Even as India's foreign policy is focused on Act East, the outreach towards Central Asia was simply waiting to happen. The first India-Central Asia Summit was held on Thursday on virtual mode, thanks to the pandemic. If not for Covid-19, the leaders of all five countries – Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan – would have been chief guests at the Republic Day parade.
Central Asian countries have always had decent relations with India, largely because of the strong India-USSR ties. When the USSR collapsed, India established bilateral ties with independent countries. Over the last 30 years, however, while the India-Russia relation remained very strong, mostly because of the military cooperation, the relations with Central Asia has remained rather at a baseline level. Since these countries inherited a lot of Soviet era medical colleges, the Indian student diaspora is pretty strong, making up the bulk of the Indian community in these nations. In Kazakhstan, for instance, of the 8,000 strong Indian diaspora, 5,000 are medical students. In Kyrgyzstan, the student population is 15,000 strong. In recent years, many private universities are setting up campuses in these countries. Uzbekistan has campuses of Sharda and Amity universities, and Medanta hospitals will soon open up a centre there.
With the Pakistan problem not likely to be resolved any time soon, and with Afghanistan under Taliban control now, the Central Asian countries have become even more important for India. Most of these have reasonably good ties with China, and strong relations with Russia, the big players in the region. China began Shanghai Cooperation Organisation mainly to reach out to Central Asian markets; India and Pakistan joined later, the former brought into the fold by Russia, and the latter by China.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Thursday, said the ambition of the cooperation needs to be raised, and suggested setting a roadmap for the next 30 years. India has been dealing with countries as blocs in its outreach, but the Central Asia bloc is different from others. The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation is nearly defunct, but the BIMSTEC outreach, which largely replaces SAARC, has limited potential given that most of the countries see-saw between India and China. Nepal has taken to invoking the China card; Bangladesh and Sri Lanka too oscillate between the two. Myanmar requires delicate handling, given its geography, and also because it is not a standard democracy like other Indian neighbours. India has strong ties with the Association for South East Asian Countries (ASEAN)—these relations are mostly economic. ASEAN has become strategically important with the rise of the Indo-Pacific concept, and India maintains that its Indo-Pacific vision has ASEAN centrality.
Central Asia becomes an important region for India to have a larger footprint in. The China factor is present here, too. New Delhi, however, knows it is time to up the India factor. It is invoking a shared history – the Mughals came from Samarkand, and there is the Buddhist cooperation. The joint declaration even speaks about developing a dictionary of common words, said Reenat Sandhu, Secretary (West) in the ministry of external affairs.
The main focus of the summit at this stage is connectivity and cooperation. The Chabahar ambition can only be realised with Central Asia entering the scene in a big way, since after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, this alternate route to Kabul has limited scope. When Chabahar gets connected via road and rail to Central Asia, it will become a vital node of the International North South Transport Corridor. Another important outcome of the summit was to establish a joint working group on Chabahar.
Central Asia becomes important from the security point of view as well. The regional security situation is rather unsettled now. India's major concern is that Afghanistan soil might be used for anti-India terror activities. For the other countries, the condition of the minorities in Afghanistan is a concern. Afghanistan has a good number of Tajiks, Uzbeks and Turks. Hence, the present situation in Afghanistan is a concern for Central Asia in many ways.
India recently held a meeting of national security advisors of Central Asia to discuss the Afghanistan security situation, called the Delhi Security Dialogue, 2021. China and Pakistan stayed away from this outreach.
The Central Asian outreach is getting formalised with the decision to hold summits every second year, and with a secretariat proposed to be established in New Delhi.
India extended a Line of Credit of one billion dollars to the Central Asia combine in 2020. India has also a line of credit for road sewerage and IT development in Uzbekistan, which was extended in 2018. In the coming days, India's investment in this region is likely to go up substantially.
