Free Movement Regime agreement

What’s in the news?

Months after announcing that the Free Movement Regime (FMR) along the Myanmar border has been entirely suspended, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has brought in fresh protocol to regulate the movement of people living within 10 kilometres on either side of the largely unfenced international border.
The notification ending the FMR, which involves a bilateral agreement with Myanmar, is yet to be notified by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA).
Union Home Minister Amit Shah announced in February this year that the FMR was being scrapped to ensure the internal security of the country and to maintain the demographic structure of India’s northeastern States.
However, the new guidelines indicate that the regime has not been done away with but stricter regulations such as reducing the range of free movement from the earlier 16 km to the present 10 km have been introduced.

What is the Free Movement Regime?

Much of India’s present-day northeast was temporarily under Burmese occupation until the British pushed them out in the 1800s.
The victors and the vanquished signed the Treaty of Yandaboo in 1826, leading to the current alignment of the boundary between India and Burma, later renamed Myanmar.
The border divided people of the same ethnicity and culture — specifically the Nagas of Nagaland and Manipur and the Kuki-Chin-Mizo communities of Manipur and Mizoram — without their consent.
Wary of increasing Chinese influence in Myanmar, New Delhi began working on improving diplomatic ties with the Myanmar government a decade ago.
After almost a year’s delay, the FMR came about in 2018 as part of the Government’s Act East policy.
The FMR allows people living on either side of the border to travel up to 16 km inside each other’s country without a visa. A border resident needs to have a border pass, valid for a year, to stay in the other country for about two weeks per visit.
It allows tribes who share familial, social and ethnic ties on both sides of the border to keep in touch with their people.
The FMR also envisaged the promotion of localised border trade through customs stations and designated markets apart from helping the people of Myanmar access better education and healthcare facilities on the Indian side of the border.

Why does the government want FMR scrapped?

At present, apart from a 10 km stretch in Manipur, the India-Myanmar border through hills and jungles is unfenced.
The security forces have for decades grappled with members of extremist groups carrying out hit-and-run operations from their clandestine bases in the Chin and Sagaing regions of Myanmar.
The ease of cross-border movement, even before the FMR was in place, was often flagged for inward trafficking of drugs and outward trafficking of wildlife body parts.
In addition to scrapping FMR, the Union Home Minister has said the 1,643 km India-Myanmar border which stretches across four states — Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland, and Arunachal Pradesh — would soon be fenced.

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