Raja Mohan’s column on the eve of the Prime Minister’s Uzbekistan visit makes one argument in four moves: Central Asia has become an actor in its own right, the great-power map there has diversified, the region is turning towards the Middle East, and the Afghan question has shrunk. His conclusion is a call for modesty.
The Indian Express, Delhi, 26 August 2026 · Raja Mandala
India cannot match China’s infrastructure spending, Russia’s geographic advantages, Europe’s financial resources or Türkiye’s direct access across the Caspian. Nor does it need to. Sustained political attention should be matched by a practical economic agenda focused on areas where India can contribute.
What is worth keeping#
The useful sentence is the one about geography. Pakistan blocks the land route, Afghanistan is unstable, and the Chabahar and North-South corridor alternatives run through Iran, so India’s one built connectivity node “now sits idle”. That single fact explains why every grand scheme since 2015 has stayed on paper, and it is the fact an answer on India’s Central Asia policy should open with.
What the column leaves out#
Two things. First, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation gets a mention only as the occasion for the trip, though it is the one table where India, Russia, China and the five republics sit together. Second, there is no number in the piece: no trade figure, no comparison with China’s, and a reader cannot judge “cannot match” without one. The answer-writer has to supply what the columnist did not.
A specimen for the Press category: the clipping is the paper’s, quoted in part; the analysis is a stand-in for Kalyan’s own.