South Asia is home to nearly a quarter of the world’s population, yet it is one of the least connected regions in terms of people actually moving across borders.
Centuries of history, culture and common language have not translated into easy travel between neighbors. Instead, visas, political tensions and diplomatic uncertainty still decide who gets through and who doesn’t.
People want to travel for the usual reasons: school, medical care, business or just to see family. But in South Asia, borders aren’t just lines on a map—they’re high, impenetrable walls. This hurts a region that, more than most, needs economic cooperation, freedom of movement and cultural connections to thrive.
While other parts of the world are coming closer, as seen in the European Union and ASEAN, South Asia is stuck on something more fundamental: going next door can be more difficult than flying halfway around the world.
For ordinary people, how far you can travel is often not about distance. It is about the state of diplomatic relations on any given day. Students, researchers, tourists, patients and businessmen are all caught in the middle of political decisions over which they have no control or say.
Bangladesh and India show how quickly border situations can change. After Bangladesh’s political unrest in August 2024, India significantly cut back on Bangladeshi tourist visas, keeping the door open mostly for medical cases only.
A trip to India, once routine for many Bangladeshis, became an ordeal. It took almost two years for India to announce that tourist visas for Bangladeshis would be youth on 28 June 2026 – a move welcomed regionally as a concrete step towards improved connectivity.
Bangladesh and Pakistan tell a quieter story, similarly stuck. More than 50 years after 1971, when East Pakistan fought a war of independence from West Pakistan, resulting in the creation of Bangladesh, old wounds still shape ties.
Visa services have never been completely shut down, but mobility has been restricted for decades – largely limited to official, business or medical travel, with tourism barely registered. Two nations linked by history interact much less than their geography would suggest.
India and Pakistan are the worst cases. Since partition in 1947, ongoing wars and security crises have limited cross-border travel. The situation worsened after the Pahalgam attack in April 2025, when India suspended visa services for Pakistanis and revoked most of the visas already issued. Travel between the two countries has remained largely frozen since then.
India and Afghanistan have similarly closed borders. When the Taliban took power in August 2021, India suspended regular visa access for Afghan citizens. Access FACILITATE until 2025, when India introduced e-visas for select categories – business, medical and students – a small but significant breakthrough.
The Afghanistan-Pakistan border is as blocked as any other country in the region. Security concerns, armed conflict and diplomatic friction have created serious obstacles for Afghan citizens, with rights groups documenting mass deportations and tightening restrictions on families seeking refuge after the Taliban took over.
Elsewhere, the barriers look different but achieve the same thing. Sri Lanka’s 2024 attempt to outsource its visa processing drove up costs and bogged down travelers in red tape before the Supreme Court suspended agreement, with the consequences still being resolved.
Bhutan takes a different approach with its sustainable development fee – not exactly a visa restriction, but a financial barrier to movement. In most of the region, the size of your bank account increasingly determines how freely you can move.
Nepal and the Maldives remain exceptions, with more relaxed arrangements than most of their neighbours, although these too rely on successive bilateral agreements rather than any common regional framework.
The bigger picture hasn’t changed: South Asians, more often than not, find it easier to fly somewhere far away than to visit the country next door. This is not just a concern: limited mobility erodes academic collaboration, tourism and economic opportunities.
At the same time, governments rarely feel the cost directly. It is students pursuing education, patients seeking emergency care, families separated by a border, and entrepreneurs trying to reach new markets who pay the price of restrictions.
To be sure, building a more connected region does not mean tearing down borders or ignoring real security concerns. But walls that unnecessarily prevent students, researchers and businessmen from crossing borders for beneficial purposes are in no one’s interest.
How long will South Asia allow short-sighted border policies to keep its foreign neighbors at bay?
Meherun Nessa is a student at Jahangirnagar University in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
