Syllabus section –Internal security

Why in news?

Since the Ladakh stand-off between the Indian and Chinese armies in May, Arunachal Pradesh has been pushing for the ambitious Frontier Highway project along the “India-Tibet border” for facilitating faster movement of troops if a war-like situation arises.

About

• It is also called as the Arunachal Frontier Highway and Mago-Thingbu–Vijaynagar Border Highway.

• The 2,000-kilometre-long (1,200 mi) road follows the McMahon Line,[2][3] the international border between India and China

• The highway along the China border would accompany the Trans-Arunachal Highway (through the middle) and the Arunachal East-West Corridor (in the foothills along the Assam border) as major highways spanning the whole state, pursuing the Look East connectivity concept.

• The highway will pass through the BCIM Economic Corridor proposed by the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Forum for Regional Cooperation (BCIM Forum),[1][3] a multi-mode corridor that includes a highway from Calcutta in India's West Bengal state to Kunming in China's Yunnan province

• The highway will cross the Dibang Wildlife Sanctuary, which may raise environmental issues.

Need to Establish

Various sources in the Government of India and media have mentioned the following reasons to build the highway:

 

• Highway will generate employment and increase tourism in these hard-to-reach areas.

• Highway will check Chinese incursions into Indian territory.

• China has built an extensive road and railway network on its side, posing a security risk to India as the region is relatively inaccessible on the Indian side.

Source- The Hindu