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A road curves around the mountains near Zuluk village in the Indian state of Sikkim. In recent years, the Indian government has worked to boost road connectivity in such villages near its border with China. Omkar Khandekar/NPR hide caption
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Omkar Khandekar/NPR
GANGTOK, India — Nearly four years ago, Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman told the Parliament she had big plans for India's border villages.
"Border villages with sparse population, limited connectivity and infrastructure often get left out from developmental gains," she said, while announcing the government's spending budget for 2022-2023.
She unveiled the Vibrant Villages Programme, aiming to undo the neglect of thousands of communities on the border. Its first phase started with more than 600 villages along India's 2,100-mile-long border with China, many high up in the forbidding Himalayan plateau.
The finance minister didn't say it, but India's initiative appeared to be a response to China's decade-long buildup of troops and military and civilian infrastructure along their shared border.
Today, there's a tale of two borderlands in the Himalayas. China has systematically fortified its borders with India, as well as neighboring Nepal and Bhutan, creating hundreds of villages next to these South Asian countries along Chinese-controlled Tibet, and moving tens of thousands of civilians there. Analysts say the authorities in Beijing hope they will act as the state's "eyes and ears" along the disputed border, and that many of the villages double as military bases.
Meanwhile, many of India's development projects on the border sputter along without a deadline, often stymied by its slow-moving bureaucracy. As a result, youth are moving away from the villages to towns and cities downhill for jobs and education.
A sign in India's Sikkim state bordering China reads "Caution: You are under Chinese observation." In eastern parts of the state, Indian security forces have put up such signs to warn people of surveillance. Omkar Khandekar/NPR hide caption
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Omkar Khandekar/NPR
For years, analysts have accused the Chinese army of "salami slicing." It's a tactic in which one country occupies its rival's areas by chipping away at its borders. The emptying out of India's border villages, they say, could further embolden China to enter areas that India calls its own.
That's already started happening, says researcher Vinayak Bhat, who worked as a satellite analyst with the Indian army until 2015. Of more than 600 Chinese villages built near its border with India so far, he says at least 10 are located in disputed areas.
In 2021, India's Foreign Ministry accused China of "undertaking construction activities" along the border and "in areas it has illegally occupied" in Arunachal Pradesh state. China denied this, saying the construction was "on its own territory."
India's Vibrant Villages initiative was meant to bolster civilian presence along the disputed border. But NPR's recent visit to one such region and interviews with residents in other areas reveal a wide gap between the government's plans and their execution.
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Unkept promises, bureaucratic bottleneck
A string of flags welcomes visitors to the village of Zuluk in the Indian state of Sikkim. India aims to boost tourism to these border villages, hoping to create jobs for locals and prevent young people from migrating to faraway cities for work. Omkar Khandekar/NPR hide caption
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Omkar Khandekar/NPR
The border village of Gnathang, in India's far-flung state of Sikkim, sits in a scenic valley of glacial lakes and grazing yaks, surrounded by the snow-capped Himalayas. Some of its roads run so close to China and Bhutan that cellular networks across the mountain ridges send texts to "welcome" users to their countries.
It's also a place where Indian and Chinese soldiers have locked horns in the past, most recently in 2017. Numerous Indian army camps thus dot these mountains, where slogans of guns and glory are scrawled on their walls. The ghost of Baba Harbhajan Singh, an Indian soldier who died in 1968, is believed to keep an eye on the patrolmen. Legend has it, if they get drowsy on the job, Baba smacks them awake.
But for many residents, the bigger battle is often with nature. In winter, eggs and onions turn rock-solid. There's no running water. The power and internet go off for days. People mostly hibernate in their wood-and-tin houses, burning firewood to brave the freezing cold.
Indian Union Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw briefs the media on Union Cabinet decisions at the National Media Centre on April 4, 2025, in New Delhi. Chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Cabinet approved the Vibrant Villages Programme II to develop villages located along the country's international borders to enhance national security. Sanjeev Verma/Hindustan Times via Getty Images hide caption
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Sanjeev Verma/Hindustan Times via Getty Images
Under the Vibrant Villages Programme, the finance minister said, the government would transform such places. She promised to build roads and houses, promote tourism, extend welfare projects and create jobs.
That was in 2022.
"Since then, all we have received is one solar-powered lamp in our village," says Sonam Bhutia, the village leader of Gnathang. The streetlamp broke down in a month — but they had no one to turn to.
"Our legislators only visit twice in a five-year term: while campaigning for elections and for a victory lap," Bhutia says.
He says it's why only 750 people live there now, after more than 1,500 residents have left over the years. Hundreds of Indian border villages have emptied out as residents move to towns and cities in other parts of the country.
In the week NPR spent in Sikkim, more residents shared stories of unkept promises. Roads and cellphone connectivity did improve, helping draw more tourists. But power and internet were erratic, and locals had to move out for schools and medical treatment, they said.
Sonam Bhutia, leader of Gnathang village in the Indian state of Sikkim, accuses the Indian government of neglecting development works inside border villages. Omkar Khandekar/NPR hide caption
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Omkar Khandekar/NPR
Some blame the bureaucracy. Sherpa Sangpo Bhutia, the chief of Zuluk village, says he participated in several meetings with state officials over the past two years. The officials then submitted proposals to build a sports ground and cultural center in the village that has yet to materialize.
"I'm sure they're trying from their end," he says, "but it must be getting stuck somewhere."
The chasm between the government's promises and results worries researchers who study security in this area, as much of the border between India and China is disputed. And while India's construction lags, China has been aggressively building villages in the region and subsidizing new residents to move in.
