Change in India’s Stance Towards SCO: The Rise and Rise of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation

For long India remained indifferent to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). New Delhi’s position towards the Organisation was at best ambivalent. Now that this regional grouping has acquired strength and muscle, India is showing a keen interest in joining it. New Delhi considers SCO membership vital for promoting its interests in the region. The government has written to its missions in four Central Asian countries as also in China and Russia to do the needful in this regard including analysing the nature of rule changes for joining this regional formation.

As of now, Minister for External Affairs S.M. Krishna will be leading the Indian delegation to Tashkent. The SCO Summit will be held on June 10-11. India has generally been cool towards some new regional formations. It happened with IBSA and the troika among Russia, India and China. In fact, New Delhi took the plunge only when Brazil threatened to approach Beijing if it remained non-committal. Similarly, India was unenthusiastic about the SCO initially knowing full well that as an observer, it had only limited role. However, things have changed after the Yekaterinburg meeting last year. It was Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who went all the way to Yekaterinburg and realised the growing importance of this forum. India had earlier participated in the SCO summits but it was represented by Petroleum Minister Murli Deora or Minister of State in the PMO Prithviraj Chavan. It remained virtually a bystander.

The terms of engagement are changing and if India and some other countries join the grouping, the SCO will acquire even greater weight and muscle. The rules for fresh entry are likely to be unveiled around the Tashkent Summit. As per sources, Iran, India and Pakistan are the likely candidates. But it will not be easy for the SCO to take some observers as full members and ignore others. Mongolia too is keen on membership. It is also being pointed out that during the Bangalore meeting of the Russian, Indian and Chinese Foreign Ministers, both the Russian and Chinese Foreign Ministers had urged Krishna to take more interest in the SCO, which was an indication of their support for India’s future membership.

That may be bearing fruit now. It now appears that Iran may have missed the bus and India and Pakistan would be inducted. Tehran is facing UN sanctions for its nuclear programme and fresh sanctions are being contemplated. It now transpires that a country aspiring to join the SCO should not be under the UN Security Council sanctions. Should that happen, it will be a big setback to Tehran and may even damage Iran’s ties with Russia and China. One thing is, however, clear: India’s entry will boost the grouping. After all, Russia, India and China are working together under the banner of BRIC, why cannot they be together in the SCO?

The new Secretary-General of the SCO, Muratbek Sansyzbayevich Imanaliev’s observa-tions—that “enlarging membership is an important task for the SCO at present and for a long time in the future” and that “we will continue to enhance cooperation within the SCO framework” —are significant.

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The membership issue is still complicated. The expansion of the SCO is an ironic mirror image of the NATO expansion in the 1990s. Efforts to bring in Iran are serious given its strong say on the Caspian and Central Asian energy resources. Russia is pushing its entry but China is not fully inclined. China feels, if Iran joins it would drastically change the original function of the SCO. Chinese reluctance is rooted in a concern that this would change the meaning of the SCO in a very specific way. With Iran joining, the grouping will be seen as anti-American which China is avoiding. That being the case, the question of new membership may get complicated. It may even be shelved.

One reason why India is very keen on membership at this stage is the growing importance of the region not only in terms of its energy resources but also in fighting terrorism. India has shifted its position vis-à-vis the SCO. Earlier, it followed a policy of masterful inactivity towards the SCO. India was the only country among the observer countries that was not present at the head of state or government level during many of the SCO summits. For some reason, the Indian Government thought the presence of Murli Deora was enough. But this left a negative impact. It signalled an impression among the SCO members that India took the grouping merely as a consortium of energy producers and consumers.

Today New Delhi has realised that it stands to benefit from its association with the SCO. It is now placing itself in a key role in any Afghan settlement. After President Obama’s decision to place Pakistan at the centre of a resolution, India is in a way facing a situation of semi-isolation in Afghanistan. Much to the dismay of India, most Western powers are chary of Islamabad’s aversion to including India at the high table of conflict resolution in Afghanistan. Many analysts see it as India’s diplomatic failure.

Russia has assured the Indian leaders of its full backing. It seems Beijing too has decided to withdraw its earlier reservations. India knows that India’s membership will provide it with an extremely useful forum for deepening the Sino-Indian normalisation.

India’s participation in the Tashkent Summit is a window of opportunity for New Delhi to harmonise its Afghan policy with Russia, China, Iran and the Central Asian states. But India needs to overcome many challenges that have to do with the earlier US-centric stance towards Afghanistan. New Delhi identified itself too closely with the Bush Administration which did not go down well with some neighbouring countries including Iran.

The author is an Associate Director, Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi.