Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Tuesday, 20 October 2026, represented India at the 25th meeting of the SCO Council of Heads of Government (CHG) in Dushanbe, delivering a pointed message to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO): institutional growth without purpose risks diluting the grouping's effectiveness.

India's Core Message to the SCO

Singh stressed that the SCO must remain lean and outcome-driven. “A greater number of institutions does not necessarily translate into greater achievements. New mechanisms should focus on clearly identified needs, avoid duplication, and prioritise delivering practical value to Member States,” Singh said, as quoted by the Ministry of Defence.

He called on the grouping to uphold its foundational principles — sovereign equality, consensus, and mutual respect — and to build on the foundation laid over the past 25 years with a “forward-looking roadmap focused on consensus-driven cooperation and tangible outcomes.”

Measuring Success by People, Not Paperwork

Singh laid out a people-centric yardstick for gauging the SCO’s progress. “Our success should be measured by the opportunities we create for youth, new markets we open for our entrepreneurs, technologies we make available to our farmers and small-scale business owners, and the connections we foster among societies,” he said.

This framing notably shifts the emphasis from geopolitical symbolism — at which the SCO has historically excelled — toward measurable economic and social dividends, an area where critics argue the bloc has consistently underdelivered.

Key Decisions from the Dushanbe Meeting

According to the Ministry of Defence, the heads of delegation adopted the Joint Communiqué of the meeting, which included the SCO budget for 2027, relevant financial and administrative decisions, and the Action Plan for the Multilateral Trade and Economic Cooperation Programme (PMTEC) for 2026–2030, which India backed. The session reviewed progress in economic and trade cooperation among member states and discussed ways to deepen cooperation in transport, finance, digital economy, and social development.

India's Zero-Tolerance Stand on Terrorism

Singh used the multilateral platform to issue an unambiguous warning on terrorism — widely read as an indirect message to Pakistan, a fellow SCO member. “Terrorism remains one of the most serious threats to peace and development. Terrorism not only harms innocent lives but also disrupts investment and commerce. It radicalises societies and deprives our youth of the opportunities they deserve,” he said.

He explicitly rejected any double standards: “There can be no justification for terrorism. There can be no double standards in dealing with it, and there can be no place for those who finance, support, or provide safe haven to terrorists. The entire ecosystem of terrorism must be firmly and collectively eliminated.”

This is consistent with India’s longstanding position at SCO forums, where it has repeatedly called for a unified, unambiguous approach to counter-terrorism — language that has at times strained consensus within the bloc.

What This Signals for India's SCO Posture

India’s dual emphasis — institutional restraint on one hand, hard security on the other — reflects its broader strategy within the SCO: engage constructively on trade and connectivity while refusing to allow the platform to be used as cover for state-sponsored terrorism. With the PMTEC Action Plan for 2026–2030 now endorsed, the coming months will test whether the bloc can translate its diplomatic communiqués into ground-level economic cooperation.