what is india up to guys ??? India border weapons plan revived By Subir Bhaumik, BBC News, Calcutta India's Special Services Bureau (SSB) has revived a programme to provide weapons training to youths in border villages after a gap of seven years. The SSB is a para-military agency now responsible for guarding the country's borders with Nepal and Bhutan, It was formed in 1963 after India's humiliating defeat in the 1962 border war with China. Its brief was to train border populations for behind-the-lines partisan warfare. Ten days In 2001, the SSB was placed under the Home Ministry and given the job to guard India's borders with Nepal and Bhutan and told to discontinue its earlier role of training border populations. But the programme has now been renewed. The SSB instructors are now providing weapons training and basic combat skills to 15 young men at Ranidanga, 15 kms from West Bengal's northern town of Siliguri. These young men hail from Indian border districts with Nepal. SSB sector commander HC Pandey says the training will last for 10 days. He said there were plans to provide weapons training and basic combat skills to nearly 400 youths at Ranidanga. "We want the border populations to be part of our effort to defend the national frontiers effectively," Commander Pandey said. SSB officials say that the border populations would not be provided with weapons after the training in peace time. The idea, they say, is to create a trained pool of people who would be motivated to co-operate with security forces and fight alongside them, if necessary. It is not yet clear whether the SSB will only train border populations in areas it is now deployed - along Nepal and Bhutan - or whether they will extend their programmes to other border regions, as they did before.