India’s SCO dilemma

If New Delhi is uncomfortable in aligning its activities with a China-dominated grouping, it must drastically raise its bilateral engagements in Central Asia.

The recently-concluded Shanghai Corporation Organisation (SCO) summit under the Indian presidency clearly shows that New Delhi is not quite sure what priority this organisation deserves. India would not like to be out of the SCO activities as it has serious security, economic, and energy interests in the Eurasian region. Now with Iran joining as a full member, the importance of the SCO for India has further increased. However, India is not very comfortable with Beijing’s influence over SCO activities and the organisation’s generally anti-United States attitude.

The timing of the Indian chairmanship of the SCO was not very conducive. The policy-makers in Delhi have been too busy with the G20 presidency. To a large extent G20 activities overshadowed SCO events. Moreover, relations with two important members of the organisation, viz China and Pakistan, have been at an all-time low.

While converting the two-day summit into a two-hour online affair, New Delhi lost a good opportunity to showcase and assert its independent foreign policy orientation. Even if India was able to organise more than 130 SCO meetings and events, the real show was supposed to be the summit. With a tense geopolitical environment, the whole world would have glued to the event in New Delhi in which the leading Eurasian powers including Russia, China, Iran, and India would have discussed their designs for the region.

Since the core of the SCO is Central Asia, this would have also provided a good opportunity to welcome all Central Asian leaders together. Some of the bilateral meetings could also have generated a lot of interest. It was at the bilateral meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Samarkand summit in 2022 where Modi made the famous ‘not an era of war’ statement.

From the beginning, India was in a dilemma concerning its engagement with the SCO. So just being an observer in the SCO seemed fine. But the US’ decision to start withdrawing from Afghanistan in 2014 changed the equation. The SCO had already formed a Contact Group with Afghanistan. The Afghan President was being invited to attend SCO summits. Moreover, the US’ New Silk Road Strategy of linking Central and South Asia via Afghanistan was going nowhere.

Within the context of increasing uncertainty in Afghanistan and a possibility that the SCO may play some significant role in the future of Afghanistan, India applied for its membership in 2014 and became a full member in 2017. Since then, however, various developments have created new dilemmas for India.

Downturn in ties with both China and Pakistan, the US exit from Afghanistan, and the return of Taliban in Kabul have coincided with India’s serious involvement in various Indo-Pacific initiatives with the US. In the meanwhile, the West is trying to isolate Russia, and Iran continues to be under various sanctions.

At the summit, China’s President Xi Jinping outlined his all major projects viz the Global Security Initiative, the Global Development Initiative, the Global Civilization Initiative, and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). He asserted that China is willing to co-operate on all these projects with the SCO members. Both Russia and China want to deepen linkages between the Chinese-led BRI and the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union.

To reduce their dependence on both Russia and China, Central Asians want India to play a bigger role in the region. This also fits well within their multi vector foreign policies. Despite intentions and rhetoric, however, New Delhi remains a marginal player in Central Asia. So, at least the SCO is good forum where Central and South Asians meet.

However, at a time when India-US ties have become very close and its relations with China have deteriorated, India cannot be an enthusiastic player in a China dominated club. The Delhi declaration shows that India was the only country which did not support the BRI and did not sign the SCOs Economic Development Strategy 2030.

Due to difficult India-Pakistan relations and an unstable Afghanistan, Iran has been a key factor in India’s connectivity designs in Eurasia. Being SCO members, both Russia and Iran will have no problem in linking their connectivity strategies with the SCO or the BRI. In fact, the International North-South Transport Corridor, in which India is a partner along with Russia and Iran, was listed as a BRI project at its last forum. So, to be relevant in Central Asia, either India must align its activities along with the SCO or drastically raise its bilateral engagements in the region.

(Gulshan Sachdeva is Professor, Centre for European Studies, and Coordinator, Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence, Jawaharlal Nehru University.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.