Neighbourhood First Policy
How India's Neighbourhood First doctrine structures relations with Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Afghanistan, and Pakistan — and how to read its signaling.
Origin and codification
Neighbourhood First emerged as a named doctrine on 26 May 2014, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi invited the heads of government of all SAARC states and Mauritius to his swearing-in — the first such gesture in Indian republican history. The MEA subsequently institutionalised the phrase in its Annual Reports beginning 2014–15, where it appears as the first of India's concentric foreign-policy circles, ahead of 'Extended Neighbourhood' (Act East, West Asia, Central Asia) and 'Major Powers.' External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar's 2020 book The India Way frames the policy as 'non-reciprocal' in spirit: India offers asymmetric concessions to smaller neighbours without insisting on parity.
The doctrine has antecedents. The Gujral Doctrine of 1996–97, articulated by then-External Affairs Minister I.K. Gujral, established five principles including non-reciprocity with Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives, and refusal to interfere in their internal affairs. Neighbourhood First operationalises Gujral's logic with greater connectivity infrastructure, credit lines through the Exim Bank, and HICDP (High Impact Community Development Projects).
Institutional architecture
Within the MEA, the Neighbourhood is divided across territorial divisions on Jawaharlal Nehru Bhavan's south block organisation chart. The Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Maldives (BSM/BSMM) division handles the eastern and southern arc; the Northern Division covers Nepal and Bhutan; the Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran (PAI) division handles the western flank. Each is headed by a Joint Secretary reporting to a Secretary (typically Secretary East or Secretary West) and ultimately to the Foreign Secretary. The Development Partnership Administration (DPA), established in 2012 and restructured in 2020, executes Lines of Credit and grant projects — by 2023 India had extended over US$ 30 billion in LoCs globally, with the largest tranches to Bangladesh (US$ 8 billion across three LoCs signed 2010, 2015, 2017).
The PMO supervises strategic decisions through the National Security Adviser (Ajit Doval, since May 2014) and the Strategic Policy Group. Major neighbourhood crises — the 2015 Madhesi blockade on Nepal, the 2018 Maldives political crisis under President Yameen, the 2022 Sri Lankan economic collapse, the August 2024 fall of Sheikh Hasina in Dhaka — are typically managed by NSA–PMO channels in parallel with formal MEA tracks.
The connectivity logic
Neighbourhood First is operationally about connectivity. Flagship projects include the Bangladesh–India electricity grid interconnection (commissioned 2013, expanded 2018), the Motihari–Amlekhgunj petroleum pipeline to Nepal (commissioned September 2019), the India–Myanmar–Thailand Trilateral Highway (under construction since 2002, repeatedly delayed), the Chabahar Port in Iran (operationalised by India Ports Global in December 2018 under a 2016 trilateral agreement with Afghanistan), and the Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project linking Kolkata to Mizoram via Sittwe (Myanmar). The 2015 Land Boundary Agreement with Bangladesh, ratified via India's 100th Constitutional Amendment, settled enclaves dating to the 1947 partition.
Vaccine Maitri (January 2021 onward) and HADR responses — Operation Maitri after Nepal's April 2015 earthquake, Operation Cactus precedent from 1988, the November 2017 Maldives drinking-water airlift — are deployed as the humanitarian face of the doctrine. The MEA briefing vocabulary that signals Neighbourhood First in action includes the formulae 'SAGAR' (Security and Growth for All in the Region, articulated by Modi in Mauritius on 12 March 2015) for the maritime neighbourhood, and 'HOPE' or 'first responder' language for HADR deployments.