THE SILIGURI IMPERATIVE

Once a vulnerability, the ‘Chicken's Neck' can, through foresight and strategic coherence, transform into a launchpad linking India's northeast to southeast Asia and the wider Indo-Pacific

- BHASKAR J. MAHANTA

The geography of the Siliguri Corridor, called 'Chicken's Neck,' is often dismissed as a mere cartographic anomaly.

Yet, for those of us who have been at the frontlines wearing the uniform along these flanks, these lines are not abstract; they are lived realities. They pulsate with tension, history and the relentless churn of geopolitics. This narrow passage is not just a transportation artery, but a strategic lifeline, a vulnerability, and now, the very fulcrum upon which great-power ambitions pivot. Thus, the enduring truth remains: geography never retires from geopolitics. The corridor is currently enduring a confluence of simultaneous, multi-directional pressures, transforming it into a strategic theatre demanding a doctrinal transformation.

China's grand strategy of encirclement

The challenge facing the Siliguri Corridor is layered, encompassing military, demographic, psychological, informational and infrastructural dimensions. It is important to unpack this layering from a threat-vector perspective. A revisionist China is tightening its grip across the Himalayas and the Bay of Bengal, employing a strategy of meticulous, expansive influence—a grandmaster playing patiently and methodically. The Doklam crisis revealed Beijing's objective: positional advantage. This pursuit manifests in the strategic use of infrastructure, where roads, airstrips and "civilian projects" serve a military shadow function.