The past three decades have been so transformative in terms of communication technologies that younger generations may have a real challenge relating to this true narrative about a time when even basic connectivity in India’s border regions was a battle.
Circa 1994: As the district magistrate of West Bengal’s undivided Murshidabad district, sharing a 125-kilometre border with Bangladesh, telephones with subscriber trunk dialling (STD) facilities were few and far between. The only Public Call Office (PCO) facilities were available primarily at important post offices. Therefore, when the Department of Telecommunications announced 16 PCO booths for unemployed youth in Berhampur town—the district headquarters of Murshidabad—there was an overwhelming response, with over a thousand applications.
But the selection process wasn’t simple. The Telephone Advisory Committee members were affiliated with the Congress, which held power at the Centre, while the majority of local legislators and zilla panchayat representatives were from Left Front parties. It required consummate negotiation skills to finalise the 16 beneficiaries. All were expected to make handsome profits—for by then, many male residents had moved to Mumbai, Kerala, and the Gulf for gainful employment and demand for long-distance communication was high.
At the time, sub-divisional towns had no STD facilities, and the 26 block development officers (BDOs) had to depend on the West Bengal Police’s radiogram to send and receive important messages to and from their sub-divisional officers (SDOs) and the district magistrate. Gram pradhans were not authorised to use the police radiograms. The Border Security Force (BSF) had its own communication setup, but a BSF network phone was available only in the DM’s office to keep abreast of the situation on the border.
This was also the year when the Border Area Development Programme (BADP) was extended to India’s eastern frontier after its successful roll-out from 1986-87 for states bordering Pakistan—Jammu & Kashmir, Punjab, Gujarat, and Rajasthan. Initially, the emphasis was on infrastructure to facilitate the deployment of the BSF. But by 1993-94, the scale and scope were expanded: every state with an international border was included, and the ambit was widened to cover socioeconomic aspects such as education, health, agriculture, communication, and other allied sectors.
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A call to action
It was sometime in February 1994 when I received a call on the ‘hotline’ from then state home secretary Manish Gupta (who later became chief secretary of West Bengal and an MP from the Trinamool Congress). He asked whether I, as the DM of Murshidabad, could quickly conceptualise a border area development scheme under the BADP post haste.
By a providential coincidence, at a recently concluded district planning committee meeting, we had dropped a proposal for providing wireless communication to the gram panchayats (GPs) on account of lack of financial resources. The idea had been to improve communication between them and the blocks and zilla panchayats. This, then, was a golden opportunity to revive the proposal and align it with this innovative funding programme—albeit limited to the border GPs and blocks.
The technical proposal was prepared with support from the local National Informatics Centre (NIC) office. Backup batteries had to be procured because of erratic power supply and antennae had to be installed. But by the end of March, we had 86 gram pradhans communicating with each other, and with the blocks and zilla panchayats, about bridges, culverts, absentee teachers, primary healthcare centre staff, milk cooperatives, jute prices, and almost everything under the sun.
In the initial days—before the excitement toned down and it became clear that the wireless system was there to stay—there was a flurry of information that flew back and forth. The gram pradhans of the border villages were more empowered than those in the non-border blocks like Sadar and Kandi, as we could only link the border villages in the first phase.
Of course, by the turn of the century, the now-ubiquitous mobile phone had made its appearance, and within a decade of its launch, the importance of the STD PCO booths was lost forever. This was my tryst with the BADP as a district magistrate, and yours truly got a special commendation from the government for this innovative way of addressing connectivity issues.
Murshidabad was just one of 111 border districts in 16 states and 2 Union territories along the international boundary eligible for grants under the BADP, funded by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA).
This programme aimed to cover all census villages, towns, and semi-urban and urban areas located within 0-10 km (crow-fly/aerial distance) from the first habitation near the international boundary in the 362 border blocks.
Within this core area, the highest priority was to be accorded to those villages identified as ‘strategic’ by the border guarding forces— BSF, Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), and Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB).
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628 Xiaokang vs 663 VVP
It was while deciding upon the priority towns that realisation dawned in the MHA that several frontier villages along the India-Tibet border were facing massive outmigration on account of lack of employment and infrastructure.
Also, in large stretches of ‘normally uninhabited areas’, the civilian footprint was limited to occasional forays for cattle grazing.
Meanwhile, over the last few years—especially after the 2020 Galwan clashes—China has stepped up the establishment of Xiaokang or “well-developed villages” on the border as part of its strategic infrastructure development initiative, particularly along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). There are now 628 Xiaokang villages, with more reportedly being built.
These villages were designed to serve multiple purposes, including civilian settlement and military presence—which is why they have been characterised as ‘dual-use infrastructure’. More significantly, China’s strategy involves a conscious effort to shift the demographic profile of this sparsely populated region by encouraging “people of all ethnic groups to root themselves in the border areas, guard the homeland, and build their hometowns”.
What this means, in effect, is the gradual induction of the Chinese Han population into these regions, thereby interfering with the traditional Tibetan way of life.
India has responded to these Xiaokang villages with its own Vibrant Villages Programme (VVP), announced in the 2022 Union Budget. This centrally sponsored scheme aims to modernise 663 villages along the China-India border in regions such as Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim, and Arunachal Pradesh. However, unlike China, changing the demographic profile is not on India’s agenda.
Instead, India’s strategy is to ensure uninterrupted power, all-weather roads, high-speed internet, youth skill development, organic agriculture, promotion of local arts and crafts, and infrastructure for eco-friendly tourism to help integrate these local economies with larger circuits.
As Prime Minister Narendra Modi put it, India is redefining these frontier settlements as “first villages” rather than the last outposts. Last year, quoting Modi, former Border Management secretary (now J&K chief secretary) Atal Dulloo observed: “We have strived to extend our full support to the development of these villages holistically by laying emphasis on their economy, livelihood, social structure, infrastructure, education, electricity and telecommunications.”
It bears recall that in both 1962 and 1965, the first alerts about border transgressions came from the transhumant graziers and herders in these regions!
Hopefully, the successful implementation of the VVP will give a boost to both the economy and the ecology of these “first villages” of our Republic.
Sanjeev Chopra is a former IAS officer and Festival Director of Valley of Words. Until recently, he was Director, Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration. He tweets @ChopraSanjeev. Views are personal.
(Edited by Asavari Singh)