Examine the institutional architecture — military and diplomatic — through which India and China manage disputes along the Line of Actual Control.

The India-China boundary remains undelimited, with the Line of Actual Control (LAC) managed not by a treaty-based dispute settlement body but by a layered set of confidence-building mechanisms. The Galwan clash of June 2020 both stress-tested and expanded this architecture, which today operates on parallel military and diplomatic tracks.

Military track

• Border Personnel Meeting (BPM) Points provide local, tactical-level liaison to defuse face-offs before escalation; the Vacha-Damai point in Arunachal Pradesh is one such venue [1].
• Corps Commander-level talks form the senior operational tier, institutionalised after 2020 and running through more than twenty rounds — the 11th (April 2021) to the 17th (December 2022) and beyond — historically at Chushul-Moldo in eastern Ladakh [2].
• The mechanism is now widening geographically: in September 2026 the first-ever Eastern Sector Corps Commander meeting was held in Arunachal Pradesh, led by the GOC, 3 Corps, amid tension in the Taksing area of Upper Subansiri [1].
• Border management is multi-agency: the delegation included an Inspector-General of the ITBP, reflecting the Army-paramilitary layering along the frontier [1].

Diplomatic track

• The Working Mechanism for Consultation & Coordination (WMCC), a foreign-office-led channel, reviews the LAC situation and cross-border cooperation; its 33rd meeting was held in Beijing on 25 March 2025 [3].
• Above it sits the Special Representatives dialogue on the boundary question, whose December 2024 decisions the WMCC was tasked with operationalising [3].
• Summit diplomacy supplies political momentum — the Arunachal talks preceded India's hosting of the BRICS Summit (11-13 September 2026) [1].

The architecture has proved effective at managing incidents but not at settling the boundary, since it rests on political goodwill rather than binding obligation. Deepening it — through faster-responding local mechanisms, sector-wise Corps Commander channels and eventual LAC clarification — alongside sustained border infrastructure, offers the surest path to durable peace and tranquillity.