Guest contributor
Shalini Perumal
The shifting geopolitics of South Asia have long been analysed through the lens of zero-sum competition, particularly regarding the trade networks and maritime access points around the Bay of Bengal.
During the recent state visit of Bangladesh Prime Minister Tarique Rahman to Beijing, China formally revived discussions around the China-Myanmar-Bangladesh Economic Corridor (CMBC).
This infrastructure project seeks to link southwestern Yunnan Province to the major Bangladeshi ports of Chittagong and Mongla via Myanmar, presenting a major alternative transit to global shipping lanes.
Predictably, the response from New Delhi’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) was wrapped in defensive security rhetoric.
Randheer Jaiswal, the MEA spokesperson, noted that India is “closely monitoring developments in the neighbourhood and taking appropriate measures when needed.”
However, examining this development solely from New Delhi’s perspective obscures a more complex and critical reality. India’s reactive neighborhood diplomacy is built upon structural economic inefficiencies, administrative broken promises, and a glaring moral blind spot.
In its desperate drive to counter Chinese commercial expansions, New Delhi has systematically traded its democratic credentials for a transactional alliance with Myanmar’s unlawful military junta.
This dynamic exposes the internal contradictions of India’s foreign policy, where aggressive rhetoric regarding international rules and regional sovereignty stands in stark contrast to its own record of territorial administration and complicity in regional war crimes.
The layout of the CMBC is not a sudden innovation; it is the direct mutation of the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar (BCIM) Economic Corridor first conceived under the 1999 Kunming Initiative.
The initial BCIM framework was structurally inclusive, aiming to build a continuous web of multi-modal transportation corridors linking Kunming to Kolkata, via Dhaka and Mandalay.
However, India gradually froze its involvement and effectively killed the project. New Delhi publicly claimed this withdrawal was a principled stand against China’s non-transparent Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)—frequently pointing to infrastructure corridors built through contested territories like Kashmir.
Thus, by completely dropping India out of the equation, the newly revived CMBC streamlines regional transit. China has built upon the existing 1,700-kilometer-long China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC) infrastructure and extended it westward to tap straight into the Bangladeshi maritime grid.
By refusing to join a collaborative four-nation economic matrix, India’s rigid posture has achieved exactly what it feared: it has accelerated its own exclusion from the emerging supply chains of the Bay of Bengal, leaving neighbouring states to negotiate directly with Beijing without a regional counterweight.
New Delhi’s establishment frequently frames China’s expanding footprint in South Asia as an aggressive, predatory strategy. However, a deeper analysis reveals that Beijing’s gains are often the direct consequence of India’s persistent administrative inertia and failed project delivery.
A prime example is the recent development surrounding Bangladesh’s second-largest seaport, Mongla Port. During Prime Minister Tarique Rahman’s visit to Beijing, Dhaka finalized a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC) to develop the China-Bangladesh Mongla Port Economic Zone.
This specific economic zone was not stolen from India; it was originally allocated to New Delhi under a high-profile bilateral agreement during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Dhaka in 2015.
Over the course of a decade, the Indian government-nominated developer, the Hiranandani Group, failed to make meaningful structural progress.
Consequently, in 2025, the interim administration led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus in Dhaka exercised its sovereign right to delist the underperforming Indian firm and open the zone to functional international capital.
India’s diplomatic response has been to express anxiety over “dual-use infrastructure” and potential surveillance risks near its borders.
Yet, this rhetoric deliberately obscures the real issue: sovereign neighbors like Bangladesh cannot indefinitely delay national development to comfort India’s strategic anxieties. India’s inability to deliver on its infrastructural promises has left its neighbours with little choice but to diversify their partnerships to secure long-term economic stability.
The most troubling aspect of India’s regional diplomacy is its relationship with Myanmar’s military junta. In a desperate, reactive attempt to keep the military from deepening its reliance on Beijing, New Delhi has maintained an active diplomatic, financial, and military alliance with a junta that has zero democratic legitimacy and is widely accused of widespread atrocities against its own people.
According to extensive investigations by United Nations monitoring bodies and international human rights watchdogs, India has consistently supplied military hardware and weapons to the junta since its 2021 coup.
Strikingly, the primary drivers of this weapons pipeline are not rogue private actors, but Indian Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) operating under the direct control of the Ministry of Defence in New Delhi.
Yantra India Limited, a state-owned ordnance manufacturer, has directly shipped specialized 122-mm artillery gun barrels to the Myanmar military, which are utilized in field howitzers to shell civilian settlements and resistance strongholds.
Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) has repeatedly exported remote-controlled weapon stations, sonar systems, coastal surveillance radars, and advanced communication equipment to the junta and its intermediate arms brokers.
Sandeep Metalcraft, a private Indian firm, has funneled thousands of military fuzes used to arm and detonate anti-personnel munitions and grenades.
This military pipeline stands in open violation of Customary International Law and International Humanitarian Law (IHL).
Under international law, a state is complicit in international wrongful acts if it provides aid or assistance with the clear knowledge that such materials will facilitate gross human rights abuses or war crimes.
With global bodies documenting the junta’s systematic campaign of airstrikes on schools, displacement of ethnic minorities, and extrajudicial executions, New Delhi cannot claim ignorance regarding the destination and utility of its exports.
India’s defense—that it is merely honouring legacy contracts signed prior to the coup—is legally groundless under international frameworks, where peremptory norms against aiding atrocity crimes override standard commercial agreements.
Furthermore, as a member of the Wassenaar Arrangement, India has committed to maintaining regional stability by restricting the export of dual-use technologies to destabilized combat zones.
By continuing these transfers and extending diplomatic engagement to junta leader Min Aung Hlaing, New Delhi has exposed a moral vacuum at the heart of its foreign policy, sacrificing international legal standards for shortsighted realpolitik.
The ultimate failure of India’s cynical engagement with the junta is that it fails even on its own realist terms.
New Delhi has abandoned its international legal obligations and alienated the democratic aspirations of the Burmese people to protect its strategic border investments, notably the flagship Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project.
Yet, the military junta India supports no longer commands the territorial authority to secure those investments.
The transit path for both India’s Kaladan project and the proposed Chinese CMBC runs directly through Myanmar’s western Rakhine State.
However, Rakhine State is no longer under the functional administration of the junta in Naypyidaw. The Arakan Army (AA), a ethnic revolutionary organisation, has pushed the junta out of the vast majority of the region, establishing firm control over 14 of 17 townships, as well as the Myanmar-India border town of Paletwa.
The military junta has been reduced to besieged enclaves in the state capital of Sittwe, the island of Manaung, and parts of the deep-sea port town of Kyaukphyu.
This collapse of state control has completely destabilized foreign infrastructure investments. While the junta retains nominal authority over the town of Kyaukphyu—the maritime anchor for China’s deep-sea port project—the area is effectively under active siege, with AA-led forces deployed within two kilometers of key military bases.
The security vacuum has already forced the dismantling and relocation of major projects, including the $140 million Kyaukphyu gas-fired power plant operated by VPower Group and the Chinese state-owned CNTIC.
The facility faced an unviable operational environment marked by fuel shortages and the rapid advance of frontline combat.
In fact, highlighting the project’s vulnerability, Bangladesh Foreign Minister Khalilur Rahman made it clear that any overland connectivity through Myanmar remains conditional on the return of peace to Rakhine State and the safe repatriation of the over one million Rohingya refugees living in Cox’s Bazar.
It is clear India remains stubbornly anchored to a collapsing dictatorship. By refusing to formally and actively engage with the National Unity Government (NUG) and the prominent ethnic resistance organisations that actually govern the border regions, India’s strategy has left its own infrastructure projects vulnerable and stranded in active war zones.
The revival of the China-Myanmar-Bangladesh Economic Corridor illustrates the changing realities of South Asian connectivity. For India, it serves as a stark reminder of the limitations of its traditional regional approach.
New Delhi’s policy of using security rhetoric to discourage neighbors from engaging in international trade while failing to deliver efficient commercial alternatives has proven counterproductive.
Worse, its willingness to violate the spirit of international law by channeling weapons to a brutal military junta has damaged its standing as a credible, law-abiding international actor.
True stability in the Bay of Bengal cannot be achieved through the militarisation of border regimes or reactive panic over external investments.
If India wishes to remain an influential actor in its shared neighborhood, it must align its foreign policy with international humanitarian standards, halt its complicity with the Myanmar junta, and reliably deliver on its economic commitments.
Until New Delhi transitions from a defensive security mindset to an open, reliable partnership model, its neighbors will continue to look past India to secure their economic futures.
Shalini Perumal is a creative international development professional who has worked previously in Mae Sot, Thailand at Mae Tao Clinic, consulted for Finnish Refugee Council Myanmar, and served as a Writer/Researcher at Insight Myanmar Podcast. She is currently a freelance journalist working on a novel.
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