48 on the India-Bhutan border and 90 around the India-Myanmar border no tower has been installed on the India-China border. This is happening despite the fact that Indo-China border is more sensitive and has witnessed constant incursions by the Chinese army.
In the last few years Chinese has been aggressively increasing their activities along the Mac Mohan line which divides both the nation. Incidents like Doklam and constant incursion into Indian territories in Arunachal Pradesh and Ladakh constantly remind us the threat posed by the dragon. While Chinese have massively upgraded infrastructures including road, air, telecom etc on their side of border, the Indians are yet to wake up. Majority of border areas still do not have proper road connectivity. Lack of modern facilities has forced the people to migrate from border areas to the urban areas. This has created opportunities for the Chinese to carry out incursion without any fear. Due to lack of road and hostile terrain, the army and other security forces are not able to reach all the places to carry out patrolling. The villagers living along the international border used to be the first line of defence and source of information for the army. Now even that source is drying up due to migration of villagers. Both government of India as well as state government needs to really pull up socks before it’s too late.