China has steadily built up Himalayan villages along Tibet's southern borders with India, Nepal and nearby Bhutan since 2016. The remote villages are usually accessible only from the Chinese side, through freshly built roads linking them to bigger Chinese towns nearby.
China has also built villages in areas claimed by Bhutan, although China considers them part of its territory and populated them with Chinese citizens, according to research by China scholar Robert Barnett. His report in late 2024 documented 22 such villages.
Need for speed
An Indian army convoy moves along the Srinagar-Leh National Highway toward Ladakh on June 17, 2020. At least 20 Indian soldiers were killed in a violent clash with Chinese forces in a disputed border area. Faisal Khan/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images hide caption
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Faisal Khan/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Over the last decade, India and China have had several confrontations over the buildup of roads and infrastructure near the border. Tensions peaked in 2020, as a brawl in the high-altitude region of Ladakh killed at least 20 Indian soldiers, as well as an unconfirmed number of Chinese troops, and led to a two-year military standoff.
Retired Col. Vinayak Bhat worked as a satellite analyst with the Indian Army until 2015. He says many new Chinese villages have the potential to be military launchpads — even though the Chinese authorities portray them mainly as civilian settlements.
"China keeps claiming these are civilians who have come in and occupied those areas," says Bhat. "So what does one do? You can't kill them. You have to have talks. And that they're taking advantage of."
While India might not have the resources to build new villages to assert its territorial claims, Bhat says, it can control migration out of ones that already exist — by proper implementation of projects like Vibrant Villages.
For this report, NPR requested the Earth imaging company Planet Labs to share satellite images along India's border with China. These included nearly a dozen villages from the western region of Ladakh and the northeastern states of Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh in India. The images were from November 2022 and October-November 2025. NPR requested Bhat and Matthew Akestar, a Tibet scholar and researcher, to analyze them.
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Both Bhat and Akestar say the images suggest India is prioritizing the construction of roads in the mountains. They also point to the increased construction alongside the roads, but say it isn't clear what the nature of the buildup is.
The overall progress, says Bhat, is "much slower. But I'm sure there are constraints and the people are realistic in taking decisions."
Konchok Stanzin, a former Indian legislator from the Himalayan territory of Ladakh, concurs that it's not easy to build in the Himalayan highlands. "Given the low temperatures, people can work only between April and October," he says.
Workers with India's Border Road Organisation construct a road near Demchok, in Ladakh, on May 19, 2024. Tauseef Mustafa/AFP via Getty Images hide caption
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Tauseef Mustafa/AFP via Getty Images
But Stanzin observes that the speed and planning in infrastructure projects in India are in sharp contrast to those visible in Chinese villages across the border. He saw it himself a few years ago, while visiting Demchok village on the frontier.
"Indian officials sometimes only approve work in September," he says, when a biting cold is just about to set in. And when work does start, it drags on indefinitely.
"When Chinese authorities build a road, they bring along power lines too," Stanzin says. "But in India, they build a road, then dig it up for cables, then dig it up again for plumbing works. ... In the time it takes India to lay the foundation for a building, China completes the building."
At the other end of the border, the rural works minister of Arunachal Pradesh, Pasang Dorjee Sona, says central government officials in New Delhi often decide what they need without consulting local leaders. Their "desktop work," he says, has meant several border villages were left out of welfare activities.
"A lot of villages which are exactly on the border have been missed out" of the first phase of the Vibrant Villages Programme, he says. "And a lot of villages, where there has been no habitation for years, have made it to the list."
Sona adds that Indian bureaucrats often focus on building infrastructure but not making the facilities functional: Schools lack teachers; hospitals lack health care workers; cellular towers lack a stable network.
People watch and travel India's new National Highway route connecting the border state of Sikkim with West Bengal state and the rest of the country, in Bagrakote, West Bengal, India, on Jan. 6, 2025. Diptendu Dutta/NurPhoto via Getty Images hide caption
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Diptendu Dutta/NurPhoto via Getty Images
"Roads are coming up," he says, "but other sectors also need to be taken up in the same spirit."
India's interior ministry did not respond to NPR's requests for an interview. But Indra Hang Subba, a parliamentary legislator from Sikkim, says such delays are inherent to India's democratic system.
"If China wants to do one thing, they will do it," he says. "But in India, we do things with the consensus of the people. The pace would be a little slower, but the development will be equitable."
It's why, he says, it took two years to put together a list of projects worth $50 million in his Sikkim constituency. For the last few months, he's been waiting for approval from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government.
Residents who have returned to Indian border villages wish the officials would hurry up.
Pema Sherpa, who runs a café in the Indian village of Kupup, says unreliable power, internet and mobile connectivity in border areas like hers make life difficult for residents and visitors. Omkar Khandekar/NPR hide caption
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Omkar Khandekar/NPR
Three years ago, Pema Sherpa quit her job in Delhi and returned to her hometown Kupup, in Sikkim state. She now looks after a grocery and snack shop along with her mother, serving rice, noodles and meat curries to tourists.
She says the new roads have brought in more customers — but the inadequate infrastructure makes everyday life a struggle.
"I have heard the Vibrant Village campaign is about reversing migration," she says. "But if you want people to return and establish themselves, basic services are needed. Even my siblings don't prefer staying here because of issues around power, mobile connectivity and internet."
For residents like Sherpa, the main challenge for most residents of India's border villages is not China. It's getting their own government to govern.
Omkar Khandekar and Pankaj Dhungel reported from Gangtok, India. Emily Feng reported from Washington, D.C. Aowen Cao contributed research.
