From Aadhaar to solar farms, Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Tuesday, October 20, 2026 declared India ready to share its development blueprint with fellow Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) members — framing the country's technology and innovation journey as a replicable model for the Eurasian grouping.

In a post on X in Hindi, Singh wrote: 'Bharat ka Development Experience, Technology aur Innovation ke madhyam se vyapak badlaav laane ka udaaharan hai' — 'India's development experience is an example of bringing sweeping change through technology and innovation.' He specifically named Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), Women-Led Development, and Clean Energy as the three pillars India is prepared to share and build on with SCO partners.

What India is offering the SCO table

The three pillars Singh invoked are far from rhetorical. India's DPI stack — anchored by Aadhaar biometric identity and the UPI payments rail — has delivered financial and governance services at a scale most middle-income economies have not matched. The Digital India programme, launched in 2015, turned that infrastructure into a live policy laboratory whose results are now internationally cited.

On clean energy, India co-founded the International Solar Alliance in 2015, an initiative that has become a signature piece of its multilateral soft power. Women-Led Development, meanwhile, represents a domestic policy framework of targeted economic and social empowerment programmes — one India has increasingly presented on global platforms as evidence that growth can be gender-inclusive by design.

India's expanding footprint inside the SCO

India became a full SCO member in 2017, initially drawn in by the grouping's security architecture. Over the years, New Delhi has methodically broadened that engagement — using summits and ministerials to layer development cooperation on top of the harder security conversations the SCO was built for. India hosted the SCO Summit in 2023, deploying that moment to showcase its development model directly to heads of government from across Eurasia.

Singh's statement continues that arc. By pairing a senior cabinet minister's voice with explicit offers of DPI and renewable-energy collaboration, India signals that its SCO posture is not passive membership but active co-shaping of the agenda.

The soft-power play behind the statement

There is a clear strategic logic here. The SCO brings together states at very different stages of digital and energy transition — Central Asian republics, Pakistan, China, Russia and others — creating both an audience and potential co-investment partners for India's proven models. Positioning India as a development partner rather than simply a security interlocutor gives New Delhi distinct leverage that money or military posture alone cannot buy.

The move also fits a wider Indian multilateral pattern: show up with scalable, affordable, home-grown solutions and let the track record do the diplomacy. Whether that offer translates into concrete DPI-export agreements or clean-energy financing mechanisms at the next SCO ministerial will be the real test of intent.