Myanmar (India's Neighbours)

📌 Background & Key Features

Strategic gateway: Myanmar is India’s only ASEAN land neighbour, central to the Act East Policy’s connectivity pillar (India-Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral Highway, Kaladan project linking Mizoram to Sittwe port).
Balancing act: India engages the military junta pragmatically for security cooperation (countering Northeast insurgent safe havens) while China deepens its own footprint via the Kyaukpyu deep-sea port and China-Myanmar Economic Corridor.
Security spillover: Myanmar’s civil war and refugee flows into Mizoram/Manipur complicate India’s Northeast security calculus, intersecting with Manipur’s ethnic unrest.

Border	1,643 km land border + maritime boundary; land bridge to ASEAN under Act East
Regime	Military junta (since Feb 2021 coup); ongoing civil conflict with Ethnic Armed Organisations (EAOs)
Key project	Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project (delayed, cost ballooned ~6x)

2025: The arrest of seven foreign nationals under the UAPA drew attention to links between India-based networks and Myanmar-based Ethnic Armed Organisations, highlighting the region’s spillover security risk.
India continues to monitor Myanmar’s planned elections (flagged as a key 2026 watch item) given implications for junta legitimacy and regional stability.
Connectivity bottlenecks (Kaladan Project delays, insurgency-hit highway construction) remain the biggest drag on India’s Act East ambitions via Myanmar.

Border: 1,643 km land border + maritime boundary; land bridge to ASEAN under Act East
Regime: Military junta (since Feb 2021 coup); ongoing civil conflict with Ethnic Armed Organisations (EAOs)
Key project: Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project (delayed, cost ballooned ~6x)

Year	Question	Marks
2005	Write about Military rule in Myanmar.	10
2009	Write in about 50 words about Sino-Myanmar relations.	5