Bishkek Test: Why the SCO Matters More to India Than Ever

-Aditya Amitabh Trivedii, Managing Editor 

BISHKEK: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s presence in Bishkek ahead of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit comes at a moment when the Eurasian landscape is undergoing profound strategic shifts. Wars, sanctions, disrupted trade routes, energy insecurity and an increasingly fragmented global order have given the SCO a significance that extends well beyond its original mandate. For India, however, the importance of the Bishkek summit lies not merely in the size of the grouping or the number of powerful leaders gathered around the same table. Its real value lies in the diplomatic space it provides New Delhi to engage simultaneously with Russia, China, Iran and the Central Asian republics while protecting its own strategic autonomy.

Modi’s engagements on Monday underlined precisely this approach. He held talks with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov. The discussions covered bilateral ties as well as the rapidly changing regional environment. The Prime Minister is scheduled to address the 26th SCO Summit on Tuesday.

The SCO was born in a very different geopolitical environment. What began in 1996 as the Shanghai Five—China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan—was initially designed to reduce military tensions and build confidence along post-Soviet borders. The organisation was formally established in Shanghai in 2001 after Uzbekistan joined the grouping. India and Pakistan became full members in 2017, Iran joined in 2023 and Belarus became the latest full member in 2024.

The result is a grouping of ten full members stretching across a huge portion of Eurasia. Together, the members account for more than 40 per cent of the world’s population and roughly a quarter of global GDP. Those numbers alone, however, do not make the SCO a cohesive geopolitical bloc. The organisation has no equivalent of NATO’s collective-defence mechanism, no integrated military command and no single foreign-policy position on many of the world’s most contentious issues. Its members themselves have competing strategic interests. That contradiction is perhaps the most important feature of the SCO—and one that India must approach with realism.

The most immediate challenge facing the Bishkek summit is the conflict surrounding Iran and the wider instability in West Asia. Modi’s meeting with Pezeshkian therefore carries significance well beyond the bilateral relationship. The two leaders discussed bilateral ties and the evolving situation in West Asia. Modi reiterated India’s position that disputes should be addressed through dialogue and diplomacy and stressed the need to protect freedom of navigation and commerce.

For New Delhi, this is not simply a question of diplomacy. India’s energy security, commercial shipping, access to West Asia and connectivity with Central Asia are directly affected by instability in the region. Any prolonged disruption of maritime routes can have consequences for India’s energy imports, freight costs and supply chains.

Iran is also central to India’s connectivity ambitions. The Chabahar route and the International North-South Transport Corridor provide India with an alternative pathway towards Afghanistan, Central Asia, Russia and Europe. This makes Tehran an unavoidable partner in India’s Eurasian strategy.

The meeting between Modi and Putin was equally important. India and Russia continue to maintain a broad strategic relationship covering defence, energy, trade, space and technology. But the relationship has acquired a new dimension since the Russia-Ukraine conflict transformed the global economic and security environment.

During their Bishkek talks, Modi conveyed India’s consistent position on the need to move towards an end to the Ukraine war and reaffirmed India’s support for peace efforts. Putin, meanwhile, briefed Modi on developments concerning the conflict. For India, maintaining communication with Moscow is not a choice dictated by nostalgia. It is a calculation based on national interest.

Russia remains important to India’s defence architecture and energy security. At the same time, New Delhi has steadily diversified its partnerships with the United States, Europe, Japan, Australia and the Gulf. The underlying message is clear: India does not want its relationship with one major power to come at the expense of another.

No discussion of the SCO can ignore China. President Xi Jinping’s presence in Bishkek ensures that the summit will also be watched closely from the India-China perspective. Although no formal Modi-Xi bilateral meeting had been officially confirmed by Monday night, the two leaders’ presence at the same summit itself carries diplomatic significance.

India-China relations have gradually moved towards greater engagement after years of severe tension following the 2020 border crisis. Yet the relationship remains complicated by unresolved boundary issues, strategic competition and economic disagreements. The SCO gives both countries an institutional platform where engagement is possible without requiring every bilateral dispute to be resolved first.

That is precisely why India should use the organisation pragmatically—not as an anti-Western alliance and certainly not as an anti-China platform, but as a forum through which difficult relationships can remain open to dialogue.

The significance of Modi’s Bishkek visit becomes clearer when viewed alongside his preceding visit to Uzbekistan. India has increasingly recognised that Central Asia cannot remain a peripheral component of its foreign policy. Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan occupy a strategically vital space connecting Russia, China, South Asia, Iran and Europe.

