ABSTRACT
Regional politics and regional order find themselves in a paradoxical juxtaposition today, against the political announcement of expansion of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) membership, which took place at the 15th SCO leadership summit in Ufa, Russia, in July 2015. This summit was a landmark event for a number of regional and global advances. It took place in Ufa at a time when Russia’s relations with the West are still on a difficult track, the Chinese have launched their ambitious Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB) under the OBOR, and the formal launch of BRICS’s New Development Bank (NDB) and the Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) which have been introduced. The SCO summit in the Ufa was concurrently hosted with the BRICS summit and simultaneously, the announcement was made of SCO membership expansion. India partook in the Ufa summit as a BRICS member and prospective member of the SCO. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while partaking in the BRICS and SCO summits, also met the leaders of the Central Asian Republics (CARs). The question arises in this context: Will its inclusion in SCO as a full member allow India to emerge as a greater power in the Central Asian region and change the balance of power there? To what extent will China, as the predominant power in the SCO, accommodate India’s presence? This chapter argues that post-Ufa, a ‘soft balancing’ is taking place between India and China, where Russia as well as the region of Central Asia are significant factors in their relationship discourse.1
