My Take | India stirs the pot in Shanghai Cooperation Organisation
- New Delhi’s rejection of China’s Belt and Road Initiative is part and parcel of a looming infrastructure “war” and battle for influence in the Global South between the two nations
India refused to endorse China’s Belt and Road Initiative at the virtual Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit this week. Well, that’s hardly news. It would be big news if it did, as that would mean reorienting its recent tilt towards Washington and giving up its long-standing resistance to the initiative
There is also a report that says Iran joined India in refusing to endorse the belt and road plan. Now that would be big news if it were true, because it would raise fundamental questions about why Iran wanted to join the SCO in the first place.
During a state visit in February in Beijing, President Ebrahim Raisi spoke in glowing terms about the belt and road plan, and his speech at Peking University was extensively reported by the Tasnim News Agency, whose official status is somewhat similar to that of Xinhua, the Chinese state news agency. Isolated by severe Western sanctions, Tehran wants the debt financing that comes with the initiative.
Iran does play a key role in the International North–South Transport Corridor (INSTC) championed by India, but it’s doubtful it would give up on the belt and road just for the corridor, which, though running through Central Asia to Russia, is at a much smaller scale even if fully completed by ship, rail and road. It also involves a pie-in-the-sky proposal to build a canal linking the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea, which most independent experts have dismissed as not feasible.
So for now, I will assume India is the only SCO member state that formally opposes the initiative. After all, there are the long-standing Indian-Chinese border disputes, which affect belt and road routes but especially the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which have recently threatened to turn hot.
Then there is the undeclared infrastructure “war” or at least competition, between the initiative and the INSTC. Both infrastructure development and transport projects seek to gain economic advantages and geopolitical leverage across central Asia.
The intense contest for leadership of the Global South between India and China often focuses on Africa. But as Russia is bogged down in Ukraine and losing dominance in Central Asia, its traditional sphere of influence, the huge land mass has also become a site for the jockeying of influence and power by India and China.