The 26th SCO Summit in Bishkek (Aug 31–Sep 1, 2026) marked the bloc’s 25th anniversary, with leaders signing the main declaration plus 27 other documents on security, ports, energy, and green technology. Modi pushed hard on counter-terrorism, calling out “double standards”, and held separate bilaterals with Putin, Pezeshkian and others, while only informally interacting with Xi. India secured narco-terrorism language in the joint text and advanced Central Asia connectivity and energy interests without needing consensus on the bloc’s larger geopolitics. The takeaway: India is extracting real, incremental gains from SCO membership while carefully avoiding entanglement in the China-Russia-led anti-West framing.
Kyrgyzstan hosted one of the year’s more closely watched diplomatic gatherings this week. The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) marked its 25th anniversary with its 26th Heads of State Summit in Bishkek on August 31 and September 1, chaired by Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov under the theme “25 Years of the SCO: Together for Sustainable Peace, Development and Prosperity.” The summit brought together Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Pakistan’s Shehbaz Sharif, Iran’s Masoud Pezeshkian, Belarus’s Alexander Lukashenko and the heads of the Central Asian republics, alongside 15 dialogue partners and two observer states in an expanded “SCO Plus” format. Modi’s trip was a four-day engagement, beginning with a state visit to Uzbekistan’s capital, Tashkent, on August 29-30, before he travelled onward to Bishkek, underscoring how deeply Central Asia now features in India’s diplomatic calendar.
A Grouping Built For A Multipolar World
The SCO was founded in 2001 by China, Russia and four Central Asian states to manage border security and counter what its charter calls the “three evils”, terrorism, separatism and extremism. Over two decades, it has grown into a ten-member bloc spanning roughly 3.4 billion people, with India and Pakistan admitted as full members in 2017 and Iran joining more recently. What began as a narrow security forum has steadily broadened into a platform for trade, connectivity, energy cooperation and, increasingly, an alternative pole to Western-led institutions.
This year’s summit arrived against a turbulent backdrop: the war in Ukraine grinds on, the Middle East remains volatile, Afghanistan’s stability is precarious, and several members, China and India among them, are absorbing fresh US tariffs, including the 25 per cent levy Washington imposed on New Delhi over its purchases of Russian crude. Putin and Xi have long used the SCO stage to advocate a “multipolar” global order; this summit was no exception, with discussions touching on the Black Sea, Ukraine, and the fallout of the US-Israel war on Iran.
What The Bishkek Summit Actually Delivered
Beyond the rhetoric, the summit produced a substantial paper trail. Leaders signed the Bishkek Declaration on the 25th Anniversary of the SCO along with 27 other documents, an unusually dense outcome even by SCO standards. These included a protocol amending the SCO Charter; regulations establishing a Universal Centre for Countering Security Challenges and Threats to Member States; a revamped Executive Committee structure for the SCO Anti-Narcotics Centre along with cooperation programmes on combating drug addiction and countering synthetic drugs and precursors through 2030; a plan on International Information Security for 2026-2028; a declaration on nuclear and physical nuclear security; a statement on cooperation in energy systems; an action plan for developing ports and logistics centres across member states for 2026-2030; and a cooperation programme establishing a “Green Technology Corridor” through 2030.
On the security track, India secured language it had been pushing for: the declaration’s provisions on narco-terrorism and organised crime were reported to specifically reinforce India’s own concerns in this space. In his plenary address, Modi called for dismantling “the entire ecosystem of terrorism, its financing, recruitment, radicalisation, and safe havens,” insisted terrorism could not be treated as a “strategic asset for anyone,” and rejected any “double standards” in the fight against it, an unmistakable, if unnamed, reference to Pakistan-linked cross-border terrorism. He also framed India’s vision for the bloc’s next quarter-century around three words, “Security, Connectivity and Opportunity”, arguing that the real test of SCO cooperation should be measured in new markets for entrepreneurs, technology reaching farmers, and tangible gains for ordinary citizens rather than declaratory statements alone.
How India Used The Platform
On the sidelines, India ran an active bilateral calendar rather than treating the SCO as a purely multilateral photo-op. Modi held one-on-one meetings with Russian President Putin, Iran’s Pezeshkian, Kyrgyzstan’s Japarov and Armenia’s Pashinyan. The Modi-Putin meeting reviewed the full spectrum of India-Russia ties following the recent India-Russia Inter-Governmental Commission in Moscow, with defence, energy and the Arctic’s Northern Sea Route reportedly on the agenda, a signal that India intends to keep its Russia relationship on an independent track regardless of Western pressure. With Xi Jinping, no formal bilateral was scheduled this time, though the two leaders shook hands and interacted warmly on the sidelines, continuing the cautious normalisation visible since their Kazan meeting in 2024 and last year’s Tianjin talks, where the two sides had already agreed on border-management steps and resumed direct flights and the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra.
Taken together, this suggests India is extracting real, if incremental, value from its SCO membership: a platform to press its counter-terrorism narrative onto a joint document that Pakistan itself has co-signed, continued high-level bandwidth with Moscow even as the West raises objections, a working channel with Beijing that does not require pretending the relationship is problem-free, and now a specific set of “Plus” formats, ports, logistics, green technology, narcotics enforcement, through which New Delhi can pursue Central Asian connectivity and energy interests without waiting for consensus on the bloc’s larger geopolitical posture.
The Fault Lines
Yet the SCO’s achievements sit alongside real structural weaknesses. It remains a grouping without a shared strategic purpose: China and Russia see it primarily as a counterweight to the West, Central Asian states value it mainly for stability and economic access, and India joined largely to avoid ceding regional space to Beijing and Islamabad. The India-Pakistan relationship remains its most visible internal contradiction; Modi and Sharif shared a stage in Bishkek with no bilateral engagement planned between them. Decision-making by consensus among such disparate members also limits the SCO’s ability to act decisively, and its expanding “Plus” format of dialogue partners, while useful for outreach, risks diluting focus further.
India’s Balancing Act, Going Forward
For New Delhi, the SCO remains an exercise in strategic dexterity rather than alignment. India has consistently resisted framing the SCO as an anti-Western bloc, a posture that puts it at odds with the more overtly confrontational rhetoric favoured by Moscow and Beijing. Three considerations should guide India’s approach from here. First, on security, India must keep pressing the SCO’s narco-terrorism and counter-terrorism architecture into operational reality rather than let the fresh declarations remain paper commitments, a lesson learned from years of uneven follow-through within the India-Pakistan context. Second, on economic and energy interests, India should now translate the ports, logistics and Green Technology Corridor agreements into concrete projects connecting India to Central Asia, while continuing to hedge through parallel frameworks such as the International North-South Transport Corridor and its own bilateral energy ties with Russia and the Gulf, so that energy security is never dependent on any single bloc. Third, India must continue resisting the China-Russia narrative of the SCO as a bloc against the West, using the platform instead to advocate reform of global economic governance rather than its replacement by a rival axis.
The Road Ahead
If the SCO is to remain relevant beyond its silver jubilee, it will need to reconcile the divergent expectations of its members: a security-first vision favoured by some, a counter-hegemonic vision favoured by others, and a development-first vision favoured by most of the developing and emerging economies within it, India included. The Bishkek summit’s unusually heavy documentary output suggests the organisation understands this and is trying to give its members something more concrete to show for membership. For India, the task now is implementation,turning the ports, energy, connectivity and anti-terrorism commitments signed in Bishkek into results, while carefully avoiding entanglement in a great-power rivalry that does not serve its long-term interests.
(This article reflects developments and statements through September 1, 2026, the concluding day of the 26th SCO Summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan)
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