What Makes Their Relations Tick?

Abstract

India and Myanmar have not always enjoyed a comfortable relation with each other ever since their independence from colonial rule. When the Burmese military suppresses the voice of civil rights movements within its sovereign territory, India, as its democratic neighbour, voices concern through verbal actions and nothing more and when non-state actors from the Northeast Indian states act against established Indian authorities on Indian soil, New Delhi talks tough with Myanmar, such that insurgents from Northeast India seeks asylum in Myanmar, and when India accuses Myanmar of such accusations and misunderstandings tend to occur, where both countries blame each other for their problems, not to mention the maelstrom of problems related to drug flow, illegal human migration, and illegal trade that occurs between the porous borders of both these sovereign Asian countries. Amidst such problems and misconceptions in their relations of the past and also the present, what are the factors that keep a thaw in their relations?