The MInister Amit Shah of India said that the government has decided to build a fence along the 1643 kilometer Indo-Myanmar border to facilitate better surveillance. India is also going to end the Free Movement Regime along the border as well. They believe that the fencing will be finished in the next four and a half years. Also anyone coming through the border will have to get a visa. Earlier in September, Manipur Chief Minister N Biren Singh had pushed to wind up the FMR along the border to curb “illegal immigration’ In India. THe border between India and Myanmar runs through for states of Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland, and Arunachal Pradesh. The FMR was mutually agreed between the two countries that allow tribes living along the border to travel up to 16 km inside the other country without a visa. Although India is working towards a National Register of Citizens which will likely end this agreement.
India is most likely doing this because of the ongoing problems in Myanmar. Since February 1, 2021 the Myanmar military has carried out a brutal nationwide crackdown on the millions of people who opposed their rule. Their have been many arrests, mass killings, and torture within the state. With this problem seeming to have no end the Indian government wants to secure their border to protect their state and to avoid their already large population from undergoing an immigration crisis from Myanmar. India is justified by building this fencing and only allowing people to cross into their state with visas to make their growing state more secure.
This relates to our International Relations class because it involves security threats. The security threat going on in Myanmar is an intra-state conflict because it is a conflict inside of the country and most of the deadliest conflicts have been intra-state conflicts. It is also a security threat for India because due to the conflict in Myanmar, India has been flooded with immigrants due to them want to escape the violence going on in Myanmar. A flood of Immigrants can cause an economic burden because the population will grow inside the country very quickly.