India, as the current chair of SCO, will host the 23rd SCO summit in July 2023. In a surprise move, it has decided to conduct the summit virtually through a Zoom meeting instead of in-person expected earlier. This decision has raised various speculations, among which is the notion that India may not prefer to offend its Western allies by hosting Russian and Chinese leadership in-person. The SCO is an organisation primarily influenced by China and includes the Central Asian Republics (CARs), namely Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. It also includes India, Pakistan, Russia, and China. India and Pakistan became full members of the organisation in 2017. This vibrant composition of SCO, thus, makes it potent for achieving the objectives that it has mentioned in its charter, which include cooperation in political, economic, and technological spheres to ensure regional peace.
However, the conflicting priorities of the members’ countries make it difficult for the platform to realise its full potential. India and Pakistan, as members of the organisation, rarely achieve consensus on matters of extreme significance. Similarly, India has a spat with China on territorial issues. Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan also have border clashes in which more than fifty people died in 2021. Such bilateral conflicts of the member states have been hampering the effectiveness of the organisation, even though the charter of SCO restricts discussions on matters of bilateral nature. The decision to hold this year’s summit might also illuminate these lines of conflicts. For the 2023 SCO Summit, all the member states, China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan have been invited. The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), India, has announced the theme for the summit to be ‘Advancing a Secure SCO’. The concept of a secure SCO, encapsulated by the term SECURE, was introduced by Prime Minister Modi during the 2018 SCO summit. SECURE represents the key pillars of Security, Economy and Trade, Connectivity, Unity, Respect for Sovereignty and Territorial Integrity, and Environment. There are speculations that this theme indicates India’s muted resentment of Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine even though India has not explicitly condemned the invasion, and it remains an importer of 20 percent of Russian crude oil amidst Western sanctions on Russia’s exports. Similarly, the stress on respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity indicates India’s relations with China and Pakistan, as the state has been involved in various border clashes with the two countries over the years.
In May 2023, India hosted the SCO Foreign Ministers Council meeting, and both foreign ministers of China and Pakistan visited India to attend the meeting. Although the meeting might have appeared as a constructive development in favour of regional uplift, the post-meeting assessments indicate otherwise. It was China’s first visit to India since the border clashes between the two countries in Ladakh and Aksai Chin in 2020, and even though the foreign minister of Pakistan also paid a visit to India, the nature of his trip did not indicate any significant improvement in their strained relations. The top diplomats from both sides remained engaged in verbal sparring on issues of cross-border terrorism and Kashmir. India does not share conducive relations with its neighbours owing to multiple reasons. It has strong reservations against the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor as it believes the corridor passes through disputed territory. Whereas, the statement of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China emphasises promoting interconnected development. China will be hosting the third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation this year, for which China sees SCO as an important constructive force. Moreover, India’s boundary dispute with China is not resolved completely so far, even though both countries have come to agreements of mutually withdrawing troops along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). Thereby, such frosty relations with both of its neighbour states yield ground for India’s holding the SCO summit virtually and focusing on the theme of ‘SECURE SCO’.
India’s approach towards the upcoming SCO summit manifests its position in global geopolitics. Amidst spiralling tensions between U.S. and China and the U.S. and Russia, India is shifting its inclination towards the Western bloc and is a part of alliances which are considered anti-China. Its aspiration to become a part of NATO-plus, which includes Japan, New Zealand, Israel, Australia, and South Korea and its readiness to contain China in the region by becoming part of anti-China groupings have left it stranded in the region as it is distancing itself from the Eurasian-leading organisations. While Pakistan is determined to refrain from aligning with either of the two rival global powers in favour of regional and global stability, India, on the other hand, manifests a persistent tilt towards bloc politics. India’s adoption of such an attitude undermines the strength of the SCO, which is not only harmful to regional harmony and security but is also detrimental to the economic uplift of these individual member states, including Pakistan.