SCO Summit: Indian pivot amid discordant notes
By Manish Anand
New Delhi, July 5: India hosted the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit in the virtual format and Russ and China sought to exploit the grouping to amplify self-interests. While the apparent disunity in the grouping gained the spotlight, India sought to steer the SCO to its one of the core mandates of tackling terrorism through collective efforts.
At a time when Afghanistan, abandoned by the western powers, is fast threatening to once more become a terror sanctuary and laboratory with benign patronage from neighbouring Pakistan, Prime Minister Narendra Modi sent out a loud message to act against terror in all its form and against all the sources.
“The Member States consider it important to build up joint coordinated efforts by the international community to counter the activities of terrorist, separatist, and extremist groups, paying special attention to preventing the spread of religious intolerance, aggressive nationalism, ethnic and racial discrimination…,” said the Delhi Declaration issued after the Leaders’ Summit.
“The SCO is committed to curbing terror even while member countries who are violating the solemn commitment are getting away. PM Modi called them out at the SCO Summit,” said Rajiv Bhatia, India’s former ambassador to Mexico and Myanmar, told The Raisina Hills.
The western commentators have spotlighted the sharp disunity in the sense of purpose of the SCO Summit. They have argued that Russian President Vladimir Putin used the forum to talk of his own domestic issue, including the botched up rebellion by Wagner private paramilitary, while his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping sought to amplify the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) template for the economic development of the regional economy.
But India, seeking to give a voice to Global South on issues such as growing sovereign debts of developing and poor countries, hunger and energy transition, sought to give a direction to the vision of the group to remain relevant internationally. The Delhi Declaration, thus, underlined the need for rules-based international order, multipolarity and the pivot of the United Nations, as well as commitment to not violate sovereignty of any nation.
“The SCO is the most important group representing the Euro-Asian region. Besides Russia and China, India is a major player in the grouping. It must remain part of the group, and the natural justification is that the group helps us to work for multipolarity in the world order,” added Bhatia. He stressed that the SCO has similar diversity as is seen in Quad and SAARC, but area of unity is more than areas of disunity.
“In the SCO, there is a whole lot of unity on several issues. Yet there are contradictions because of conflicting interests between Russia and the Central Asian countries, as well as China and other countries. They may be slowing the progress on the common agenda,” noted Bhatia, adding that India’s interest lies in multipolarity and thus various groupings work in the interest of the country.
Modi stressed on issues such start up cooperation, energy transition, people to people collaborations among others to give a new direction to the forum. Indian presidency of the SCO saw several meetings in all parts of the country on a number of key global issues.
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