What if there's a war with China? Will it be back to 1962?
In case of a war with China again, it will be back to 1962, when the Indian troops ran away from their positions. While China is mounting its mountain divisions, India is only slowly getting its mountain Corps off the ground. A Mountain Strike Corps (17 Corps) of 90,274 additional soldiers was sanctioned by the UPA-2 in July 2013. A sum of Rs 64,678 crore, spread over an 8-year period, was allotted for the purpose till 2020-21. There was, however, no dedicated funding. Defence PSUs and ordnance factories had not yet stepped up indigenous production to meet the needs of the Mountain Corps. The Army is equipping the new units with its depleted War Wastage Reserves (WWR). About 90 of the 250 units required have been raised so far. The Army believes it has to put its "boots on the ground" in the current situation of lack of cutting-edge technology. Given the long border with China, all the units will have to be put on the ground as soon as possible. The country has two long, treacherous borders with China as well as Pakistan. Besides, the Army has to conduct counter-insurgency operations in Kashmir and the North-East apart from calling out the Army for conflagrations such as the agitation by the Jats. In the 1962 War, the Indian Army was outnumbered, outgunned and outmanoeuvred by the Chinese Army. There are many theories about why the Chinese attacked India in 1962. But, significantly, not much seemed to have been learnt from the War. The Chinese similarly wanted to teach Vietnam a lesson after Hanoi's successful campaign aginst the US colonialists, but the ferocious Vietnamese turned the tables on the Chinese giant. But then the Vietnamese had one of the three greatest generals the world had ever seen in Lee Duc Tho.