Regionalism in world politics is an old concept. It generally happens to ensure power balance or wisely says building the capacity of regional members relatively. Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) is one of the regional groupings. SCO is a permanent international intergovernmental organisation having headquarters in Beijing, China. Generally, the organisation is found to fulfil the common interest of the founding members and mostly the common interest changes with time which changes the structure and objectives. Its founding leaders are the two great powers of the East- China and Russia. Its other initial members were Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan to the northwest of china roughly shares 3 million sq km of border and Uzbekistan all together form SCO in 2001 a few months before the 9/11 attack, signed the charter in 2002 and enter into force in 2003.
The SCO was preceded by the creation of a 'Shanghai Five'- Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The three former Soviet republics shared a long frontier with China. The purpose of the Shanghai Five was to stabilise this frontier as well as building on the shared Sino-Russian interest in preventing American meddling in their Central Asian backyard. India and Pakistan were inducted as full members in 2017. Iran reached its track to full membership on 17 September 2021 which have ethnic and linguistic links with the Persian-speaking Afghan Tajiks.
Besides Afghanistan, Belarus and Mongolia are observers. The SCO has several "Dialogue partners". They include Armenia, Azerbaijan from the neighbouring Caucasus region, Turkey a step further to the West and newly added two from the Middle East- Saudi Arabia and Qatar and one from the other side of the Red Sea, Egypt.
Nepal and Sri Lanka from the subcontinent and Combodia from southeast Asia are also dialogue partners. For an organisation that bears the name of Shanghai, but is focused on Central Asia, its associates look disparate.
Central Asia is a part of India's extended neighbourhood and provides a platform to connect with its traditional friends and challenging neighbours. A platform to express India's outlook toward central Asian developments and find converging areas for mutual benefits and growth.
SCO members are well aware that India is an energy deficient country. Central Asia and Russia are extremely well endowed with Fossil fuels, Natural gas as well as nuclear and Hydropower potential. India's rapidly expanding energy need will provide an assured and stable market to these countries. TAPI pipeline and IPI pipeline are few steps taken in this direction.
