Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Uzbekistan in August 2026, receiving a ceremonial welcome from President Shavkat Mirziyoyev. The visit advances India's Connect Central Asia policy, deepening bilateral ties in connectivity, trade, energy, and cultural domains. India and Uzbekistan share an elevated partnership status and cooperate through the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. The visit signals India's strategic intent to expand its presence in Central Asia, a region increasingly contested by China and Russia amid shifting Eurasian geopolitics.

India's Central Asia engagement is anchored in the 'Connect Central Asia' policy, launched in 2012, which aims to build physical, economic, and people-to-people linkages with the five former Soviet republics: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The India–Central Asia Summit format, first held virtually in 2022, institutionalised this outreach at the heads-of-state level.

Uzbekistan is India's largest trading partner in Central Asia. The two countries elevated their relationship to a 'Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership' in 2022. Bilateral cooperation spans the International North–South Transport Corridor (INSTC), the Chabahar Port route (bypassing Pakistan to access Afghanistan and Central Asia), digital payments, pharmaceutical exports, and defence.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), founded in 2001 and headquartered in Beijing, is the primary multilateral platform connecting India with Central Asia. India became a full SCO member in 2017 at Astana. The SCO framework covers security, counter-terrorism (via the Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure, RATS), and economic cooperation.

For examiners, the critical static layer here is India's connectivity architecture toward Central Asia: INSTC, Chabahar, the Ashgabat Agreement, and the SCO. The bilateral India–Uzbekistan partnership level and its year of elevation are prime fill-in-the-blank targets. The geopolitical context—India seeking non-Pakistani overland routes into Central Asia—underlies every question about this corridor.