Framing the neighbourhood: land, sea and region

Detail

1. Who counts as a "neighbour"?

• Land neighbour (the traditional view): a country that shares a land boundary with India. This is the older and narrower way of drawing the neighbourhood.
• North-west: Pakistan and Afghanistan.
• North: China (the Tibet region), Nepal and Bhutan.

• East: Bangladesh and Myanmar.

• Maritime neighbour (the wider view): a country joined to India by a shared sea, even if there is no land border between them (defined in full in Section 3).

• Region: a group of neighbouring countries that work together. They can be linked by land, by sea or by both.
• Ancient links show that the neighbourhood is old. Place names travelled with traders, priests and stories across the Bay of Bengal.
• Dvaraka (Gujarat coast) → Dvaravati, an early kingdom in present-day Thailand.
• Ayodhya (Uttar Pradesh) → Ayutthaya, a historic royal capital of Thailand.
• The lesson: the sea joined India to South-East Asia long before today's borders were drawn.

2. India's land boundary

• Land boundary: the line on land where India's territory ends and a neighbour's territory begins.
• Length: 15,106.7 km, shared with seven countries (MHA, Department of Border Management) [2]. (NCERT Class 7: "over 15,100 km".)
• The terrain changes all along the boundary. It crosses:
• deserts (the Thar, on the Rajasthan–Gujarat border with Pakistan);
• marshes (the Rann of Kachchh, Gujarat);
• plains and river valleys (the Ganga–Brahmaputra delta, on the border with Bangladesh);
• forests and hills (the north-east, on the border with Myanmar);
• high mountains (the Himalaya and Karakoram, on the border with China).

Rank	Neighbour	Length (km, MHA) [2]	Indian states/UTs along it	Direction
1	Bangladesh	4,096.7	West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura, Mizoram	East
2	China	3,488	Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh	North
3	Pakistan	3,323	Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab, Jammu & Kashmir, Ladakh	West/North-west
4	Nepal	1,751	Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Sikkim	North
5	Myanmar	1,643	Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram	East
6	Bhutan	699	Sikkim, West Bengal, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh	North-east
7	Afghanistan	106	Ladakh (Gilgit-Baltistan, held by Pakistan)	North-west

• The longest frontier is with Bangladesh (this is the Class 11 MCQ answer). China and Pakistan come next.
• Afghanistan's 106 km is a claimed border.
• The line runs through Gilgit-Baltistan. India claims this area as part of the Union Territory of Ladakh, but Pakistan holds it.
• It meets Afghanistan at the Wakhan Corridor, a thin strip of Afghan land squeezed between Tajikistan to the north and Pakistan to the south. The corridor reaches east to China.

• Result: India and Afghanistan have no land border they can use in practice.

• Who manages the border: the MHA's Department of Border Management builds fences, floodlighting, border roads, Border Out Posts (BOPs) and Company Operating Bases (COBs). It also puts up technology-based surveillance along the borders with Pakistan, Bangladesh, China, Nepal, Bhutan and Myanmar [2].

3. Maritime neighbours

• Maritime neighbour: a country that is linked to India by a shared sea, even when it has no land border with India.
• Immediate island neighbours: Sri Lanka and the Maldives are India's two island neighbours (NCERT Class 11).
• Sri Lanka lies south-east of Tamil Nadu. It is separated from India by the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait.

• Maldives is a chain of coral islands (atolls) in the Arabian Sea. It lies south of the Lakshadweep islands.

• The wider ring: seen "from a high-altitude satellite", the following countries are also maritime neighbours:

• across the Arabian Sea: Iran and Oman;

• across the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea: Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia.

• Shared maritime boundaries: India has sea boundaries with Sri Lanka, Maldives, Indonesia, Thailand, Myanmar, Bangladesh and Pakistan (7 countries).

• Indonesia and Thailand are neighbours only by sea. They touch India through the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

• Myanmar, Bangladesh and Pakistan are neighbours by both land and sea.

• India's coastline is now officially longer.

• In 2025 it was re-measured as 11,098.81 km, up from 7,516.6 km [7]. (NCERT Class 11: 7,516.6 km, mainland and islands together.)
• The National Hydrographic Office and the Survey of India did the work using GIS software and high-resolution data on the High-Water Line (the line the sea reaches at high tide). Better data → more bends and inlets captured → a longer measured coast [7].
• The new length was announced by a Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways circular of 29 April 2025. It helps India manage its territorial waters and EEZ (Exclusive Economic Zone: the sea area up to 200 nautical miles from the coast where only India may use the fish, oil and minerals) [7].

