SARAH MCCAMMON, HOST:
India and China are in a race to populate their long border in the Himalayas. The race began after China built hundreds of villages along the disputed border with India and paid people to move there. NPR's Omkar Khandekar has been to the Indian side of the border.
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OMKAR KHANDEKAR, BYLINE: The Gnathang village is in a scenic valley of grazing yaks and glacial lakes surrounded by the snowcapped Himalayas. This place in India's northeast is dotted with army camps with slogans of military glory scrawled on their walls. There is a temple for a soldier who had died on patrol.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTIST: (Singing in non-English language).
KHANDEKAR: His ghost is said to keep an eye over his fellow soldiers. Those who get drowsy on their watch, well, he smacks them awake. They need to be on their toes because this is a border region where Indian and Chinese soldiers have clashed, most recently in 2017. This is a report from news channel Times Now at the time.
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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: The troops, both sets of troops, in fact, just 50 meters away from each other. As we understand, 3,000 troops on either side, which makes it a very tense situation.
KHANDEKAR: But for residents, the bigger conflict is with nature. Winters here are harsh. Eggs and onions turn rock solid. There is no running water. The power goes off for days. And the internet? Forget about it. And that's why the village chief, Sonam Bhutia, felt seen when he heard a speech by India's finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman.
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NIRMALA SITHARAMAN: Border villages with sparse population, limited connectivity and infrastructure often get left out from the development gains.
KHANDEKAR: She promised investment in hundreds of border villages under what she called...
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SITHARAMAN: A new Vibrant Villages Programme.
KHANDEKAR: ...The Vibrant Villages Programme.
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SITHARAMAN: The activities will include construction of village infrastructure, housing, tourist centers, road connectivity and support for their livelihood generation.
KHANDEKAR: That speech was in 2022. Since then, Chief Bhutia says all his village received is...
SONAM BHUTIA: (Non-English language spoken).
KHANDEKAR: ...One solar-powered street light. And it broke down in a month.
BHUTIA: (Non-English language spoken).
KHANDEKAR: He accuses officials of corruption. That's why he says only a third of his village's population live there - a total of 700 people. Similar migration across India's 2,100-mile border with China has emptied hundreds of villages. In contrast, Chinese state media says between 2018 and 2022, Beijing built at least 624 villages near the border areas. The combination of China's building spree and the emptying of India's border villages worry security analysts, like Colonel Vinayak Bhat. He has worked as a satellite analyst with the Indian Army. He says at least 10 of these Chinese-built villages are in the disputed areas.
VINAYAK BHAT: They keep claiming, OK, these are civilians who have come in and occupied those areas. So if they have come in, what do you do? You can't kill them. So you have to have talks, and that, they are taking advantage of.
KHANDEKAR: Bhat calls this the salami-slicing tactic. He says that's why reviving India's border villages is crucial. But the progress so far has been, well, insufficient. Konchok Stanzin is a former Indian local legislator from the Himalayan territory of Ladakh. He says India doesn't plan its infrastructure projects the way the Chinese do. During a visit to the Indian village of Demchok a few years ago, he saw it himself, right across the border.
KONCHOK STANZIN: (Non-English language spoken).
KHANDEKAR: He says, "when Chinese authorities build a road, they bring along power lines, too. But in India, when they build a road, they dig it up for cables, then dig it up again for plumbing works."
STANZIN: (Non-English language spoken).
KHANDEKAR: He says, "in the time it takes India to lay the groundwork for a project, China completes the project." India's interior ministry did not respond to NPR's requests for an interview. But Indra Hang Subba, a legislator from Sikkim, says the delays are often because of India's democratic system.
INDRA HANG SUBBA: If China wants to do one thing, they will do it. You don't like it? You don't be there. But in India, we do things with the consensus of the people. So the pace obviously would be a little slower.
KHANDEKAR: It's why, he says, it took three years to get work sanctioned for 40 projects in his Sikkim constituency, even though these projects would help India's national security.
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KHANDEKAR: Even those residents who are returning wish the Indian state would hurry up. Three years ago, Pema Sherpa quit her job in Delhi and returned to her hometown Kupup, in Sikkim, to look after her mother. The inadequate infrastructure, she says, is making her life frustrating.
PEMA SHERPA: Even my siblings, they don't prefer staying here because of issues like connectivity, network, internet. To want to people come here, work, establish themselves, I think these basics are needed.
KHANDEKAR: Because Sherpa says, for most residents, their main challenge is not China, it's getting their own government to govern. Omkar Khandekar, NPR News, Gnathang.
(SOUNDBITE OF MARISA ANDERSON'S "HESITATION THEME AND VARIATION BLUES") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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