India-Central Asia: the extended neighbourhood

India-Central Asia relations are a study in civilizational depth defeated by geography. The five republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan sit on uranium, gas, and critical minerals India needs, and on the counter-terrorism and Afghanistan files India cannot ignore, yet Pakistan blocks every direct land route between them.

For UPSC, the region tests four things: connectivity as strategy (Chabahar, INSTC, the Ashgabat Agreement), energy and mineral security, the New Great Game of rival powers, and multilateral balancing through the SCO. This article gives you the material for all four.

Five republics, one civilizational corridor

Central Asia is India's extended neighbourhood in the Eurasian heartland: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, independent since the Soviet collapse of 1991. The links run deep through the Silk Route, Buddhism and Sufi scholarship, and they survive in popular culture through Bollywood and yoga. Strategically, the region is where Afghanistan's instability, Eurasian energy, and great-power rivalry meet.

The resource base is formidable: Kazakhstan is the world's largest uranium producer, Turkmenistan holds the fourth-largest natural-gas reserves, and the region carries large deposits of oil, gold, copper, and increasingly prized rare earths and lithium. A massive rare-earth deposit reported in Kazakhstan's Karaganda region in 2025 underlines why New Delhi now treats the region as a critical-mineral frontier.

Why the region matters: uranium, gas and the Afghan file

Energy security is the hardest interest. Kazakhstan provides the bulk of India's uranium imports, the fuel for an expanding nuclear-power programme, and India has renewed long-term uranium procurement agreements with Astana. On gas, the TAPI pipeline, meant to carry Turkmen gas through Afghanistan and Pakistan to India, remains the great might-have-been: stalled by Kabul's instability and India-Pakistan tensions, it is the textbook case of geography vetoing economics.

The security file is equally binding. The five republics share India's concern over radicalization spilling from Afghanistan, narcotics trafficking through the Golden Crescent, and the need for a stable, inclusive Kabul. All five consistently back India's permanent UNSC seat, making the region a reliable diplomatic constituency. In Kautilya's mandala terms, Central Asia is the friendly outer circle that offsets a hostile immediate geography.

The connectivity problem: geography's veto

Connectivity deficit is the relationship's defining constraint: with no direct land access, every Indian good bound for Central Asia must detour around Pakistan or through an unstable Afghanistan. India's answer is a portfolio of corridors. Chabahar port in Iran, which India contracted to operate for ten years in 2024, is the sea-land gateway bypassing Pakistan. The International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), a 7,200-km multimodal network linking India to Russia via Iran and Central Asia, offers a route to Europe roughly two-fifths shorter than Suez. And the Ashgabat Agreement, which India joined in 2018, creates a multilateral transit framework binding Central Asia to the Persian Gulf.

The honest audit: corridors are slow. INSTC moves but faces sanctions friction on the Iran leg, the expiry of the US sanctions waiver for Chabahar has complicated the port's logistics, and TAPI is frozen. India supplements the big corridors with air corridors and digital connectivity, but the region still accounts for under one percent of India's global trade, a figure that embarrasses the rhetoric.

The institutional stack: summits, dialogues and exercises

The policy architecture began with the Connect Central Asia Policy of 2012, built on four Cs: commerce, connectivity, consular ties and community. It was followed by the 2015 visit to all five republics, SCO full membership in 2017, the first India-Central Asia Summit in 2022 that institutionalized leader-level engagement, and the India-Central Asia Dialogue of foreign ministers, whose fourth edition met in New Delhi in June 2025 on counter-terrorism, critical minerals and connectivity.

The toolkit is practical: a $1-billion line of credit announced in 2020 for infrastructure, IT, energy and agriculture; strategic-partnership agreements with Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan; joint exercises like Dustlik with Uzbekistan, Khanjar with Kyrgyzstan and Kazind with Kazakhstan; ITEC training slots; and an India-Central Asia Rare Earth Forum for joint mineral exploration. The 2025 dialogue also saw India and the Eurasian Economic Union agree terms to launch FTA negotiations, the trade track meant to formalize the relationship.

