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By:

Dr. V.L. Dharurkar

12 February 2025 at 2:53:17 pm

Myanmar Matters

If India seeks deeper integration with Southeast Asia, Myanmar is the gateway through which those ambitions must pass. For all the attention lavished on the Indo-Pacific, Myanmar remains curiously underappreciated in India’s strategic imagination. Nestled between South Asia and Southeast Asia, Myanmar occupies a position that geographers would call fortunate and strategists indispensable. If India seeks deeper integration with Southeast Asia, greater influence in the Bay of Bengal and a...

Myanmar Matters

If India seeks deeper integration with Southeast Asia, Myanmar is the gateway through which those ambitions must pass. For all the attention lavished on the Indo-Pacific, Myanmar remains curiously underappreciated in India’s strategic imagination. Nestled between South Asia and Southeast Asia, Myanmar occupies a position that geographers would call fortunate and strategists indispensable. If India seeks deeper integration with Southeast Asia, greater influence in the Bay of Bengal and a credible response to China’s expanding footprint, Myanmar is the gateway through which those ambitions must pass. Long before modern nation-states emerged, the territories that today constitute India and Myanmar were linked through commerce, migration, religion and culture. Buddhist monks, merchants and travellers moved freely across the region, carrying ideas that left an enduring imprint on both societies. The spread of Buddhism from India into Myanmar created a civilisational bond that continues to shape people-to-people ties even today. Strategic Value History, however, is only part of the story. Geography is what makes Myanmar strategically indispensable in the twenty-first century. Positioned between the Indian subcontinent and mainland Southeast Asia, Myanmar forms a natural land bridge connecting India to Thailand and beyond. It is the only Southeast Asian country that shares a land border with India. As New Delhi seeks to transform its ‘Act East’ policy from diplomatic rhetoric into economic reality, Myanmar becomes the crucial link in that chain. Roads, railways, energy corridors and trade routes connecting India to Southeast Asia must inevitably traverse Myanmar's territory. Recognising these realities, India has in recent years sought to deepen engagement with its eastern neighbour. High-level visits, infrastructure projects and expanding economic cooperation reflect an understanding that geography cannot be ignored. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent efforts to strengthen ties with Myanmar represent an attempt to revive historical connections while adapting them to contemporary strategic realities. The question of a country’s geographic advantage has acquired greater significance amid the intensifying competition between India and China. Myanmar occupies a pivotal position in the strategic contest for influence across the Indo-Pacific. For Beijing, the country offers a valuable outlet to the Indian Ocean. Chinese investments in ports, pipelines and transport corridors running through Myanmar help reduce China's dependence on the Strait of Malacca, one of the world's most congested maritime chokepoints. For India, the implications are equally profound. A Myanmar drawn excessively into China’s orbit would complicate New Delhi’s strategic calculations in the Bay of Bengal and India’s northeastern frontier. Conversely, a stable and cooperative Myanmar strengthens India's regional influence and provides greater strategic depth in a rapidly changing geopolitical environment. Myanmar’s importance extends beyond land connectivity. Its extensive coastline along the Bay of Bengal places it at the heart of maritime routes linking the Indian and Pacific Oceans. As the Indo-Pacific emerges as the principal theatre of global economic and strategic competition, countries like Myanmar situated along these maritime crossroads have acquired heightened significance. Natural Resources The country’s strategic value is reinforced by its abundant natural resources and favourable geography. The fertile Ayeyarwady River basin has long served as Myanmar’s economic heartland, while its energy reserves and access to sea lanes enhance its attractiveness to regional powers. These assets make Myanmar not merely a transit corridor but a consequential actor in its own right. Cultural diplomacy has played a notable role in this effort. Shared Buddhist heritage provides a foundation that few other bilateral relationships can claim. Such civilisational links create reservoirs of goodwill that complement economic and strategic cooperation. Yet sentiment alone cannot sustain a partnership of this importance. India’s engagement with Myanmar must be guided by clear strategic objectives. Connectivity projects need to be completed efficiently. Trade and investment must expand. Security cooperation, particularly in border regions, requires continued attention. Above all, India must recognise that influence in Southeast Asia begins not in distant capitals but at its own eastern doorstep. The broader stakes are considerable. Whether through regional connectivity initiatives, maritime cooperation in the Bay of Bengal or the pursuit of a free and open Indo-Pacific, Myanmar occupies a central position in India's regional vision. It is not merely a neighbouring state but a strategic hinge connecting South Asia to Southeast Asia. As great-power competition reshapes Asia, geography is once again asserting its influence over politics. In that geopolitical landscape, Myanmar's significance is unlikely to diminish. For India, the road to Southeast Asia runs through Myanmar, and the success of India’s eastern ambitions may well depend on how effectively it nurtures that relationship. (The writer is a foreign affairs expert. Views personal.)

The Convenience Economy

India’s booming lifestyle management industry is a symptom of the state’s withdrawal from care infrastructure.

AI generated image
AI generated image

An IIT-founder CEO in Gurugram pays Rs. 1 lakh a month to a single person who manages his laundry, food, wardrobe, domestic staff training, and household repairs. In Bengaluru, a young professional couple uses a lifestyle management firm to coordinate their home schedules, travel bookings and vendor calls. These are not outliers but the visible edge of a formalising industry now present across India’s metros.


