Uzbekistan’s Foreign Minister Bakhtiyor Saidov’s August 2026 visit to New Delhi underscored India’s evolving strategy in Central Asia. The two nations agreed to double bilateral trade to US$3 billion within three years and initiated talks on a Free Trade Agreement, with critical minerals, mining, digital public infrastructure, and connectivity as priority areas. India’s offer of its fintech and DPI expertise, alongside defence cooperation, highlights a multi-dimensional partnership. The visit also reflects India’s pragmatic recalibration of its Eurasian connectivity strategy, particularly after the lapse of Washington’s sanctions waiver for Iran’s Chabahar port and the absence of budgetary allocations for it. Rather than relying on a single corridor, India is diversifying through multiple routes, including Kazakhstan’s eastern branch and Russia’s INSTC investments. While India’s footprint remains smaller than China’s, the enduring institutional linkages and incremental gains suggest a durable approach. Prime Minister Modi’s upcoming visits to Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan are expected to add momentum.
When Uzbekistan's Foreign Minister Bakhtiyor Saidov landed in New Delhi on 2 August for a four-day visit, his itinerary appeared to be routine: a visit to President Droupadi Murmu, a business forum, and bilateral talks with S. Jaishankar at Hyderabad House. Beneath these conventional meetings lay what was consequential. The two countries agreed to double bilateral trade, from the current level of around US$1.5 billion, to US$3 billion within three years, while launching talks on a Free Trade Agreement. They identified critical minerals, mining, digital public infrastructure and transit connectivity as important areas of engagement in any future agreement. Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal joined the conversations, signalling the importance given to the expanding economic relations between the two countries. Saidov himself said the trip was a preparatory one, laying the grounds for the upcoming visit by Prime Minister Modi to Tashkent.
Such engagement ahead of PM Modi’s visit, focusing on further strengthening the relationship, may not look transformative. However, what makes it worth noticing is what it reveals about the method behind India's Central Asian outreach, a method whose real strength lies in its endurance, built not for one dramatic breakthrough but for steady, compounding gains that grow over time.
A pattern, not a moment
Minister Saidov’s visit needs to be viewed as part of a longer diplomatic sequence. It is the latest link in a chain which includes the 17th round of India-Uzbekistan Foreign Office Consultations in May 2026: a Bilateral Market Access protocol signed the same month as Uzbekistan formalised its WTO accession, followed by the Jaishankar-Saidov phone call in July, and now this visit. The regional element was quite clear, for instance, the India-Central Asia Summit mechanism of 2022, the standing Secretariat it created in Delhi, and the 4th India-Central Asia Dialogue that brought all five Central Asian foreign ministers to the capital. This clearly shows that now India has moved from holding occasional, one-off summits to setting up regular, ongoing talks. That shift matters more than any single joint statement, because durable regional influence is built through repetition, not announcements.
The substance is economic
What is new here is the prominence that this meeting gets. Critical minerals and mining sit at the top of the agenda. This alignment represents a major step forward in strengthening India's supply chain resilience and expanding its regional influence. By tapping into Central Asia's vast mineral reserves, including critical shares of uranium, copper, and rare earths, India directly addresses global supply vulnerabilities. This turns out to be of significance when China currently controls over 70% of global rare earth extraction and roughly 85% of refining capacity.
India has also offered its Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) and fintech expertise to Uzbekistan as part of a broader push to expand bilateral economic and technological cooperation. India, leveraging its world-class DPI, backed by platforms like UPI that processed over 131 billion transactions in 2023 alone, as a key technology exporter, puts it as a primary enabler for emerging markets. Coupled with an explicit expansion into defence cooperation alongside traditional educational and cultural ties, India and Central Asia are cementing a multi-dimensional partnership anchored by strong mutual diplomatic backing, as demonstrated by India supporting Uzbekistan's 2027-29 Non-Aligned Movement chairship while Tashkent endorses India's upcoming BRICS presidency.
The corridor issue
This is where the Uzbekistan foreign minister’s visit connects to a much bigger story. India's signature Eurasian connectivity bet, the Chabahar port in Iran, feeding the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), currently, is not in good shape. Washington's sanctions waiver for Chabahar lapsed in April 2026. Moreover, for the first time in nearly a decade, the Union Budget carried no allocation for the port. But this zero-allocation for Chabahar Port in the Union Budget, coinciding with the expiration of Washington’s sanctions waiver, reflects a pragmatic recalibration of India's foreign policy. Continuing direct capital allocation for the Iranian port had become practically unviable due to the ongoing US-Iran geopolitical rivalry, risks of secondary sanctions, and commercial friction.
It is notable that India has not announced an exit. There are reports of renewed movement on the Chabahar-Zahedan rail link as Iran sanctions ease in other respects. Russia is financing the Rasht-Astara rail segment of INSTC. At the same time, Kazakhstan is developing an eastern branch of the corridor. None of these alone replaces Chabahar's promise. Together, they represent a concerted and holistic connectivity link to the region. This is because, now, India is no longer betting its entire Central Asian access on one Iranian port, one American waiver, and one geopolitical mood in Washington. That is arguably the real story of India's Central Asian and Eurasian policy in 2026. The same instinct shows up in the parallel, still-unfinished India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEEC).
The scale of what still lies ahead is itself a measure of opportunity. China's Belt and Road footprint in Central Asia is far larger than that of India, but this also marks out how much headroom exists for India to grow into. Afghanistan's path toward stability remains uncertain, and when it firms up, the most direct overland route to the region would open with it. A US$3 billion trade target, once reached, would still put India behind Central Asia's other major partners, meaning the real upside is likely bigger than the target itself. The trade target is worth sitting with as a genuine marker of ambition. Reaching to US$3 billion in three years is quite an ambitious target for the two economies without a shared border, without a completed FTA yet, and without a fully built-out overland route, and therefore it would require sincere effort on the part of both countries to achieve it within the deadline.
Conclusion
Judged against the standard of "has India built its Eurasian gateway," the answer in August 2026 is clearly: “not yet”. A more realistic way of assessing Indian efforts would be to ask, i.e. whether India is building durable institutional linkages, diversifying its connectivity options, and making sincere efforts to stay in the game despite setbacks like the funding freeze at Chabahar. The short answer to these queries would be: “yes”. Saidov’s visit suggests that Uzbekistan is ready to take the process of engagement to the next level, going forward. This is important as it conforms to the pattern already set by the two countries trying to take the relationship to greater heights. It is characterised by candid consultations during any crisis, a pragmatic emphasis on economic cooperation rather than working towards fulfilling any grand geopolitical ambition, and a refusal to let one failing corridor stop the wider project. In all likelihood, Prime Minister Modi’s upcoming trips to Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan later this month are likely to inject further momentum into India’s strategic vision in Central Asia and the wider Eurasian region.
Mohammed Shoaib Raza is a PhD scholar at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. The views expressed here are his own.
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