India and Its Neighbours II: Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Maldives, Bhutan and Afghanistan
In each of these relationships India’s structural advantage is proximity and its structural problem is that proximity is also what makes it a domestic issue in the other country. W…
In each of these relationships India’s structural advantage is proximity and its structural problem is that proximity is also what makes it a domestic issue in the other country. Where India has delivered without visibility, it has done best.
This is chapter 56 of the PSIR Optional Notes, from the part on South Asia and the World Order in the Paper II syllabus. The complete book is a free download.
UPSC syllabus
India and South Asia: ethnic conflicts and insurgencies; India’s role in South Asia and regional security.
In one page
- Sri Lanka: the Tamil question, the 1987 Accord and the Thirteenth Amendment, the IPKF experience, the war’s end in 2009, Chinese port investment, and India’s decisive assistance during the 2022 economic collapse.
- The Thirteenth Amendment, which created provincial councils, remains India’s stated benchmark for a political settlement and remains incompletely implemented.
- Myanmar: a 1,600-kilometre border, insurgent sanctuaries, the Kaladan project and the trilateral highway, and India’s engagement with the military authorities since the 2021 coup.
- Ending the Free Movement Regime and fencing the border in 2024 has security logic and cuts across communities that the boundary divides, which Mizoram and Nagaland have opposed.
- Maldives: the 1988 Operation Cactus, the India Out campaign, the 2023 change of government and the withdrawal of Indian military personnel, followed by a substantial financial rescue in 2024.
- Bhutan: India’s closest relationship, revised by the 2007 friendship treaty removing the guidance clause; hydropower as its economic core; and Doklam as the demonstration of its security dimension.
- Afghanistan: development legacy, engagement without recognition since 2021, and Chabahar as the access route.
- The common lesson: durable influence has come from delivering public goods, power, connectivity, credit, health, and the reverses have followed visible interventions in domestic politics.
Sri Lanka
The ethnic question. Sinhala Only in 1956, standardisation in university admissions, and the citizenship legislation of 1948–49 that disenfranchised Indian-origin Tamils created the grievances that produced militancy. Civil war ran from 1983 to May 2009.
India’s involvement. Covert support to Tamil militant groups in the early 1980s; the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord of July 1987, which produced the Thirteenth Amendment devolving power to provincial councils and made Tamil an official language; the deployment of the Indian Peace Keeping Force, which ended in conflict with the LTTE and withdrawal in 1990; and the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991, after which India ceased direct involvement while maintaining the Thirteenth Amendment as its benchmark.
Since 2009. India’s positions: full implementation of the Thirteenth Amendment and provincial elections; accountability and reconciliation, on which India has voted variously at the Human Rights Council; and the livelihood questions of Tamil fishermen and the Katchatheevu issue.
China. Hambantota port, developed with Chinese lending and leased for ninety-nine years in 2017 after debt difficulties, is the standard case in the debt-sustainability debate; Colombo Port City; and the docking of Chinese research vessels, which India has protested and Sri Lanka has periodically restricted.
2022. Sri Lanka’s default and economic collapse produced India’s largest ever assistance to a neighbour, roughly four billion dollars in credit lines, currency swaps and deferred payments, alongside fuel, food and medicine supplies, delivered faster than any other partner. This is the strongest available evidence for the proposition that India’s comparative advantage lies in being the first responder. Subsequent cooperation has covered energy connectivity, renewable projects, digital identity and the resumption of the ferry service.
Myanmar
Interests. A 1,600-kilometre land border with four Indian states; insurgent groups of the North-East using Myanmar territory, which cooperation has intermittently addressed; connectivity as the land bridge to Southeast Asia through the Kaladan project and the India-Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral Highway; energy, with Indian stakes in offshore gas; and the strategic concern of an exclusive Chinese position.
Policy. India shifted in the 1990s from support for the democracy movement to engagement with the military government, on the reasoning that isolation had delivered nothing and had ceded the field to China. After the coup of February 2021 India has continued engagement, called for a return to democracy and the release of detainees, abstained on some multilateral resolutions, and supported ASEAN’s Five-Point Consensus while working with the authorities in practice.
