‘Living On The Edge’: 카지노 Magazine’s Next Issue On India’s Fragile Borderlands and The Human Cost of Conflict 

What is a border but an invisible line drawn in the sand? Is it just the end of one country and the start of another? Or is it something more: The children who learn early where to run when the sirens start, the families split by fences and rules, the soldiers stationed to defend it, and the civilians left to pick up the pieces of conflict. 

The real cost of the current geopolitical border issues—whose redrawing has plunged the world into wars, incursions, and offensives—is not monetary. It is borne by the people who, through no fault of their own, happen to live in a place of interest.

In 카지노 Magazine’s next issue, Living on the Edge, turns away from maps and lines to focus on the people who live at the margins, where national borders aren’t just geography, but a daily reality. Where a ceasefire doesn’t mean safety, and where war doesn’t always come with a declaration.

Who gets to live in peace, and who is always on notice? Who owns a homeland when the homeland keeps moving? And what happens when the state redraws boundaries without consent?

“Life in these border areas of Poonch, Rajouri, Kathua, Samba and Jammu districts is a daily grind under the shadow of mortar shells and shattered homes.” Ishfaq Naseem writes. From villages shelled without warning, where gurdwaras become shelters, and hospitals are always running out of staff, Naseem’s ground report explores the aftermath of the Pahalam attack and subsequent shellings on Kashmir’s border downs. “The situation was not even as bad in the 1965 and 1971 wars as it is now,” says one resident. Another recounts, “We stayed hungry on the day of shelling and for several days... both the days and nights were bleak for us.” 

In Punjab, Pragya Singh tracks how memory and fear shape entire geographies. Amid drone sightings and economic paralysis at Attari-Wagah, families packed their belongings and fled—some for the third or fourth time in their lives. Singh explores the cyclical nature of displacement, writing, “Home here is defined by return, not permanence, by rebuilding and restocking, not accumulating.”

To the west, in Gujarat’s salt-crusted wetlands, Pritha Vashisth documents lives lived in bureaucratic uncertainty. In Kutch’s Sir Creek region, borders shift with tides, and belonging feels provisional. Retired BSF jawan Kanji Rajput, who once navigated the marshlands during war, now fights for his pension. “These are settlements that weren’t built on dreams or decisions,” writes Vashisth, “but based on displacement from place to place on the fragile ground that once trembled beneath the boots of soldiers.”

Further east, Snigdhendu Bhattacharya captures the unfolding crisis on the India–Myanmar frontier, where the central government’s push to erect a physical fence threatens to sever transborder tribal communities. In Longwa, a village literally split between two nations, the Konyaks protest: “Longwa is one and undividable. So are the Konyaks.” Meanwhile, the Naga and Zo groups raise slogans like “We live by blood, not by choice,” invoking Article 36 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. As Bhattacharya notes, “For the Zos living in the India–Myanmar borderland, the international border is just an imaginary line.”

Against these ground reports, Seema Guha offers a historical lens. The unfinished business of the Radcliffe Line, the McMahon Line, and maritime borders like Sir Creek continue to shape foreign policy and fracture communities. From Mizoram’s resistance to Delhi’s refugee bans to the lethal fences of the Bangladesh border, she writes: “Contested borders don’t just divide nations—they split histories, cultures, and families.”

In Living on the Edge, 카지노 asks what it means to live in places where belonging is conditional, infrastructure is absent, and danger arrives with no warning. Where the state promises security, but offers only surveillance. Where history remains unfinished—and memory, inherited. The borders may be quiet for now. But the people who live along them know better.