Irrawaddy Imperatives: Reviewing India’s Myanmar Strategy

Irrawaddy Imperatives has hit the stands at a time when one needs to remind Indian policy planners—now wholly focused west on Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover—that Myanmar is an equally, if not more important, neighbour saddled with an equally serious crisis, which may have a much more adverse impact on India’s ‘Act East’ policy. India can expect no headway in its ambitious ‘Act East’ thrust through land, trying as it does to situate its inadequately developed and conflict-ravaged Northeast at the heart of its engagement with the Tiger Economies of Southeast Asia, unless there is peace, stability and a friendly government in Myanmar. If the Taliban has taken Afghanistan by force in total violation of the 2020 Doha Accord, so has the Myanmar military junta, overturning a decisive electoral mandate in favour of the National League for Democracy (NLD) led by Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.