The Free Movement Regime. The arrangement permitting residents within sixteen kilometres of the border to cross without documents recognised that the boundary drawn in 1826 divided communities. Its scrapping in 2024, with fencing announced along the length of the border, was justified by cross-border movement of insurgents, arms and narcotics and by demographic concerns in Manipur. The 2024 paper asked for the implications on the ethno-political situation, and they are substantial: the Chin-Kuki-Mizo communities and the Nagas are divided by the boundary, so the measure severs kinship, trade and marriage networks; Mizoram and Nagaland have formally opposed it; it interacts with the Manipur conflict from 2023 in which the status of Kuki-Zo communities is contested; and it affects the reception of refugees from Myanmar, which Mizoram has continued regardless of central policy. The countervailing case is that an unregulated border in a period of civil war in Myanmar carries real security costs.
Maldives
Strategic weight. Astride the sea lanes carrying a large share of India’s trade and energy, and within the Indian Ocean’s central sea lines.
The record. Operation Cactus in 1988, when Indian forces reversed a coup attempt within hours, remains the reference point for Indian responsiveness. Assistance during the 2004 tsunami and the 2014 Male water crisis, when India airlifted drinking water.
The friction. An India Out campaign centred on the presence of a small number of Indian military personnel operating aircraft gifted for medical evacuation and maritime surveillance; the 2023 election of a government that had campaigned on that platform; the replacement of military personnel by civilian technical teams in 2024; and a diplomatic controversy over remarks by Maldivian officials. India nonetheless extended substantial financial support in 2024, including a currency swap and rollover of treasury bills, and relations subsequently stabilised with agreement on defence and development cooperation.
The lesson. Visible military presence, however benign in function, is politically usable by domestic opponents in a small state; financial and developmental assistance is not. India’s recovery in the Maldives came through the second instrument.
Bhutan
India’s closest relationship. The Treaty of Friendship of 1949 was revised in 2007, removing the provision by which Bhutan agreed to be guided by India in external relations and replacing it with a commitment to cooperate on national interests, which converted a protectorate-like arrangement into a partnership.
Substance. Hydropower is the economic core: Chukha, Kurichhu, Tala and subsequent projects built with Indian assistance, with power exported to India, providing the largest share of Bhutan’s revenue. India is Bhutan’s largest trading partner and development partner, financing a substantial share of its five-year plans. Free trade and free movement operate between the two.
Security. Doklam in 2017, treated in Chapter 49, was a standoff on territory Bhutan claims, and India’s intervention was made on Bhutan’s behalf under their security understanding. Bhutan and China have conducted boundary talks over many rounds and agreed a three-step roadmap in 2021, which India watches closely because any settlement affects the trijunction.
Current. Cooperation has extended to the Gelephu Mindfulness City project, cross-border rail connectivity and digital payments, and hydropower financing terms have been renegotiated as Bhutan’s debt profile became a concern.
Afghanistan
Covered in Chapter 53 and summarised here. India’s development legacy is unusually large for a non-neighbour: the Salma Dam, the Zaranj-Delaram highway, the parliament building, hospitals and scholarships, amounting to some three billion dollars of commitment. Since August 2021 India has maintained a technical presence in Kabul from June 2022, delivered humanitarian assistance including wheat, medicines and vaccines, and engaged at official level without recognition. Its interests are counter-terrorism, access to Central Asia through Chabahar, and preventing exclusive Pakistani or Chinese influence. Its constraint is that development leverage requires a presence that recognition alone can make secure.
Regional security: India’s role
The pattern across all five relationships is worth stating explicitly as the analytical conclusion.
- First responder. Disaster relief, evacuation, pandemic supply and financial rescue are where India’s proximity is an unambiguous asset: Sri Lanka in 2022, the Maldives in 2024, Nepal in 2015, and Vaccine Maitri across the region.
- Public goods over presence. Power, connectivity, credit, health and digital infrastructure generate durable goodwill; visible security presence generates domestic opposition in the partner country.
- The China variable. Every smaller neighbour uses the Chinese option for bargaining leverage. India’s counter has been faster delivery rather than exclusivity demands, which is the more sustainable approach.
- Non-interference in domestic politics. The reverses, Nepal 2015, the Maldives 2023, Bangladesh 2024, all followed perceptions of Indian alignment with one domestic faction.
