India is interested in the natural resources of Central Asia. Photo Credit: Jason Sangster for Mercy Corps

Over the centuries, Central Asia has been India\'s door to the outside world and has deeply influenced India\'s history, culture and polity. While the region south of the Himalayas has largely determined the mainstream features of Indian civilization, Central Asia has also influenced India in important ways. From a geopolitical and security perspective too, the Himalayas have never been India\'s frontier. Today, as in the past, Central Asia continues to play an important role in India\'s security. Thus India cannot afford a passive approach to Central Asia; it has to be a player in the region.

What are India's interests in Central Asia? These are fundamentally strategic, but also economic. Briefly, India's interests are three pronged. From a security perspective, India would like to encourage the development of stable and secular regimes in Central Asia. Because lest weakened, unstable states with centrifugal tendencies can become bases for terrorist, separatist and fundamentalist elements, which could link up with counterparts in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In tandem, India's interests coincide with ensuring that any instability and chaos in the region does not lead to a "domino effect", of which there is a serious danger.

On the role major powers in the region, India is watchful of the possible impact of developments in Central Asia on the Xinjiang region of China that would have a direct bearing on India's security interests. Beyond that, India seeks to have a firm foothold and exercise influence in Central Asia along with other great powers so that this strategically located region does not become an area dominated by forces inimical or hostile to India's interests. In concert, it is in India's interests to track any military presence in the region that could potentially threaten it.

It is in India's interest to track any military presence in the region that could potentially threaten it.

From the commercial standpoint, India's interests determine that it gain access to the region's rich natural resources, such as oil and gas, uranium, rare earths and minerals, copper, gold, diamonds etc. and to acquire, if possible, some specialized defense technologies and defense production facilities.

India has many advantages in Central Asia. It is not handicapped by any negative historical legacy. Nor does India pose to Central Asia any direct contemporary threat, whether ideological, demographic or territorial. On the other hand, as India has always had a romance and mystique for the people of this region, India\'s \"soft power\" has the potential to be a powerful influence on this region. India\'s technical-economic assistance programs like ITEC (ITEC or Indian Technical Economic Cooperation is a bilateral program of assistance of the Government of India), particularly in areas like information technology, are seen as very relevant and useful for Central Asia. India is also the nearest large market for products of the region. In addition, Central Asia\'s rich cultural heritage and natural beauty could attract large numbers of tourists from India and thereby give a boost to the local economies.

At the same time, there are many glaring weaknesses in India\'s policy and approach towards Central Asia. When the Central Asian republics attained independence, they looked forward to India playing a prominent role as a major partner in all spheres of activity. Unfortunately India was unable to optimally convert the traditional goodwill into contemporary influence.

Although this is changing now, the Indian presence and visibility in this part of the world still remains extremely poor. India\'s economic relations have woefully lagged behind the political relationship, principally because India is not economically rich enough, nor is its business, industrial and financial community aggressive enough to overcome India\'s geographical and other handicaps in dealing with Central Asia.

India\'s \"soft power\" has the potential to be a powerful influence on this region as it has always had a romance and mystique for the people of this region.

From the perspective of the Central Asian countries, India has not been able to make a significant contribution to their immediate priorities viz. their search for national identity, security and, more recently, regime survival. Nor has it given meaningful help in their economic development. Thus India occupies a somewhat lower priority in the foreign policies of the Central Asian countries, at least in a short-term perspective.

Of course, other powers pose their own set of problems for Central Asia. Even though the Central Asian countries, as an expression of their sovereignty and independent identity, seek to distance themselves from Russia, they can neither ignore nor do without Russia, whose clout in Central Asia remains considerable despite the growing influence of China and the US.

The latter two countries have their own limitations - China has been traditionally regarded by Central Asians with suspicion as an expansionist and dominating power, and the US is suspected of actively working for regime change in these countries. Major bilateral and international donors too have not been able to make any meaningful difference to the lives of the people.

Against this background, the Central Asian countries continue to have some expectations that India would play a much larger role in Central Asia, and, albeit somewhat vaguely, consider India as a potential balancing factor to the other major players in the region. However, India\'s good relations with Russia and the fact that it is a relatively minor player in Central Asia restricts its role as an effective balancing force.

India\'s major dilemma and constraint is how to access Central Asia. Given the situation in Afghanistan, and Pakistan\'s unwillingness to offer transit facilities to India, the traditional access route via Afghanistan is blocked for the foreseeable future. All possible routes to Central Asia via Iran are neither reliable nor optimal, even less so in view of the international pressures on Iran today. India could, however, explore the possibility of establishing links with Central Asia via China, since that is the only other overland route to Central Asia from India.

India\'s good relations with Russia and the fact that it is a relatively minor player in Central Asia restricts its role as an effective balancing force.

Given its inherent handicaps, India cannot achieve its objectives by acting on its own in Central Asia. As a geographical area that abuts on the borders of major powers in Asia, including India, Central Asia will always attract a foreign presence. It is a \"negative security space\", which the major powers cannot afford to let other powers or forces dominate. Thus, in order to protect and preserve its interests in the region, India has no alternative but to closely consult and cooperate with the other major powers who have an interest and a presence in Central Asia.

Aspiring to be an influential global power, India has to be a player in the unfolding \"Great Game\" in Central Asia, on an equal footing with the other major players like the United States, Russia and China if it is to successfully protect its vital national interests in Central Asia. Thus India must remain integral to Eurasian energy politics. India needs to not only make significant oil and gas investments in Eurasia, but also leverage its position as a major existing and potential consumer of imported energy, and as a key transit country for Eurasian oil and gas to global markets. Eurasian oil and gas pipelines and power transmission lines from Central Asia to India would give India the much-needed meaningful economic links with, and an overland access route to, these countries.

Were that to happen, Central Asia could be transformed into a strategic space uniting major Asian continental powers and energy producers and consumers, plus the omnipresent superpower, in a web of interdependence rather than competition. The need of the hour is for bold and creative thinking by all the major players present in Central Asia who are interested in a stable and peaceful Central Asia.




Contributed by Rajiv Sikri, the former Secretary (East) at the Indian Ministry of External Affairs. Reprinted with permission from OpinionAsia.

To read another Global Envision article about India's role in Asia, see Is India Emerging as an Eastern or Western Power?



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