Bordering boredom

Indo-China boundary talks cannot progress without a creative spark. India should provide one

Predictably there has been no big breakthrough in the seventh round of talks on the boundary dispute with China this week. Thanks to the diplomatic opaqueness that has surrounded them, few in India or China know or care for the arcana of the Sino-Indian boundary negotiations. That does not necessarily make the case for an early conclusion of these talks. But it does suggest that many of the old slogans that prevented a breakthrough no longer animate the new generation in either country.

One hopes that the calm backwaters of Kerala, the scene for the current round, have helped create a new sense of perspective. Sino-Indian ties have never been as good as they are today. Trade between the two countries is booming and contacts at the high political level, as between the two peoples, have become more intense and productive. This has created a rare setting for the political leaderships in the two capitals to shed their traditional obsessions with territoriality and find innovative solutions to the issues at hand. It is widely known that India prefers a solution built around the status quo on the border which could be legalised into a boundary on the basis of a notional exchange of territorial claims 8212;

India8217;s on Aksai Chin in the western sector and China8217;s on Arunachal Pradesh in the east. Beijing, on the other hand, has emphasised the importance of substantive adjustments in both the sectors. The Chinese are offering major concessions in the western sector if India demonstrates flexibility on the Tawang tract in the east. For traditionalists in India, territorial concessions in Tawang are just inconceivable. If these positions remain inflexible, one can bet there would be little progress for years to come.

One way out for the two sides is to focus on developing creative ideas that skirt around the question of major territorial exchange, and focus on a form of 8220;shared sovereignty8221; that grants each other practical rights 8212; political, economic and ecclesiastical 8212; in the disputed territories. Having just broken the paradigm on the nuclear negotiations with the United States, India must have the confidence to break new ground. Had the political leadership allowed bureaucratic conservatism and hyped up security concerns to prevail in the nuclear diplomacy towards the US, there would have been no deal. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh must now boldly reconceptualise the future of our frontiers with China.