India-Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral Highway

The India-Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral Highway (often abbreviated IMT-TH) is a flagship overland connectivity project designed to link the Indian border town of Moreh, in Manipur, to Mae Sot in Thailand, traversing approximately 1,360 kilometres through Myanmar via Tamu, Kalewa, Yagyi, Monywa, Mandalay, Meiktila, Nay Pyi Taw, Payagyi, Thaton and Myawaddy. The concept was first articulated at a trilateral ministerial meeting in Yangon in April 2002, where the foreign ministers of the three nations endorsed the construction of a contiguous highway. The project is the principal physical embodiment of India's Act East policy — the reorientation, announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014, of the earlier Look East policy from passive engagement toward active infrastructural and economic integration with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). It also operationalises India's membership of BIMSTEC and the Mekong-Ganga Cooperation framework.

The highway is not a single contract but a patchwork of segments financed and executed under distinct arrangements, which explains both its complexity and its delays. India bears responsibility for two principal Myanmar-side components funded through grant assistance from the Ministry of External Affairs: the construction of 69 bridges along the Tamu-Kyigone-Kalewa (TKK) road, and the upgradation and reconstruction of the Kalewa-Yagyi road section. Myanmar is responsible for stretches within its own territory beyond the Indian-funded portions, while Thailand has financed and largely completed the Mae Sot-Myawaddy and adjoining segments on the eastern flank. The Indian segments are implemented by agencies such as the National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited (NHIDCL) and contracted construction firms, with the Border Roads Organisation having historically built the connecting Tamu-Kalewa-Kalemyo "Friendship Road."

A central operational ambition is to make the highway part of a seamless customs-and-transit regime rather than merely a paved surface. To that end the three governments have negotiated a Motor Vehicle Agreement (MVA) intended to permit the cross-border movement of passenger, personal and cargo vehicles among the three countries without trans-shipment at each border. India has separately concluded the proposed extension of the corridor eastward, with discussions to lengthen the route to Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, which would create a genuine India-to-Indochina land bridge. The Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project, linking Kolkata to Sittwe port and onward to Mizoram, is a complementary but legally and geographically distinct initiative, not a segment of the Trilateral Highway itself.

Contemporary milestones reflect both progress and stagnation. The Yagyi-Kalewa road and the TKK bridges have been at varying stages of completion under Indian funding through the late 2010s and early 2020s. Trilateral ministerial and senior-officials meetings — convened by India's Ministry of External Affairs, Myanmar's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Thailand's Ministry of Foreign Affairs — have repeatedly reaffirmed target completion dates that have slipped well past original 2016 and 2019 projections. The military coup in Myanmar of 1 February 2021, and the ensuing armed conflict across Sagaing Region and the Myanmar-Thailand frontier around Myawaddy, has severely disrupted construction, security and the prospects of an operational MVA.

The Trilateral Highway should be distinguished from adjacent and frequently conflated concepts. It is not synonymous with the Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project, which is a sea-river-road corridor through Rakhine State and Mizoram rather than a highway through central Myanmar. It is also distinct from the broader Asian Highway Network (AH1 and AH2) coordinated under UNESCAP, although the Trilateral route overlaps with portions of those designated corridors. Unlike China's Belt and Road Initiative corridors through Myanmar — notably the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor running from Yunnan to Kyaukpyu — the Trilateral Highway is a grant-and-cooperation venture without the sovereign-debt characteristics that have attended several BRI projects, a contrast Indian policymakers emphasise.

The project's edge cases and controversies are substantial. Land acquisition, insurgency in Manipur and Nagaland, the fragility of the Indo-Myanmar Free Movement Regime, and the 2021 coup have each impeded delivery; India's 2024 decisions to fence the India-Myanmar border and reconsider the Free Movement Regime introduce new friction into the very cross-border mobility the highway was meant to enable. The civil war has rendered key segments around Tamu, Kalewa and Myawaddy insecure, and the legitimacy question of dealing with the State Administration Council junta complicates intergovernmental coordination. Critics note that despite more than two decades of announcements, no end-to-end commercial traffic moves along the full corridor, and the enabling MVA remains unsigned in operational form.

For the working practitioner — the desk officer, the connectivity analyst, the BIMSTEC negotiator — the Trilateral Highway is a case study in the gap between strategic ambition and on-the-ground delivery in a conflict-affected transit state. It remains the single most cited deliverable of Act East and a recurring item in UPSC General Studies Paper II on India's bilateral and regional relations, where candidates are expected to link it to Northeast India's development, the maritime-versus-overland connectivity debate with China, and ASEAN integration. Its trajectory illustrates how third-country instability can hold an entire regional connectivity vision hostage, and why India increasingly pairs overland corridors with maritime alternatives such as Sittwe and Chennai-Dawei discussions.