While the free movement regime did facilitate the hill tribes to maintain cross-border links, it also allowed insurgents and traffickers to freely enter and exit the country.

Given Myanmar’s geostrategic significance and the continuing insurgency threat, disturbances in Myanmar pose a direct and serious policy challenge to India. A calculated realistic approach weighing the evolving ground situation alone will deliver the objectives of India’s foreign policy.

India must continue to engage with the Tatmadaw, even as it supports the efforts of the UN and the ASEAN to restore democratic processes and prevent violence and conflict in Myanmar.

The Rohingya crisis is not just Myanmar’s domestic problem but a regional issue and it needs to be tackled at the regional level in a more comprehensive way.

The success of India's diplomacy will lie in the extent to which it can induce Naypyitaw to take a long view in the interests of its own political stability, internal security and social harmony.

While decades of counterinsurgency operations and peace processes have taken the sting out of the region’s major insurgencies, collaboration between groups continues to pose security challenges, particularly in the exploitable border areas adjacent to the upper Sagaing Region of Northwest Myanmar.

Regulated borders with greater emphasis on developing people-to-people contact and cross-border trade initiatives are likely to yield greater security benefits as against a closed border.