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What's the article about?
- It talks about the outcomes of India’s engagement with the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).
Relevance:
- GS2: Bilateral, Regional and Global Groupings and Agreements involving India and/or affecting India’s interests;
- Prelims
Context:
- Recently, India hosted the meeting of the Council of Heads of State of the SCO.
Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO):
- It is a Eurasian political, economic and military organization aiming to maintain peace, security and stability in the region.
- It was created in 2001 and it is a permanent intergovernmental international organization.
- Prior to the creation of SCO in 2001, Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan were members of the Shanghai Five.
- India and Pakistan became members in 2017.
- On 17th September, 2021, it was announced that Iran would become a full member of the SCO.
- Heads of State Council is the supreme SCO body which decides its internal functioning and its interaction with other States & international organisations, and considers international issues.
Analysis:
Why did India join SCO?
- SCO’s members together make up a third of the global GDP, a fifth of global trade, a fifth of global oil reserves and about 44% of natural gas reserves.
- To focus on regional security and connectivity – important for India’s growth and development.
- To address challenges of terrorism in Pakistan, and Chinese aggressions as well as the Belt and Road Initiative.
- Strategic importance of the SCO given that Pakistan is its full member.
- To get into the Central Asian markets and resources.
- India believes in principles of “multi-alignment” and “strategic autonomy”.
Present status: failed summit
- Given the above mentioned reasons, hosting this meeting was an opportunity for India to further strengthen India’s position and thus ensure gains from the membership of the SCO.
- However certain events such as postpone the SCO summit due to the Prime Minister’s U.S. State visit, and then to turn it into a virtual summit may have been a dampener on the SCO outcomes.
- Thus, despite adopting the New Delhi declaration and joint statements on radicalisation and digital transformation, the government was unable to forge consensus on other agreements including one on making English a formal SCO language, while India, despite being Chair, did not endorse a road map on economic cooperation, presumably due to concerns over China’s imprint.
Way Forward:
- With its SCO chairmanship ending, the government may now be feeling the law of diminishing returns over its SCO engagement — one that might make its task of hosting the G-20 even more difficult.
