India will be infra-ready along China border in 5 years: BRO DG Lt Gen Raghu Srinivasan

Lt Gen Raghu Srinivasan, PVSM, VSM and Director General, Border Roads Organisation (BRO), has said that India is on the way to boosting infrastructure along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), adding that the country would reach a position it aspires to be in over the next four to five years.

Speaking on The Statesman Talk podcast with Ananya Dasgupta, Lt Gen Srinivasan said the catch-up was just a question of time.

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The BRO chief, while answering a question on border roads during the exclusive interview, acknowledged that China was building quality infrastructure along the LAC. “Everyone asks this question about China… China is building very good roads. There is no two ways about that.”

However, he also sought to explain why China was able to build infrastructure faster than India, which continues to face geographical challenges.

“What China is building is in the Tibet Autonomous Region. It is a flat table land. They don’t have the ascent and the deep valley gorges which are normal in the Himalayan region. The Chinese area is in the rain shadow. While our border is on the Himalayan watershed. The watershed by definition means that no moisture gets across it. So the amount of rainfall and the amount of snow which takes place across in Tibet is negligible as it is a desert after all. Building (infrastructure) there is a little easier,” he said.

|India will be infra-ready along China border in 5 years – BRO DG Lt Gen Raghu Srinivasan.

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Lt Gen Srinivasan, however, added that despite the challenges, India has been employing the best available technology to match up to China’s infrastructure along the border.

“We have made an effort to ensure that the best of technology that we have in the country, whether at Nagpur, Delhi, Chennai, or any other place in the hinterland, reaches the borders. Whether we are talking about rock-cutting, excavation, or surfacing of the roads, we are looking at getting better and better in whatever we are doing,” the top BRO official further said.

He also pointed out that while BRO carries out a majority of the infrastructure work on its own, it has also started to engage contractors for the job to enhance its capacity.

“We are the only government agency construction agency which works departmentally and that has been our forte. But we know that we need to do more and for that we’ve been empowered by the government to go in for larger contracts. The Ministry of Defence is pushing for it and we are doing as much as we can do. I must say that even our large contractors are also bringing better machinery, better technology to get the work done along the border,” he said.

“What we see in terms of the catch-up that we are playing, it’s just a question of time. I think in about three, four or five years, we would have achieved the levels that we need to be at,” the BRO chief added.

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