Arunachal Pradesh

What's his argument?

He listed a few focal points: the Galwan clash in 2020, ongoing issues in the Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh, and this staggering record trade deficit.

Oh, the $112.6 billion deficit with China in 2025-26.

Exactly.

I may have disagreements with that because it's from the northeast.

It's from Arunachal where nobody in that area would perhaps associate with the Harry Potter character.

But then that is the reason why it got covered by BBC.

It got covered by everyone.

Yeah, and the official focus is on trade and people-to-people engagement.

Okay, but we have to bring up the elephant in the room here, the totally unresolved twenty-twenty border tensions in Arunachal Pradesh.

Right.

Former Foreign Secretary Nirupama Menon Rao was quoted expressing hope for, uh, steady stabilization.

And then s-

And let me tell you, you cross Arunachal Pradesh and then you reach China.

Thank you.

I'm saying.

Just six years back in the summer of 2020.

Eastern Ladakh, some of it also took place in Sikkim and a little bit subsequently in Arunachal.

By that time, Indian army had gotten used to it and they were prepared.

So Chinese units will come, patrols will come, and usually in the past they will just show banners each side and they'll go back.

Guilty as charged.

Swacha is India's easternmost border personnel meeting point, sitting way out in the Kibbutz sector of Arunachal Pradesh.

Spot on.

These talks were led by LT Gen Girish Kalia and his Chinese counterpart, following some recent friction in the Toxing area of the upper Subansiri district.

Now, we are used to hearing about border talks in Ladakh.

I mean, there have been 23 rounds there since the Galwan clash in 2020.

But this is the first senior military talk in months focused specifically on Arunachal Pradesh.

Which really begs the question, why does this matter right now?

Communities used to be better prepared," says Avinash Kumar Chanchal, Deputy Program Director, Greenpeace South Asia.

He adds, "That knowledge and those adaptive measures are no longer helping them." The center approved the National Glacial Lake Outburst Flood Risk Mitigation Project on July twenty-fifth, 2024 for Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim, and Uttarakhand.

It had a financial outlay of one fifty crore rupees.

The Central Water Commission also monitors glacial lakes across the Himalayan River basins using remote sensing techniques.

Now, the Indian-Himalayan region stretches roughly 2,500 kilometers across 13 states and union territories.

And this is from Ladakh in the west, of course, Jammu and Kashmir you can add, to Arunachal Pradesh in the east.

And a global study published in Nature recently estimated that about three million people in India live in areas directly exposed to glacial lake outburst floods.

which apparently is the highest national total anywhere in the world.

In fact, Ladakh showed that a remote lake can release a damaging flood.

A rock ice avalanche or a temporary river blockage could be much, much harder to anticipate.

And finally, number five is Arunachal Pradesh and the upper Brahmaputra system.

This is among the least studied and potentially the most consequential regions.