Families pay final tributes as bravehearts laid to rest
nJAMSHEDPUR/KOLKATA/BHOPAL: When Ganesh Handsa, 22, returned home in Jharkhand’s West Singhbhum in February for a holiday, he promised to help his family build a two-brick room house for them. Handsa, who was among the soldiers killed in the violent face-off with Chinese troops in Ladakh on Monday, was the sole bread-earner for the impoverished family that lives in a two-room thatched mud house.
Six of the 20 soldiers killed in Ladakh were from the country’s most backward and poorest parts in West Bengal, Jharkhand, Odisha and Chhattisgarh. The villages of some of them do not have even basic facilities like piped drinking water.
Ganesh Handsa’s brother, Dinesh, said the local administration overnight built a road to bring his body in their Bandhdih Tollah village. “My brother’s death has ensured that our village now has a road,” Dinesh Handsa said. But he added Ganesh’s dream of building a concrete house for the family of six remains unfulfilled. “When he came in February, he promised to send money to build two brick rooms for us. With him, the dream is also gone,” he said.
Around 500 km away, the family of another soldier, Rajesh Orang, 26, killed in Ladakh, lives in a single-storey house in West Bengal’s Birbhum. “The old house needs restoration. I do not know whether the family without their only earning member will be able to repair their home now,” said Ritesh Orang, a relative.
He said that the only source of drinking water for close to 200 families in the village is a handpump and a narrow lane connects it to the main road about five km away. “So, the body could be brought only to the main road from where people carried it to the village,” Orang said.
Ruling Trinamool Congress legislator Asish Banerjee visited Orang’s home on Thursday and assured all help to the family. The village of Bipul Roy, 26, another soldier killed in Ladakh, in West Bengal’s Alipurduar district has electricity but no concrete road.
The construction of a road to sepoy Deepak Kumar’s Farenda village in Madhya Pradesh was announced in 2017. “Chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has directed officials to complete the road fast,” said Ashish Singh, a resident of village. “We will name the road after Deepak,” he said.
Kurretola in Chhattisgarh’s Kanker district, where sepoy Ganesh Ram Kunjam was from, got a road under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana last year. His friend Surya Nevendra said Kunjam was able to build a concrete house last year.
Two facts stand out from the present face-off: the People Liberation Army (PLA) encroachment across the LAC in Galwan Valley and in the disputed area of Fingers, North of Pangong Tso, has been a well-planned military activity; and military-level dialogue and understanding on the LAC has no sanctity for PLA. This military action has eroded whatever confidence was created with China at the military level, and trust at diplomatic and political levels.
China under President Xi Jinping is committed to retake all territories it perceives to have belonged to China in the past.
As per past practices in the Demchok, Depsang, Chumar areas in Ladakh and in Doklam, the effort at military and diplomatic levels was to defuse and disengage. This has been the government’s
While the armed forces have to be prepared for any military escalation, it is for the Cabinet Committee on Security to consider wider geopolitical and strategic aspects and then give further directions. I think the government will now explore diplomatic and political level possibilities to get the encroachments vacated
No. The Pakistani military and political objectives in Kargil were much larger. It became a limited war situation. The Chinese intrusion in Ladakh, unless it escalates further, can’t be compared to Kargil. Given the complexity and high-level bilateral and multilateral interaction (including security) between India and China, the stakes in any India-china conflict, whether large-scale or limited, will be much higher.