The New Great Game: China, Russia and the rest

New Great Game is the standard shorthand for the region's crowded geopolitics. China dominates the economics through the Belt and Road and the China-Central Asia (C+C5) format, with trade roughly thirty times India's $1.2-billion level. Russia remains the primary security guarantor through bases and the CSTO. The United States runs its own C5+1 summitry. India's play is strategic autonomy in Eurasia: voice independent positions through the SCO and the summit format, avoid choosing between Moscow and Beijing, and compete where it can add value, minerals, connectivity finance, and counter-terrorism cooperation, rather than where it cannot.

Frictions and the way forward

The friction list is short and structural: negligible trade volumes, no seamless inter-bank rails or credit guarantees for private investors, narcotics flows, and the connectivity chokepoints above. The way forward the sources converge on is commercial rather than ceremonial: conclude the India-EAEU free-trade agreement, deepen SCO and Eurasian engagement, build air corridors to bypass the land veto, and shift from government MoUs to business-council-led B2B ventures. Central Asia rewards the patient corridor-builder, not the summit-hopper.

Exercises, agreements and uranium

The Ashgabat Agreement: in order to facilitate the movement of commodities between Central Asia and the Persian Gulf, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Oman, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan have entered into a multimodal transportation agreement. India joined in 2018, and alongside INSTC and the TIR Convention it is the connectivity answer to the Pakistan veto on overland routes.

The military grammar is three exercises: DUSTLIK with Uzbekistan, Khanjar with Kyrgyzstan and Kazind with Kazakhstan. The energy grammar is uranium: Kazakhstan generates 43% of the world's uranium, and Turkmenistan holds the world's fourth-largest gas reserves, the base for the TAPI pipeline.

The ledger is thin but growing: India-Central Asia trade crossed $1 billion in 2023, against a sub-$5 billion potential both sides acknowledge. The soft layer includes Central Asian leaders' appreciation for 'One Earth, One Health', interest in 'One Sun, One World, One Grid', plans for friendship hospitals and Ayurveda outreach, and sharing of India's Panchayati Raj experience in local governance.

India-Central Asia at a glance

What examiners keep asking

Frame any answer in three moves: the stakes (uranium, gas, minerals, Afghanistan), the veto (geography: Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the corridor portfolio built to beat it), and the game (China's economics, Russia's security, India's autonomy play). Close with the trade figure: under one percent of India's global trade is the statistic that disciplines every grand claim.

Key Terms

• Connect Central Asia Policy: India's 2012 framework for engaging the five Central Asian republics on commerce, connectivity, consular ties and community. It is the doctrinal anchor examiners expect in any CARs answer.
• New Great Game: The New Great Game denotes the 21st-century rivalry of China, Russia, the US and others for influence in Central Asia's energy and security. It frames India's strategic-autonomy play in Eurasia.
• Extended neighbourhood: The extended neighbourhood denotes regions beyond India's immediate borders where it claims strategic stakes, Central Asia being the classic case. It justifies SCO membership and corridor diplomacy.
• Ashgabat Agreement: The Ashgabat Agreement is the multilateral transit framework connecting Central Asia with the Persian Gulf, joined by India in 2018. It featured in a 2018 UPSC mains question.
• Golden Crescent: The Golden Crescent is the opium-producing belt spanning Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan. Narcotics trafficking through Central Asian routes into India makes it a security term in the CARs file.
• TIR Convention: The UN customs-transit convention India joined to ease overland trade with Central Asia.
• Chabahar: Chabahar is the Iranian port India contracted to operate for ten years in 2024. It is India's sea-land gateway to Afghanistan and Central Asia bypassing Pakistan.
• Dustlik: Dustlik is the India-Uzbekistan joint military exercise focused on counter-terrorism. Along with Khanjar and Kazind, it represents India's calibrated security cooperation in the region.
• Khanjar: The India-Kyrgyzstan joint military exercise.
• Kazind: The India-Kazakhstan joint military exercise.
• INSTC: The International North-South Transport Corridor is the 7,200-km multimodal network linking India to Russia and Europe via Iran and Central Asia. It is India's flagship answer to the land-access veto.
• EAEU: The Eurasian Economic Union is the Russia-led economic bloc of five post-Soviet states. India agreed terms in 2025 to launch FTA negotiations with it, the trade track of the Central Asia relationship.

Practice questions