Key Bilateral Relations between India and Central Asian States

Stretching across the heart of Eurasia, the five Central Asian republics-Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan-sit on vast reserves of energy and minerals while occupying a strategic position next to Afghanistan, China, and Russia. India was among the first countries to recognise these states after the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s, and it has since worked to build separate bilateral relationships with each of them. Today these ties span defence, energy, trade, and culture, and they form a central pillar of India’s wider engagement with what it calls its “extended neighbourhood.” This post breaks down the key bilateral relationships and the concrete agreements that hold them together.

Why Central Asia matters to India 🔗

Central Asia is landlocked, resource-rich, and geographically close to regions that shape India’s security calculations. The region holds significant deposits of natural gas, uranium, oil, and increasingly important rare earth minerals. For an economy that imports most of its energy, these resources are strategically valuable.

India considers the Central Asian countries part of its extended and strategic neighbourhood. The relationship is guided by the Connect Central Asia Policy, launched in 2012, which frames cooperation around what diplomats now describe as the “4 Cs”-commerce, capacity building, connectivity, and contact. A major obstacle, however, is that India shares no direct land border with the region, and the most natural overland route runs through Pakistan, which remains closed to Indian trade.

The connectivity challenge 🔗

To get around this, India has invested in alternative routes that bypass Pakistan entirely. The two most important are the Chabahar Port in Iran and the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC). Chabahar gives India sea access to Iran, from where goods can move overland to Afghanistan and Central Asia. In May 2024, India signed a ten-year agreement with Iran to develop and operate the Shahid Beheshti terminal at the port.

The INSTC is a multi-modal corridor linking India with Iran, the Caspian region, and Russia. Since March 2025, India has been using this route to send cargo from Mundra Port in Gujarat to Central Asia via Iran’s Bandar Abbas port. India also acceded to the Ashgabat Agreement, a transport pact connecting Central Asia with the Persian Gulf, which entered into force for India in February 2018. [Image: A map showing the Chabahar Port, the INSTC route, and the five Central Asian republics, illustrating how India bypasses Pakistan to reach the region]

India and Kazakhstan: the anchor partner 🔗

Kazakhstan is the largest and most resource-rich country in Central Asia, and it is India’s biggest trade and investment partner in the region. The two nations signed a Strategic Partnership treaty in 2009 and a Defence and Military Technical Cooperation agreement in 2015. They have joint projects in hydrocarbons, education, and pharmaceuticals.

Uranium and energy cooperation 🔗

The standout feature of the Kazakhstan relationship is its civil nuclear dimension. Kazakhstan is one of the world’s largest uranium producers, and it supplies uranium to fuel India’s civilian nuclear reactors. This makes Kazakhstan a key partner in India’s strategy of diversifying its nuclear fuel sources across multiple continents to reduce the risk of supply disruption.

Kazakhstan also plays a wider role in regional stability. India and Kazakhstan cooperate on multilateral platforms like the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), and Kazakhstan has supported India’s efforts to use Chabahar by proposing to develop an eastern branch of the INSTC.

India and Uzbekistan: uranium and counter-terrorism 🔗

Uzbekistan is the most populous country in Central Asia and shares a border with Afghanistan, which makes it strategically important for India. The relationship has grown steadily, especially after the change in Uzbek leadership in 2016 opened the country to foreign investment.

The uranium supply agreement 🔗

One of the most concrete outcomes of this partnership is uranium. In January 2019, during the Vibrant Gujarat summit, India and Uzbekistan signed a long-term agreement for the supply of uranium ore concentrate to meet India’s energy requirements. The deal was struck between India’s Department of Atomic Energy and Uzbekistan’s Navoi Mining and Metallurgical Company. Alongside this, India extended a $200 million line of credit to Uzbekistan for housing and social infrastructure projects.

Defence and security ties 🔗

Defence cooperation forms another important strand. During Prime Minister Modi’s 2015 visit, the two countries agreed to deepen cooperation in defence, security, military education, training, joint exercises, and counter-terrorism. Both countries share concerns about terrorism and extremism emanating from Afghanistan, which gives this cooperation a practical urgency. Uzbekistan was also the host of the first-ever India-Central Asia Dialogue, held in Samarkand in January 2019.