4. Gulf vs strait (the Sri Lanka case)

Feature	Meaning	Example near India
Gulf	A large arm of the sea that cuts deep into land	Gulf of Mannar, between southern Tamil Nadu and north-west Sri Lanka, south of Rameswaram
Strait	A narrow waterway that joins two seas	Palk Strait, between Tamil Nadu and the Jaffna area of Sri Lanka; it links the Bay of Bengal with the Palk Bay and Gulf of Mannar side

• Between the two lies a chain of shoals called Adam's Bridge (Ram Setu). It makes the water there too shallow for large ships.

5. Regionalism and regional groupings

• Regionalism: neighbouring countries working together for peace, stability and shared progress, for example through trade, transport links and help during disasters.

SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation)

• Founded: 8 December 1985 in Dhaka, with 7 members: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Maldives.
• Afghanistan joined in 2007, making 8 members.
• Secretariat: Kathmandu (Nepal).
• Stalled: no summit has been held since 2014.
• India–Pakistan tensions → the 2016 Islamabad summit was called off → SAARC has stayed largely inactive since then.

Other groupings

Grouping	Year	Members / focus	Note
BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation)	1997	7 states around the Bay of Bengal: Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand [3]	Links South Asia with South-East Asia, and leaves out Pakistan
IORA (Indian Ocean Rim Association)	1997	Countries on the rim of the Indian Ocean	Ocean-wide cooperation (trade, maritime safety, the blue economy)
Colombo Security Conclave	—	India, Sri Lanka, Maldives and other Indian Ocean partners	Security cooperation at sea (detail in polity's india-external-relations)

• BIMSTEC becomes a formal organisation.
• The 5th BIMSTEC Summit (Colombo, 30 March 2022) adopted the BIMSTEC Charter [4].

• The Charter entered into force on 20 May 2024, after the required ratifications. This turned BIMSTEC from a loose grouping into a regional organisation [3].

• The 6th BIMSTEC Summit was held in 2025 [5].

6. Border villages: development as border management

• Border Area Development Programme (BADP): an MHA scheme that builds roads, schools, health centres and other basic facilities in villages close to the international border.
• Vibrant Villages Programme (VVP-I): a Centrally Sponsored Scheme (a scheme paid for jointly by the Centre and the states) approved on 15 February 2023 [6][8].
• Coverage: villages in 46 blocks of 19 districts along the northern border, in Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Uttarakhand and the UT of Ladakh [6][8].
• Outlay: ₹4,800 crore for 2022-23 to 2025-26 [6].
• 662 villages were picked first: Arunachal Pradesh 455, Himachal Pradesh 75, Uttarakhand 51, Sikkim 46, Ladakh 35 [6].
• Why it matters: better living conditions → people stay in their home villages → out-migration is reversed → empty border areas fill again, which improves border security [6].

Prelims Hooks

• India's land border is 15,106.7 km (MHA), shared with 7 countries. (NCERT: "over 15,100 km".)
• Order by border length, longest to shortest: Bangladesh > China > Pakistan > Nepal > Myanmar > Bhutan > Afghanistan.
• Shortest border: Afghanistan (106 km). It is claimed only, running through Pakistan-held Gilgit-Baltistan to the Wakhan Corridor.
• India's two island neighbours are Sri Lanka and Maldives. Trap: Indonesia and Thailand are maritime neighbours, but they are not counted as "island neighbours" in NCERT.
• India and Sri Lanka are separated by the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait. A gulf cuts deep into land; a strait is a narrow passage joining two seas.
• Countries sharing both land and maritime boundaries with India: Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar.
• SAARC: 8 December 1985, Dhaka; secretariat in Kathmandu; 8th member Afghanistan (2007).
• The BIMSTEC Charter was adopted in Colombo (2022) and came into force on 20 May 2024. BIMSTEC has 7 members and does not include Pakistan or Maldives.
• VVP-I (2023) covers 5 northern border states/UTs. Arunachal Pradesh has the most villages (455 of 662).
• India's coastline was revised to 11,098.81 km (2025), up from 7,516.6 km.

Mains Points

• Varied border terrain means varied border problems:
• riverine and delta stretches on the Bangladesh border → shifting river channels and hard-to-fence land → illegal migration and smuggling;
• high, snowbound Himalayan stretches with China → border lines that are not agreed and hard to watch;

• the open borders with Nepal and Bhutan → easy movement of people, but also a risk of misuse.

• From "land" to "sea" neighbourhood:

• Sri Lanka, Maldives and the Indian Ocean ring (Indonesia, Thailand and others) widen India's strategic space;

• the revised coastline (11,098.81 km, 2025) improves the data for managing territorial waters and the EEZ.

• Regional groupings: with SAARC stalled since 2016, India has shifted its energy to BIMSTEC (a Charter-based organisation since 2024), IORA and the Colombo Security Conclave. This links the Bay of Bengal and Indian Ocean geography to India's Neighbourhood First and Act East goals.

• Development as border security: BADP and the Vibrant Villages Programme treat empty, migrating border villages as a security gap. Roads, power, telecom and tourism are used to keep people living in fragile Himalayan border areas.