Modi, Myanmar president hold talks on trade, border security and defence
India opened a high-stakes channel to Myanmar’s military-led government as Modi and Min Aung Hlaing discussed trade, border security and defence in New Delhi.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Myanmar President U Min Aung Hlaing held wide-ranging talks at Hyderabad House in New Delhi, putting trade, connectivity, border security and defence cooperation at the center of India’s latest bid to manage one of its most difficult neighbours.
The meeting carried added weight because Min Aung Hlaing was on his first foreign trip since becoming Myanmar’s president. India’s foreign ministry said the official visit ran from May 30 to June 3, with Modi scheduled to meet him on June 1 after National Security Adviser Ajit Doval met him the previous day. The sequence showed that New Delhi treated the trip as a strategic engagement, not a ceremonial stop.
For India, the stakes are practical and immediate. Myanmar shares a 1,643-kilometre land border with Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram, and the frontier has long been vulnerable to insurgent movement, trafficking and other spillover risks. New Delhi has also announced plans to fence the entire border and pave a patrol track alongside it, underscoring how central border management remains to the relationship.
Connectivity is the other major prize. India has spent years trying to build smoother access to Southeast Asia through Myanmar, especially through the Kaladan Multimodal Transit Transport Project. That project includes a 158-kilometre waterway from Sittwe to Paletwa and a 109-kilometre road from Paletwa to Zorinpui on the India-Myanmar border in Mizoram. The route is meant to strengthen commercial links and reduce India’s dependence on more cumbersome overland options, but instability in Myanmar has repeatedly slowed progress.
Trade is already substantial by regional standards. India’s embassy in Yangon said bilateral trade reached US$2.1 billion in 2024-25, with Indian exports worth more than US$614 million and imports from Myanmar around US$1.533 billion. Myanmar state media said Min Aung Hlaing delivered a keynote speech at a Myanmar-India Trade and Investment Conclave in New Delhi, while other reports said he also attended a business forum at the Taj Mahal Hotel, signalling that the visit had a clear commercial track alongside the political and security agenda.
The outreach also came with obvious reputational costs. Min Aung Hlaing remains under US and Western sanctions over the 2021 coup, and his rise has followed years of turmoil after Myanmar’s parliamentary elections. Yet India appears willing to overlook much of that in order to keep communication open, protect its border, sustain trade and preserve influence in a region where China is also pressing its interests. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited Myanmar in April 2026, adding to New Delhi’s urgency.
In that sense, the Modi-Aung Hlaing talks were about more than bilateral ties. They were a calculated effort by India to secure stability on a sensitive frontier, keep trade routes alive and avoid ceding strategic space in a volatile neighbourhood.
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