Modi flies to Tashkent and Bishkek for a state visit and the SCO's 25th year

Prime Minister Narendra Modi leaves on Saturday for a four-day tour of Central Asia. He will be in Tashkent on 29 and 30 August for a state visit, then in Bishkek on 31 August and 1 September for the 26th summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. The Ministry of External Affairs announced the itinerary on Thursday.

The Uzbekistan leg is his fourth visit to the country and his second bilateral trip there. President Shavkat Mirziyoyev invited him. Delegation talks are due to cover trade, investment, defence, digital links, energy, education and people-to-people work. The two governments want to set those files against India's Viksit Bharat 2047 programme and Uzbekistan's 2030 plan. Modi is also expected at the Lal Bahadur Shastri memorial in Tashkent and at the Mahatma Gandhi Centre in the Tashkent State University of Oriental Studies.

From Tashkent he flies to Bishkek at the invitation of President Sadyr Japarov. The SCO summit marks 25 years since the organisation was founded. India has been a full member since 2017. Modi will speak on three headings the ministry has already published: security, connectivity and opportunity. He will take bilateral meetings on the margins. One of those meetings is expected with Vladimir Putin. External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar was in Moscow this month for the inter-governmental commission. The Bishkek encounter is the leaders' turn to review the same relationship.

Xi Jinping and Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif are also expected in the Kyrgyz capital. That mix is the SCO's usual table: China, Russia, Central Asia, India, Pakistan, Iran and the newer members. The grouping was built to fight what its founders called the three evils of terrorism, separatism and extremism. Those files have not closed. Connectivity, through rail and road ideas that compete with and sometimes complement China's Belt and Road, is the other standing item. India has used the forum to talk about those routes without signing up to every Chinese project.

Modi will attend the opening of the sixth World Nomad Games, a sports and culture event that Kyrgyzstan uses to display Central Asian tradition. The visit therefore has three layers: a bilateral upgrade with Tashkent, a multilateral speech in Bishkek, and a public appearance at the Games.

The trip sits between two larger dates on India's autumn calendar. The BRICS summit in New Delhi on 12 and 13 September will bring several of the same leaders to Bharat Mandapam two weeks later. The SCO week is a chance to hold the Putin meeting and to test the temperature with Xi before that larger gathering. It is also a way to keep Central Asia in view while India's diplomacy is pulled toward the Iran war, the Nepal floods and the trade fight with Washington.

Sibi George, secretary (West) in the MEA, said India and Uzbekistan have kept up extensive contact in both bilateral and multilateral formats. That is the official line. The test of the Tashkent day will be whether any defence, energy or digital document is signed that changes the volume of actual trade. The test of Bishkek will be whether Modi's three-word agenda survives a room that also contains Moscow, Beijing and Islamabad.