- Delivery deficit. India’s recurring weakness is the gap between announcement and completion, which Chapter 53’s connectivity projects illustrate.
Where answers lose marks
- Presenting the IPKF as peacekeeping in the ordinary sense. It became a combatant against the LTTE, and the episode’s cost to Indian influence was lasting.
- Omitting the Thirteenth Amendment. It is India’s stated benchmark and the substance of the Tamil political question.
- Treating Hambantota as straightforward debt-trap diplomacy. The lease followed debt difficulties and the account is contested; state it carefully.
- Describing India’s Myanmar policy as endorsement of the junta. It is engagement without endorsement, and the Free Movement Regime decision is contested within India itself.
- Saying the 2007 treaty ended Bhutan’s alignment with India. It removed the guidance clause and replaced it with mutual cooperation, which is a change of form, not of substance.
- Reciting neighbourhood policy without the pattern. First responder, public goods over presence, and non-interference are the transferable lessons.
Asked before
- How does the regime change and political crisis in Myanmar threaten regional security and peace? (2023, Paper II, 15 marks)
- Discuss the implications of the scrapping of the Free Movement Regime with Myanmar by the Indian Government on the complex ethno-political situation. (2024, Paper II, 15 marks)
Answer skeleton
How does the regime change and political crisis in Myanmar threaten regional security and peace? (15 marks, 250 words)
Frame. The crisis is not contained within Myanmar. A 1,600-kilometre border with four Indian states, contested territory with China and Thailand, and maritime access to the Bay of Bengal make it a regional problem.
Threat one, insurgency and arms. Territory controlled by neither the state nor a single authority provides sanctuary; weapons and trained personnel move; North-East insurgent groups have historically used Myanmar territory, and the Manipur conflict from 2023 has been aggravated by cross-border flows.
Threat two, refugees. Displacement into Mizoram, Manipur and Bangladesh, which interacts with local demography and with the unresolved Rohingya situation in Cox’s Bazar.
Threat three, narcotics and trafficking. The Golden Triangle’s production, methamphetamine in particular, and the growth of scam-centre operations run from ungoverned border areas.
Threat four, connectivity. Kaladan and the trilateral highway, on which India’s Act East land bridge depends, are stalled by conflict in Rakhine and Sagaing.
Threat five, strategic. An isolated Myanmar becomes more dependent on China, which extends Chinese access to the Bay of Bengal and reduces India’s room.
Responses and their limits. ASEAN’s Five-Point Consensus is unimplemented and constrained by non-interference; India engages the authorities while calling for restoration of democracy; the Free Movement Regime has been ended and the border is being fenced, which has security logic and severs communities the boundary divides.
Conclude. The crisis converts a domestic breakdown into a regional security problem through five distinct channels, and no available instrument, ASEAN consensus, Western sanctions or Indian engagement, currently addresses more than one of them.
Last-mile revision
- Sri Lanka: Sinhala Only 1956, war 1983–2009; Indo-Sri Lanka Accord July 1987 and the Thirteenth Amendment; IPKF to 1990; Hambantota lease 2017; 2022 collapse and India’s roughly four billion dollars of assistance.
- Myanmar: 1,600 km border; Kaladan and the trilateral highway; policy shift in the 1990s; coup February 2021; Five-Point Consensus; Free Movement Regime ended 2024 and fencing, opposed by Mizoram and Nagaland.
- Maldives: Operation Cactus 1988; 2014 water crisis airlift; India Out campaign; 2023 election and 2024 replacement of military personnel by civilian teams; 2024 financial support.
- Bhutan: 1949 Treaty revised 2007 removing the guidance clause; Chukha, Kurichhu, Tala hydropower; Doklam 2017; Bhutan-China boundary talks and the 2021 three-step roadmap.
- Afghanistan: Salma Dam, Zaranj-Delaram highway, parliament building; technical presence from June 2022; humanitarian assistance; Chabahar as the access route.
- Pattern: first responder, public goods over presence, the China hedging variable, non-interference, and the delivery deficit.
Read the rest. This chapter is one of 58 in the complete PSIR Optional Notes, covering Paper I and Paper II in full — free to download.