Opinion: Evolving Trajectory Of The SCO And Indian Dilemmas
NDTV
Days after his state visit to the US, Prime Minister Narendra Modi hosted the leaders of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) for its annual summit earlier this week. This is the year of India's presidency and so, it was incumbent upon New Delhi to put its best diplomatic foot forward. The fact that the summit was in virtual format dampened the spirits. But what cannot be denied is India's continued ability to engage with the West on one hand and with platforms like the SCO on the other, which includes members with a starkly anti-west foreign policy orientation.
Under Indian leadership, the SCO members signed the New Delhi Declaration, charting areas of cooperation among members as they called for the formation of a "more representative" and multipolar world order. The areas of cooperation ranged from terrorism, extremism, pandemic environment and sustainability to connectivity, supply chain resilience and regional security. There were two separate joint statements - one on countering radicalisation and one on digital transformation. Both these issues are central to Indian concerns and aspirations - one is a core security challenge for New Delhi while the other one is about India as an exemplar, sharing one of its recent success stories on digital payment interfaces such as UPI with other nations.
Prime Minister Modi, however, made it a point to highlight two critical issues targeting Pakistan and China. Taking on Pakistan directly, and the duplicitous attitude of nations like China, he remarked, "Some countries use cross-border terrorism as an instrument of their policies and provide shelter to terrorists. SCO should not hesitate to criticise such nations. There should be no place for double standards on such serious matters." With his comments, Modi was making clear that sanctimonious statements from SCO on terrorism have no meaning if Pakistan is not made to feel the heat of regional states. He was underlining New Delhi's wariness about the effectiveness of the SCO on a matter as important as this.