Nishant Gour asked: Why is it important for India to be in the SCO?

Rajorshi Roy replies: The SCO has emerged as a prominent Eurasian organisation in the last few years. The SCO has expanded not just in its geographical reach through the inclusion of new members but also in its scope and importance. It is one of the world’s largest pan-regional organisations.

Notably, the SCO’s Charter seeks to promote mutually beneficial regional cooperation in the security, cultural, economic and developmental realms. As such, there exists significant merit in India sitting inside the SCO tent. The fact is that Eurasia is a part of India’s extended neighbourhood. And events here have a direct bearing on India’s geo-strategic calculus.

The SCO, inevitably, provides India a platform to address a number of its continental interests and concerns. First, it enables India to strengthen its outreach to Central Asia. This comes at a time when India has sought to re-connect and re-energise its ties with the region. Second, it allows India to stay connected with regional discussions over stabilising Afghanistan. The SCO has a contact group which brings together all SCO members. This is crucial at a time when developments in Afghanistan have been completely overshadowed by the theatres of war in Ukraine and West Asia.

Third, it enables India to be a part of SCO’s mechanism (RATS – Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure) to tackle the ‘three evils’ of terrorism, separatism and extremism. Fourth, India’s membership of SCO inherently strengthens multipolarity in Eurasia. India has emphasised on open, inclusive and transparent connectivity projects, anchored in the International North South Transport Corridor (INSTC). This gives regional countries options to choose their connectivity projects. Fifth, SCO gives India a stage to engage both China and Pakistan bilaterally on the side-lines of its meetings. This could provide an opening to potential thaw in ties.

India’s membership of SCO at the same time provides the organisation with greater legitimacy particularly amidst allegations of SCO’s raison d'être being a parochial and disruptive body. India also brings to the table niche expertise which can be adopted for regional good. These include start-up eco-system, banking and digital transformation, traditional medicines for holistic health, and, experience in tackling terrorism and narcotics as well as providing humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR). 

Nevertheless, the jury is still out on its true efficacy. This is largely on account of several geo-political and geo-economic undercurrents. The first is the perceived China-centricism with China appearing to be calling the lion’s share of the shots. This perhaps affects SCO ambitious goal of creating inclusive economic and connectivity linkages since they are in direct competition with BRI. The other undercurrents are trust deficit between certain members, lack of respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty, inability to reach consensus on certain terror groups and cross-border terrorism, and denial of overland connectivity - a basic principle of SCO.

In conclusion, the potential of SCO is yet to be fully tapped. Calibrating a new collaborative approach is crucial since pooling of strengths in areas of overlapping interests would inevitably benefit the peoples of SCO member states. Theoretically, SCO could even help unlock connectivity between Central and South Asia, thereby creating an arc of economic advantage between the two regions. The litmus test is to navigate some of the organisation’s key fault-lines to present concrete deliverables.

Views expressed are of the expert and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Manohar Parrikar IDSA or the Government of India.