📌 Background & Key Features
- Aim: Enhance physical, digital and people-to-people connectivity; deepen trade; and act as first responder in crises, ensuring India retains primacy in its own strategic backyard.
- Instruments: Lines of Credit (India provides ~50% of its global soft lending to neighbours), SAARC Satellite, connectivity projects (BBIN Motor Vehicles Agreement, Kaladan, cross-border rail/power grids), and rapid disaster/medical diplomacy.
- Challenges: Perceived "Big Brother" attitude (e.g., 2015 Nepal blockade), slow project execution eroding trust, illegal migration/border management, and Chinese economic statecraft offering "no-strings" alternatives.
- 2025-26 stress test: Political upheavals in Nepal, Bangladesh and periodic strain with the Maldives have simultaneously tested the policy’s resilience, even as ties with Bhutan, Sri Lanka and (unexpectedly) Afghanistan strengthened.
📋 Quick Facts
| Policy | Neighbourhood First Officially articulated 2008; re-energised since 2014 |
| Land + maritime | Pakistan, China, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, Bangladesh (land) + Sri Lanka, Maldives |
| neighbours | (maritime) |
| Guiding lineage | Panchsheel (1954) → Gujral Doctrine (1996-97) → Neighbourhood First (2008 onward) |
📊 India’s immediate neighbourhood — land and maritime
📰 Current Affairs Linkage (2025-26)
- ORF year-end review (2025) notes India recorded "hits and misses" in the neighbourhood — pragmatic wins in Sri Lanka/Bhutan/Maldives offset by turbulence in Bangladesh and Nepal.
- India kept diplomatic initiatives with Nepal on hold pending its March 2026 elections, following the Sep 2025 Gen-Z uprising that ousted PM K.P. Sharma Oli.
- The Consultative Committee on External Affairs (chaired by EAM Jaishankar) now regularly briefs Parliament on the neighbourhood, reflecting its rising political salience.