India and Kyrgyzstan: a defence-led relationship 🔗

If there is one relationship in the region defined primarily by defence cooperation, it is the one with Kyrgyzstan. The two countries are strategic partners with warm ties, and their military relationship has become a model for India’s wider security engagement in the region.

Exercise Khanjar 🔗

The centrepiece is Exercise Khanjar, an annual joint special forces exercise that has been conducted alternately in India and Kyrgyzstan since its inception in 2011. The exercise typically brings together India’s elite Parachute Regiment (Special Forces) and Kyrgyzstan’s Scorpion Brigade. Training focuses on counter-terrorism operations, urban warfare, sniping, building intervention, and high-altitude mountain craft, all conducted under a United Nations mandate framework.

The 13th edition, Khanjar-XIII, was held in February 2026 at Misamari in Assam. Beyond the exercises, defence cooperation includes training Kyrgyz personnel in Indian defence establishments and joint research at the Kyrgyz-India Mountain Biomedical Research Centre. Both countries share common concerns about terrorism, extremism, and drug trafficking, which gives the partnership a clear strategic logic. [Image: Soldiers from India and Kyrgyzstan conducting a joint counter-terrorism drill during Exercise Khanjar]

India and Turkmenistan: the TAPI gas pipeline 🔗

Turkmenistan holds some of the world’s largest natural gas reserves, and the flagship project in this relationship is energy-related. The Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline is an ambitious plan to transport natural gas from Turkmenistan’s giant Galkynysh field to India through Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The scale and the obstacles 🔗

The project is designed to carry up to 33 billion cubic metres of natural gas per year through a pipeline of roughly 1,800 kilometres, with the route ending at the Indian town of Fazilka in Punjab. According to the Asian Development Bank, which supports the project, TAPI represents regional cooperation on an unprecedented scale, linking the economies of four countries. India was invited to join the initiative in 2008.

The pipeline’s history, however, is a story of repeated delays. Conceived in the 1990s, the project has been stalled for over three decades, mainly due to security concerns in Afghanistan and the difficult relationship between India and Pakistan. Recent developments have revived hopes: work resumed on the Afghan section in 2024, and by early 2026 a stretch of the route in Afghanistan was reported ready for pipe installation. Even so, India remains cautious about gas pricing and the security of a pipeline passing through Pakistan, which keeps the project’s completion uncertain.

India and Tajikistan: close and quiet ties 🔗

India and Tajikistan have traditionally close and cordial relations, established when diplomatic ties were formed in August 1992. The relationship places special emphasis on military and defence cooperation, partly because Tajikistan shares a long and porous border with Afghanistan, making it a frontline state for regional security.

The two countries have cooperated closely in multilateral forums. Tajikistan supported India’s candidature for a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council, and the two share deep historical and cultural linkages that continue to shape the partnership. Although the Tajikistan relationship attracts less public attention than the others, it remains an important node in India’s security architecture in the region.

From bilateral to multilateral engagement 🔗

While each of these relationships is built on individual bilateral agreements, India has increasingly tied them together through a multilateral framework. The India-Central Asia Dialogue, held at the level of foreign ministers, brings all five republics to the same table. At the 4th India-Central Asia Dialogue in June 2025, India and the five foreign ministers reaffirmed their commitment to deepening connectivity through the INSTC and Chabahar Port.

India has also backed this engagement with money. In 2020, it announced a $1 billion line of credit for the Central Asian states to fund priority projects in connectivity, energy, information technology, and healthcare. The first India-Central Asia Summit, held in January 2022, elevated these ties to the level of heads of state and government. In 2025, India and the Central Asian countries also moved towards a strategic partnership focused on rare earths and critical minerals, partly to reduce dependence on China for these supplies.

The challenges ahead 🔗

India’s deepening ties with Central Asia face real obstacles. The lack of direct land access remains the biggest structural problem, and the alternative routes through Iran are exposed to the risk of international sanctions. Instability in Afghanistan continues to threaten projects like TAPI. And India competes for influence in the region with much larger players-Russia, which retains deep historical ties, and China, whose Belt and Road Initiative has poured enormous investment into Central Asian infrastructure. India’s trade with the region, while growing, remains modest compared with these rivals.

What do you think? Given the long delays in projects like the TAPI pipeline, should India prioritise large infrastructure ventures or focus on quicker wins in defence cooperation and education? And how effectively can the Chabahar route compete with China’s far larger investments in Central Asian connectivity?

References

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