Vanshika Saraf is a research analyst in the Geostrategy Programme at the Takshashila Institution, where she studies India’s engagement with partner countries, East Asian politics and regional security. She also writes The Indian Radius, a newsletter on developments across the Indo-Pacific.
Recent diplomatic itineraries point to a wider shift in India’s neighbourhood. Myanmar’s president and Nepal’s foreign minister visited New Delhi shortly before travelling to Beijing, while Bangladesh’s new prime minister chose Malaysia and China for his first official trips abroad, rather than India. Together, these visits show how India’s neighbours are using multiple partnerships to renegotiate their asymmetry with India.
The subcontinental region is structured by two overlapping asymmetries. The first is the asymmetry between India and China, and the second is the substantial imbalance between India and each of its neighbours. This produces a distinctive strategic dynamic. Neighbouring states use China to widen their autonomy, while Beijing uses those relationships to constrain India. The result is not a straightforward contest in which states choose either India or China. It is a fluid process of hedging, bargaining and selective alignment.
India’s economic preponderance is evident vis-à-vis its neighbours. But there is another reality that is less obvious: India’s geographic centrality. It shares borders, rivers, electricity networks and transport corridors with almost every country in the region. This means decisions taken in New Delhi on trade restrictions, border management, water sharing or migration have immediate consequences for neighbouring countries. China can offer financing or infrastructure, but it cannot eliminate the structural strengths of proximity.
India’s official Neighbourhood First policy recognises this interdependence and emphasises greater connectivity, development, trade and people-to-people engagement. However, historical memories, territorial disagreements and domestic political friction reinforce what might be called the paradox of proximity. The closeness that makes India indispensable also makes it prone to resentment. Nepal, Bangladesh and Myanmar each manage this paradox differently, and their recent choices are instructive.
Nepal: Turning Dependence Into Leverage
In January 2024, India and Nepal agreed to facilitate exports of up to 10,000 megawatts of Nepali electricity to India over the next decade. The agreement marked a shift, turning Nepal from a country dependent on India for transit and supplies into one that India increasingly relies on for renewable power. The commencement of Nepal-Bangladesh power transactions through the Indian grid in November 2024 advanced this transformation, diversifying the Himalayan state’s export markets while making India a stakeholder in Nepal’s emergence as an energy exporter.
China entered the picture soon after. In December 2024, Nepal and China signed a framework to implement Belt and Road Initiative projects, seven years after Nepal first joined the initiative. No major BRI project has yet entered implementation, but the framework does not need to deliver concrete outcomes to be useful; its value to Nepal lies in demonstrating to India that alternatives exist.
The balancing strategy became especially explicit in June 2026, when Nepal’s new foreign minister, Shishir Khanal, visited India before making his first trip to China. He explained that Nepal would value each relationship differently, identifying India as a potential market for Nepali energy and China as an important source of tourists, investment and technology.
Bangladesh: Signalling Priority Through Sequencing
Bangladesh has been a more complicated partner. Following the political transition of 2024, Bangladesh’s interim leader, Muhammad Yunus, visited China as his first bilateral destination. The strategy continued under the government formed in 2026. Prime Minister Tarique Rahman selected Malaysia and China for his first overseas tour, with discussions focused on the Teesta project and a Chinese-backed economic and industrial zone in Chittagong. By declining to visit India first, successive Bangladeshi administrations have signalled that New Delhi cannot take diplomatic priority for granted.
Stalled talks between India and Bangladesh on a Teesta water-sharing agreement created an opening for China, which proposed a large river-management project and completed a physical survey. In 2024, then-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina acknowledged that Bangladesh had received competing proposals from both countries. She expressed a preference for Indian involvement, given that the river originates in India, but kept the Chinese option open. The issue has now resurfaced as Dhaka weighs China’s financial and infrastructure offer against the geographical reality that no durable Teesta solution is possible without India.
Myanmar: Letting Rivalry Set the Price
Myanmar’s President Min Aung Hlaing visited India in early June 2026 and travelled to China soon after. The two visits shared a focus on border stability and economic cooperation, while helping the new government break out of its diplomatic isolation.
The nation’s balancing act is clearest in its connectivity projects. In May 2023, India operationalised the Sittwe Port in Rakhine State as part of the Kaladan Multimodal Transit Transport Project, connecting the Bay of Bengal to Mizoram. Only months later, in December 2023, Myanmar’s authorities signed an addendum with China to accelerate the Kyaukphyu deep-sea port project, intended to provide China with direct access to the Indian Ocean.
Rather than selecting one corridor, Myanmar has allowed both powers to invest in strategic locations, with competition increasing the value of its territory. The regime has used this rivalry not only to attract investment but also to ease its international isolation and bolster its legitimacy abroad.
What This Means for India
First, India should treat its neighbours’ engagement with China as a routine act of hedging and stop calibrating its own diplomacy in response.
Second, India should move faster to convert its structural advantages into concrete offers before China fills the vacuum. The Teesta case shows what happens when a natural point of leverage is left unresolved for too long. The same applies to cross-border power trade, which Nepal has demonstrated can be expanded through third-country access.
Third, India should lean into the advantages China genuinely cannot offer at the same cost, including seamless cross-border access, labour mobility and lower-friction trade in local currencies.
Finally, India must recognise that its neighbours will continue to diversify their external partnerships. New Delhi can neither prevent this diversification nor should it try.Its objective should instead be more limited and pragmatic: to ensure that these relationships do not evolve into arrangements that threaten regional security while making cooperation with India more valuable than confrontation.
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