Chinese Checkers: India's strategic message to Beijing with a road, port and fest in the east

Come dawn on January 1, 2026, thousands of people — from across Arunachal Pradesh and the rest of India — may greet the new year with Surya Namaskar in a village that sees the first sunrise on Indian soil.

This grand gathering — infused with strategic undertones and spiritual symbolism — is set to be a highlight of the proposed Sunrise Festival, to be held at Dong, a remote mountain village near the India-China-Myanmar trijunction.

The festival was greenlit on May 13 during a state cabinet meeting that drew attention as it was held in Kibithu, the forward army post that faces the Chinese frontier. The inaugural Sunrise Festival — set against the backdrop of the eastern Himalayas near the border — is slated for December 29, 2025 to January 3, 2026. “Highlights will include music by local bands, water sports, trekking, and yes, a mass Surya Namaskar by thousands on New Year’s Day,” Ranphoa Ngowa, tourism secretary of Arunachal Pradesh, told ET.

Lt Gen (Retd) Rana Pratap Kalita said, “Holding a cabinet meeting in Kibithu and proposing a festival in a border village are important for strategic messaging to China.”

While New Delhi’s recent attention has largely been on the western front, where it engaged Pakistan briefly, a series of seemingly unrelated developments in the East tell a different story.

New Trade Route

From the approval of a 166-km greenfield highway between Shillong (Meghalaya) and Silchar (Assam) — boosting connectivity to Mizoram and ultimately to Sittwe Port in Myanmar — to the announcement of a border festival in Dong, these moves together reveal a quietly unfolding strategic blueprint for the Northeast. No doubt, this road, the port, and the border festival are part of a calculated effort to secure India’s Northeast and counter China’s growing influence in the sub-continent.

When the Indian army faced off with China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) at Doklam in 2017 — after the PLA brought in equipment to extend a road inside Bhutan — New Delhi’s primary concern was Beijing’s attempt to inch closer to the vulnerable Siliguri Corridor, also known as the Chicken’s Neck. This narrow strip of about 22 km in North Bengal is the only land link connecting the Northeast to the rest of India.

While India successfully blocked the Chinese advance on the disputed road, it soon began working on a strategic alternative to reduce dependence on the corridor. One key step was sending dredging machines to the Jamuna River (the Brahmaputra’s name in Bangladesh), where a 175-km stretch between Sirajganj and Daikhawa was found too shallow for cargo ships — prompting efforts to deepen the channel and open up a new trade route.

Sending containerised cargo from Kolkata to Guwahati via river routes in Bangladesh was never smooth sailing though.

In November 2019, for example, the cargo vessel MV Beki, carrying coal, ran aground on the Jamuna. Two other vessels, including one operated by the Adani Group, were stranded for days near Sirajganj. Yet, the pro-India government in Dhaka, led by Sheikh Hasina, ensured that New Delhi never lost confidence in the route. That equation changed dramatically in August last year, when Hasina was ousted amid a massive, student-led uprising, altering the political landscape overnight.

Unfriendly regime in Dhaka

With an unfriendly interim government now in place in Dhaka, led by Muhammad Yunus, India has been compelled to pursue a Plan C to address the enduring vulnerability of the Siliguri Corridor.

Heightening the urgency are reports of Chinese support to revive a British-era airbase at Lalmonirhat in Bangladesh — perilously close to the Chicken’s Neck — further reinforcing New Delhi’s need for strategic alternatives.

Just a week before India launched missile strikes on Pakistan, New Delhi approved a major infrastructure push in the Northeast — a four-lane greenfield highway from Mawlyngkhung (near Shillong) in Meghalaya to Panchgram (near Silchar) in Assam, with an estimated cost of ₹22,864 crore. Of the proposed 166-km stretch, 144 km will cut through the rugged hills of Meghalaya.

On the face of it, planning an access-controlled highway in a region that already has an existing Shillong-Silchar road may seem unusual. But strategically, it holds significant value. The new corridor will strengthen connectivity between Guwahati and Aizawl, and eventually extend down to the India-Myanmar border.

The only missing link now is the 110-km Paletwa-Zorinpui (Mizoram) road in Myanmar’s restive Rakhine state, currently under the control of Arakanese rebels. Paletwa is already linked to the Indian-built Sittwe Port via an inland waterway. Sittwe, a deep-water port developed with Indian assistance, saw its first cargo vessel — a shipment of cement from Kolkata — dock in May 2023.