Management of Indian border disputes – a complex task

Lines Drawn by Others, Held by Us

On the night of 15 June 2020, in the Galwan valley of eastern Ladakh, Indian and Chinese soldiers fought with stones, clubs and bare hands at an altitude of nearly fourteen thousand feet. Twenty Indian soldiers died in a clash in which, under agreements meant to keep the peace, not a single shot was fired. The episode captured the strange nature of India's frontiers. They are lines drawn, often vaguely, by colonial cartographers, claimed differently by neighbours, crossed by kin, smugglers and rivers, and guarded at enormous human cost. India shares about 15,100 kilometres of land border with seven countries, and several stretches remain contested or ill-defined. Managing India's border disputes is complex because each frontier is at once a legacy of history, a challenge of geography, a test of diplomacy, a problem of internal security and a home to people, and no single instrument can address all five.

The complexity begins with history. Most of India's boundaries were drawn by the British for imperial convenience, not by the people who lived along them. The McMahon Line, agreed at the Simla Convention of 1914, was never accepted by China, which today claims Arunachal Pradesh and holds Aksai Chin. The Radcliffe Line of 1947 was drawn in five weeks by a lawyer who had never visited India, leaving villages divided and riverine stretches undefined. The princely state of Jammu and Kashmir became a contested inheritance, with the ceasefire line of 1949 hardening into the Line of Control under the Simla Agreement of 1972. Inherited ambiguity means that India often manages not borders but rival interpretations of them.

Geography compounds the problem. The boundary with China runs through the high Himalaya, where glaciers, passes and the absence of a mutually agreed Line of Actual Control allow patrols to meet face to face. The Siachen glacier, secured by Operation Meghdoot in 1984, remains the highest battlefield in the world. In the west lies the Rann of Kutch and the 96-kilometre tidal estuary of Sir Creek, where shifting channels complicate any fixed line. In the east, the Brahmaputra and the riverine char lands along the Bangladesh border change course with every flood, and dense jungles along the Myanmar frontier make fencing slow. A fence that works in the Punjab plains is impossible on a Himalayan ridge or in a moving river.

Equally complex is the geopolitics. Each neighbour demands a different approach. With China, the stronger rival, India pursues negotiation through the Special Representatives mechanism set up in 2003 and the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination, while matching infrastructure along the frontier. The Doklam standoff of 2017, which lasted seventy-three days at the trijunction with Bhutan, and the disengagement agreement of October 2024 on patrolling in Depsang and Demchok show both the danger and the possibility of talks. With Pakistan, the dispute is tied to cross-border terrorism and to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor running through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. MP-IDSA has noted that Pakistan began building new military infrastructure along Sir Creek from October 2025, a sign that even a quiet sector can heat up. A collusive two-front threat makes every local dispute part of a wider contest.

Moreover, not every border dispute is with an adversary, and friendly frontiers demand delicacy. Nepal published a new map in 2020 claiming Kalapani, Lipulekh and Limpiyadhura, and amended its constitution to adopt it, turning a cartographic disagreement into a matter of national pride. With Bangladesh, India showed that patient diplomacy can work: the Land Boundary Agreement, implemented through the Constitution (One Hundredth Amendment) Act, 2015, exchanged 111 Indian enclaves for 51 Bangladeshi ones and gave thousands of stateless residents a citizenship of their choice. India also accepted the 2014 award of an international tribunal on the maritime boundary in the Bay of Bengal, which went largely in Bangladesh's favour. Big-hearted settlements with small neighbours buy trust that no fence can.

Building upon this, the border is also a frontline of internal security. Infiltration across the Line of Control, drug trafficking from the Golden Crescent and the Golden Triangle, arms smuggling, fake currency and cattle smuggling all use porous stretches. The Myanmar frontier, 1,643 kilometres long, has grown more difficult since the 2021 coup, with refugee flows into Mizoram and Manipur and large seizures of methamphetamine. In February 2024 the Ministry of Home Affairs announced plans to fence the entire boundary and to scale back the Free Movement Regime, which had allowed residents to cross within sixteen kilometres without visas. Each measure that tightens security, however, cuts across ties of kinship between the Nagas, Mizos and Chins who live on both sides.

The human and federal dimension is the most overlooked. Border communities are the first line of defence, yet many border villages, especially in Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh, have emptied as young people migrate for work, leaving the frontier hollow while China builds model xiaokang villages across the line. States have their own stakes: Mizoram and Nagaland have opposed fencing and the end of free movement, while land acquisition for fencing in West Bengal has moved slowly. Border management is a Union subject in law but a shared task in practice, and decisions taken in Delhi succeed only when state governments and local communities own them.

India has built an institutional answer step by step. After the Kargil Review Committee, the Group of Ministers report of 2001 recommended the principle of one border, one force, which gave the Border Security Force charge of the Pakistan and Bangladesh borders, the Indo-Tibetan Border Police the China frontier, the Sashastra Seema Bal the Nepal and Bhutan borders, and the Assam Rifles the Myanmar border. A Department of Border Management was created in the Home Ministry in 2004. Technology has followed, with the Comprehensive Integrated Border Management System using sensors and surveillance in riverine gaps such as Dhubri in Assam. The Vibrant Villages Programme, launched in 2023 for villages along the northern border, aims to make the frontier a place where people want to stay.

Yet complexity does not mean impossibility. The path forward combines firmness and flexibility: infrastructure and deterrence along disputed frontiers, patient diplomacy and generous settlement with friendly neighbours, technology and integrated intelligence against smuggling and infiltration, and development that turns border villages into living communities. Trade and connectivity projects such as the Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project can make borders bridges rather than walls.

"Good fences make good neighbours."

Robert Frost's line, written with irony, captures only half of India's task. India must keep its fences strong where adversaries test them, but it must also build gates, roads and trust where neighbours share its rivers, markets and families. The soldiers of Galwan held a line that others drew. The deeper task of the next generation is to settle these inherited lines through a blend of strength, diplomacy and development, so that India's frontiers become zones of security and prosperity on the road to a developed nation by 2047.