Talk to the graziers

India's border security lies more in integrating and developing the territory it claims than in agreements with foreign leaders

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech last Friday at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore was, for many, a damp squib. That annual event has traditionally provided a forum for the US-led camp in the Asia-Pacific to lambast growing Chinese aggression and expansionism, and for senior Chinese officials to blandly signal back that Beijing does not care what they feel. This was where, in 2010, Yang Jiechi – then China’s foreign minister and, until April, China’s Special Representative in border talks with India – famously brushed off Singapore's foreign minister with: “China is a big country and other countries are small countries,