India's ongoing attempt to establish a "working relationship" with the Burmese junta has suffered from some rather bad timing recently. The Indian home secretary was in Rangoon for the seventh round of talks on border management (a euphemism for cooperation against each other's insurgents) exactly when the world's attention was focussed on Aung San Suu Kyi's enforced incarceration in her car just outside town. In early July, General V. P. Malik, the then Indian army chief, arrived with a large entourage on a "goodwill visit", only to find General Khin Nyunt, one of two leaders of the junta, away in Pakistan with an even larger entourage.
Pakistan has for long been a secret, if modest, supplier of ammunition and spares to Burma, especially for commonly-held Chinese equipment. In fact, along with Singapore and Israel, it was one of the countries that was quick to come to the junta's assistance in the wake of pro-democracy uprisings in 1988. India, on the other hand, became a whipping boy for receiving the refugees and making pro-democracy noises. All India Radio is today lumped together with the BBC and the VOA by the Burmese media for their 'villainous' propaganda. For once, many Indians felt they were on the right side.
Relations soured even further when Suu Kyi was awarded the Nehru peace award in 1995. However, at about the same time, India changed tack, increasingly concerned about growing Chinese military support for Rangoon, and allegedly, the setting up of a Chinese signals facility on the Cocos Islands near the Andamans, to keep an eye on Indian naval movements and missile tests along the Orissa coast.
Since then, there has been an intermittent but steady growth of contacts between Rangoon and New Delhi. The pace has picked up in the last few years as the Burmese themselves have drawn back from an exclusive dependence on China. They are concerned (or at least the faction in the junta led by General Maung Aye is—Khin Nyunt is said to be more pro-Chinese) about the influx of Chinese settlers in the Mandalay area. Overland trade with China appears to have fallen off, and many of the sheds in the huge industrial estate along the northern border today wear a derelict look.