The lifestyle management market in India was valued at USD 2.8 billion in 2025. It is projected to reach USD 5.9 billion by 2034, growing at 8.6 percent annually, according to market research firm Dataintelo. Job portals currently list 1,094 lifestyle manager positions across India with 203 in Bengaluru alone. Salaries for these positions range from Rs. 16 lakh to Rs. 49 lakh annually, with an average of Rs 19.2 lakh.


Lifestyle managers handle tasks that should, in a functioning public infrastructure, be less burdensome. Eldercare, childcare coordination, household staff oversight. The wealthy have outsourced these to a professional class. Everyone else absorbs the work informally, mostly women.


The National Statistics Office Time Use Survey 2024 released by MoSPI in February 2025 shows women in India spend 289 minutes per day on unpaid domestic services, compared to 88 minutes for men. Women spend an additional 137 minutes daily on unpaid caregiving for household members, against 75 minutes for men. This is a structural transfer of public goods responsibility onto individual households, and within households, onto women.


The Ministry of Women and Child Development has estimated that women's unpaid domestic and care work represents 15 to 17 percent of India's GDP. India spends less than one percent of GDP on public care infrastructure. The arithmetic is not difficult.


Labour Hierarchies

The lifestyle management industry has formalised one tier of care work while leaving the other entirely unprotected. Lifestyle managers earn huge salaries and receive employment benefits. The domestic workers they are hired to supervise and coordinate fall into a completely different legal category.


India has between 25-80 million domestic workers depending on the estimate, making it the largest employer of domestic workers in the world. The country has not ratified ILO Convention 189 on Decent Work for Domestic Workers, adopted in 2011. India supported the Convention at the International Labour Conference but has not enacted national legislation in the 15 years since. The government's stated reason is that existing legal frameworks do not meet C189’s requirements. It has not changed those frameworks either.


The four Labour Codes enacted from 2019 to 2020 include domestic workers in their scope but provide no specific enforcement mechanisms, wage floors, or social security pathways for this sector. Karnataka introduced a draft Domestic Workers Welfare Bill in 2025 that mandates employer registration, written contracts, and welfare fund contributions. It has not been implemented nationally. Tamil Nadu has a welfare board, but registration is low and minimum wage compliance is weak.


This two-tier structure is not accidental. JNU economist Avinash Kumar, quoted in a recent report, described the process as ‘precarisation’ where digital platforms, uniforms, and ratings systems create an appearance of formal employment without improving actual working conditions. The lifestyle management firm intermediates between the wealthy client and the domestic worker.


The UBS Global Wealth Report 2025 places India eighth among the ten most unequal countries in its sample of 56 nations. India’s Gini coefficient for wealth stands at 0.74, identical to the United States, a country with significantly higher average income and social protection spending. India added 39,000 dollar millionaires in 2024, bringing the total to 917,000. Over the same period, its real average wealth per adult declined.


Unprotected Workers

In India’s burgeoning lifestyle-management industry, clients pay anything between Rs. 15,000-1.5 lakh a month for convenience. Demand is buoyed by a rapidly expanding class of ultra-rich; Knight Frank expects India to record the world’s fastest growth in ultra-high-net-worth individuals between 2023 and 2028. Yet the workforce underpinning this economy remains largely unprotected, with no guaranteed minimum wage, weekly rest or access to provident-fund and insurance benefits without formal contracts. The Union Budget 2026-27 proposes training 1.5 lakh multiskilled caregivers, but leaves untouched the status of 10.4 lakh ASHA and 25 lakh Anganwadi workers, who continue to deliver frontline health and nutrition services as ‘volunteers’ rather than employees.


The E-Shram portal has expanded documentation of informal workers. Registration is not protection. A domestic worker registered on E-Shram has no legal wage floor if the state government has not notified one, no enforceable rest periods, and no grievance mechanism beyond civil courts that are inaccessible to workers paid Rs. 6,000 a month.


There is no GST enforcement mechanism for the premium lifestyle management market, no mandatory disclosure requirement for firms on how they classify and pay the workers they supply to clients, and no inclusion of domestic work in the Smart Cities Mission or affordable housing planning frameworks.


India’s female labour force participation rate was 25 percent in 2024 for women aged 15 to 59, up from 21.8 percent in 2019 per the NSO Time Use Survey. The gap with men, at 75 percent, remains 50 percentage points wide. Multiple studies link this gap directly to the unequal burden of unpaid care work. McKinsey Global Institute has estimated that robust investment in India’s care economy could increase GDP by 60 percent if women’s labour force participation reaches parity.


Instead, what is happening is a market solution for the top 0.1 percent and no solution for anyone else. The wealthy hire lifestyle managers. Everyone else absorbs the work. The state counts neither as an economic contribution nor a policy responsibility.


India’s lifestyle manager industry is not evidence of prosperity. It is evidence of what happens when public care infrastructure is absent, labour law excludes the most vulnerable workers, and wealth concentrates at a rate that allows a small fraction of the population to buy their way out of the obligations the state has not met.


(The writer is an independent public policy researcher. Views personal.)

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