Vibrant Villages Programme Phase 2 Launched: ₹6,839 Crore for 1,954 Border Villages

Phase 1 (sanctioned February 15, 2023) focused exclusively on villages along India’s northern land border with China — the high-altitude Himalayan frontier. It covered 662 select villages across 46 blocks in 19 districts in Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Uttarakhand, and Ladakh (UT). The MHA sanctioned 2,558 projects and works worth ₹3,431 crore, and over 8,500 activities were undertaken including health camps, awareness programmes, and local tourism promotion.

Phase 2 (Cabinet approval April 2, 2025) is a major geographic and financial expansion. The number of villages nearly triples to 1,954, the budget doubles to ₹6,839 crore, and most significantly — the scope expands from the northern border alone to all international land borders, covering frontiers with China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal, and Bhutan. The 15 states and 2 UTs covered reflect the full complexity of India’s border geography.

VVP-II operates through a “saturation-based, convergence-driven approach” — ensuring every eligible household in a covered village receives the full suite of Central and state government benefits, rather than delivering piecemeal interventions. Six core development areas anchor the programme:

• Physical Connectivity — All-weather roads linking border villages to district headquarters and state highways, including areas currently cut off for months due to snow, floods, or terrain.
• Healthcare — Health sub-centres, primary health centres, telemedicine facilities, and mobile medical units for villages often dozens of kilometres from the nearest hospital.
• Education — School infrastructure upgrades, digital learning, and hostel support to reduce historically high dropout rates in border areas.
• Telecommunications and Internet — Mobile connectivity and broadband access, without which young people in border villages have few economic opportunities and are more likely to migrate.
• Livelihood and Economic Development — Skill training, support for agriculture, horticulture, animal husbandry, and cottage industries matched to the natural resources of specific border regions.
• Housing and Basic Amenities — Convergence with PMAY, Jal Jeevan Mission, and Swachh Bharat for drinking water, toilets, and pucca houses for all residents.

The Vibrant Villages Programme is simultaneously a welfare initiative and a national security strategy — and these dimensions are inseparable. Across India’s border areas, particularly the high-altitude Himalayan regions, decades of demographic outmigration have left many border villages partially or wholly abandoned. Young people leave for cities in search of education, employment, and basic services. The security implication is stark: an empty border village cannot provide early warning of intrusions, cannot support military patrols, and cannot demonstrate effective Indian civilian presence in strategically sensitive areas.

The MHA has explicitly stated that strengthened border villages “enable residents to act as the eyes and ears of the nation” — contributing to border security, prevention of cross-border crime, and countering illegal infiltration. Residents of border villages are often the first to observe unusual activity along the border: movements, changes in local geography, the presence of strangers. A populated, civically engaged border community is an intelligence asset. A depopulated one is a blind spot.

The China context is particularly important. VVP Phase 1 was launched in direct response to the post-Galwan review of 2020. China’s systematic investment in border infrastructure — roads, villages, military facilities — had given it strategic advantages that India needed to urgently reverse. VVP is one component of that reversal strategy, alongside the Border Roads Organisation’s record expenditure, new tunnels like the Sela Tunnel in Arunachal Pradesh, and increased military infrastructure along the Line of Actual Control.

Phase 2’s explicit inclusion of the Northeast — sharing international boundaries with Bangladesh, Myanmar, Bhutan, and China — addresses a longstanding developmental and security challenge. The Northeast has historically suffered from poor connectivity with mainland India, ethnic tensions, insurgency, and developmental neglect. Cross-border migration, smuggling, and the movement of insurgent groups across porous borders remain active security concerns.

The choice of Cachar district, Assam as the launch venue for VVP-II is significant. Cachar borders Bangladesh and has been a focal point of illegal immigration tensions for decades. Launching the programme here sends a clear signal: the Northeast is now a first-priority region for border development, not an afterthought. Vibrant, economically active border communities are the most effective long-term answer to the region’s complex security challenges.

VVP-II is explicitly framed within Viksit Bharat @2047 — India’s goal of becoming a developed nation by the centenary of independence. The inclusion of border villages in this vision carries both a welfare commitment and a political statement: India’s development journey will not leave behind its most marginalised communities simply because they live on the geographic periphery.

There is also a demographic argument. Border districts in states like Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, and parts of the Northeast have thin populations relative to their geographic size and strategic importance. Investment in livelihood and infrastructure in these regions supports natural population retention and reduces the outmigration that has hollowed out many border communities over the past three decades. Populated borders are resilient borders.