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India has 15106 km of land borders and a coastline of about 7516 km. Only 5 out of 29 Indian states have no international border or coastal line. Those long borders are shared with seven countries - China, Pakistan, Bhutan, Myanmar, Afghanistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh. Such extensive and porous borders that run through different kinds of terrains -mountains, hills, plains valleys, forests, desert, and swamps - sometimes are difficult to monitor, especially with different territorial disputes and security troubles still exist in large parts of Indian borders. Because of these artificially created boundaries that engendered many territorial disputes and left large areas porous for a variety of irregular and illegal cross-border activities, India has erected different types of barriers along its national borders. In addition to security aspects, border fencing has also political reasons closely related to the way in which these international borders were drawn. The paper discusses the complicated characteristics of India's borders with its neighboring countries, deals with the Indian strategy of fencing borders with some its neighbors and shows whether the fortification and militarization of the Indian borders by building fences and other security measures has succeeded or failed to achieve the designed goals.
Keywords: Fences, Border, India, Territorial dispute, Security.
Introduction
Current national borders in South Asia are distinguished by two particular features: first, topographic diversity and, second, the arbitrariness by which European colonial powers delineated South Asia boundaries and imposed the notion of the territorial state. The same applies to the Post-Soviet states in central Asia where borders demarcated unilaterally or artificially without taking into account prevalent ethnic, religious, linguistic, geographical, or economic conditions. As a result of these artificially created boundaries that engendered many territorial disputes and left large areas porous for a variety of irregular and illegal cross-border activities, the countries of the region have resorted to the construction of different types of barriers along their national borders in an attempt to resolve these problems that largely resulted from the manner in which nation-state has been built in the region. To fight cross-border security problems and irregular immigration, some Asian governments, especially in South, Central and Southeast Asia, have built barriers along its national border as a simple solution to complex problems.
The Asian countries have...