Yet geography has always been India’s disadvantage in Central Asia. Pakistan’s location and Afghanistan’s instability have restricted direct overland connectivity. This is where alternative corridors become strategically important. Chabahar and the INSTC are therefore not merely infrastructure projects. They are instruments of India’s larger geopolitical strategy to overcome its geographical constraints.

Modi’s meeting with President Japarov further reinforces India’s effort to deepen political, economic, educational and cultural links with Kyrgyzstan.

The organisation’s economic potential is enormous, but its institutional architecture remains incomplete. The members possess vast energy resources, large consumer markets, manufacturing capacity, technological capabilities and strategic transport corridors. Yet intra-SCO economic integration remains considerably weaker than the headline figures might suggest.

Ideas such as an SCO development bank, greater financial cooperation, improved transport connectivity and more efficient cross-border trade have been discussed for years. The challenge is turning declarations into functioning institutions.

For India, this distinction matters. New Delhi has supported connectivity, but it has consistently insisted that connectivity must respect national sovereignty and territorial integrity and should not become a vehicle for strategic dependency. The principle is particularly relevant in a region where competing infrastructure initiatives increasingly reflect geopolitical ambitions.

Counter-terrorism remains one of the strongest areas of convergence within the SCO. The organisation’s Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure, or RATS, provides a mechanism for intelligence sharing and coordination against terrorism, separatism and extremism.

For India, this is important. The Central Asian region faces threats from terrorism, radicalisation, narcotics trafficking and instability emanating from Afghanistan. India’s own security concerns make cooperation against these threats a natural area for engagement.

But here too, expectations must remain realistic. The SCO’s internal differences make it difficult to develop a unified security policy. India and Pakistan remain members of the same organisation despite their bilateral tensions. China and Russia have their own competing interests. Iran’s regional priorities are different from those of Central Asian states. The organisation can therefore facilitate cooperation, but it cannot automatically produce strategic consensus.

Perhaps the biggest asset India brings to the SCO is its ability to speak to almost every major power represented there. India maintains a strategic partnership with Russia, a complex but increasingly engaged relationship with China, longstanding ties with Iran and growing partnerships across Central Asia. At the same time, India maintains deep strategic relations with the United States, Europe, Japan, Australia and the Gulf countries.

This places New Delhi in a unique position. The SCO should not be viewed through the simplistic lens of a contest between an imagined “Western bloc” and an “Eastern bloc”. India’s foreign policy has moved beyond such binaries. Its objective is to maximise room for manoeuvre.

The timing of the SCO summit is especially significant because India will host the BRICS summit in New Delhi in September. The conversations taking place in Bishkek therefore have implications beyond the SCO itself. Russia, China and Iran are all central players in the BRICS framework, while India will be expected to bridge differences among countries with sharply divergent geopolitical interests.

The Bishkek summit provides New Delhi an opportunity to test positions, build consensus and understand where major partners stand before the BRICS meeting. Modi’s conversations with Putin and Pezeshkian are particularly relevant in that context.

The temptation at a summit of this scale is to measure success through declarations and diplomatic photographs. For India, the more meaningful yardstick should be practical outcomes. The country needs stronger regional cooperation against terrorism and extremism, secure and diversified trade routes into Central Asia and Europe, uninterrupted energy and commercial shipping routes, and greater strategic room to pursue its interests without being forced into rigid geopolitical camps.

Finally, India needs to ensure that the SCO remains a forum for dialogue even when its members disagree sharply.

The SCO is not NATO. It is not the Warsaw Pact. Nor is it a tightly integrated economic union. Its strength lies precisely in its diversity. That diversity is also its weakness. For India, however, this ambiguity can be an advantage.

A world marked by competing power centres requires platforms where rivals can still meet, communicate and negotiate. The SCO is one such platform.

Modi’s Bishkek visit demonstrates that India’s approach is neither to choose sides mechanically nor to remain on the sidelines. It is to remain engaged with all major centres of power while placing India’s own security, economic interests, connectivity and strategic autonomy at the centre of its diplomacy.

The real test of the Bishkek summit, therefore, will not be whether the SCO projects itself as a counterweight to the West. It will be whether its members can convert their enormous demographic, economic and strategic weight into practical cooperation.

For India, the answer should be measured in something even more concrete: whether Bishkek produces safer neighbourhoods, stronger connectivity, more secure trade and greater diplomatic room for New Delhi. That is where the real significance of the SCO lies.

-Aditya Amitabh Trivedii,  Managing Editor