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Geopolitics

Act East Policy Still Hinges on Manipur’s Role as Gateway — and Its Unresolved Conflict

By Sentinel NE Desk · July 6, 2026 · 1 min read
Illustration: Sentinel NE

Manipur’s historic role as a land gateway between South and Southeast Asia has been central to India’s Act East Policy, with the border town of Moreh serving as a key land port linking trade among India, Myanmar, and onward toward Thailand and China along what officials describe as a revival of the old Southwest Silk Road corridor.

The policy’s flagship connectivity project, the roughly 1,360-kilometre India-Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral Highway connecting Manipur to Mae Sot via Mandalay and Bagan, remains delayed, with completion timelines repeatedly pushed back largely because of the conflict and instability inside Myanmar since its 2021 coup.

Manipur’s own ethnic conflict, ongoing since May 2023, has added a second, more immediate obstacle: analysts note that instability in the very state meant to anchor India’s Southeast Asian gateway undermines the broader Act East Policy’s credibility and slows the practical work — trade facilitation, security along transit routes, local infrastructure — that the policy depends on.

Officials continue to describe the policy as delivering positive results in some sectors even as implementation in Manipur specifically remains fraught, an acknowledgement that the state’s dual role — as strategic asset and site of unresolved conflict — is not easily reconciled in the near term.

Sentinel NE Desk will continue to track how developments in Manipur and Myanmar affect the policy’s Northeast-facing projects.

Compiled from reporting by Imphal Review of Arts and Politics and Kautilya School of Public Policy Sentinel NE Desk cross-checked these analyses, which both note the tension between Manipur’s strategic role and its ongoing conflict, before publication. Photo: file image used for general context.

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