Editorial

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s four-day visit to Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, beginning August 29, underscores India’s deliberate deepening of engagement with Central Asia at a moment of shifting global alignments. The itinerary — bilateral talks in Tashkent followed by the 26th Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit in Bishkek, where a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin is scheduled — reflects both continuity and calculated opportunism in New Delhi’s multi-aligned foreign policy.

In Tashkent, Modi will hold delegation-level discussions with President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, his fourth visit to Uzbekistan. The agenda prioritises trade and investment, defence cooperation, digital connectivity, energy, education and people-to-people ties, while aligning India’s Viksit Bharat 2047 vision with Uzbekistan’s 2030 development goals. Bilateral trade remains modest, hovering near the $1 billion mark, yet the strategic partnership has expanded steadily. Uzbekistan’s location as a gateway to the region, its energy resources and its role in regional connectivity projects make it a natural partner for India’s Connect Central Asia policy. Cultural gestures, including visits to the Lal Bahadur Shastri Memorial and the Mahatma Gandhi Centre, will reinforce historical and soft-power links that predate modern diplomacy.

The subsequent leg in Bishkek carries greater multilateral weight. The SCO Summit marks the organisation’s 25th anniversary. As a full member since 2017, India has consistently used the forum to emphasise the “three evils” of terrorism, separatism and extremism — a priority that remains relevant given regional security challenges. Modi’s expected address will highlight India’s focus on security, connectivity and opportunity. The summit also offers opportunities for bilateral interactions with other SCO leaders, including potentially Chinese President Xi Jinping ahead of the BRICS Summit India will host in September.

The scheduled meeting with Putin is particularly significant. Coming after External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar’s recent Moscow visit, it will review the full spectrum of India-Russia ties: defence supplies, energy and fertiliser security, and efforts to expand bilateral trade. Russia remains a key partner for India despite Western sanctions and the ongoing Ukraine conflict. New Delhi’s ability to maintain robust relations with Moscow while engaging the West and managing complex ties with China demonstrates strategic autonomy rather than alignment with any single bloc.

Central Asia’s importance for India extends beyond bilateral gains. The region offers alternative connectivity routes, energy diversification and a counterbalance to over-dependence on any single power. Yet challenges persist: limited overland connectivity, competition from China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and the need to translate diplomatic warmth into tangible economic outcomes.

Modi’s visit is therefore less about spectacle and more about steady institutionalisation of India’s Eurasian engagement. Success will be measured not by communiqués alone, but by progress on trade corridors, defence collaboration and security coordination. In an era of contested multipolarity, such focused outreach strengthens India’s agency without requiring it to choose sides.

The bulldozers that tore through the Delhi Race Club this week did not merely clear government land. They dismantled a living ecosystem of work, memory and urban character. For decades the century-old club on Lok Kalyan Marg sustained hundreds of livelihoods — stable hands, trainers, syces, farriers, veterinary staff, security personnel, canteen workers, bookmakers’ assistants and the informal network of suppliers who kept the place running. When the Centre took possession and ordered the structures razed, those livelihoods did not vanish into statistics. They simply disappeared. Horses could be relocated; people with specialised skills tied to one institution could not.

What vanished with them was more than employment. The Race Club was one of the few remaining spaces in central Delhi that still carried a certain grace — the quiet rhythm of early-morning training, the seasonal spectacle of race days, the architectural presence of a colonial-era institution that had somehow survived the city’s relentless modernisation. In a capital increasingly defined by glass towers, congested roads and gated exclusivity, the club offered a rare continuity with an older idea of the city: open, sporting, slightly ceremonial. Its erasure is not an isolated administrative act. It is part of a pattern in which Delhi’s distinctive symbols are treated as obstacles rather than assets.

Cities that claim international stature do not do so solely on the strength of airports, metro lines or diplomatic enclosures. They do so by preserving layers of identity that make them recognisable and memorable. London guards its historic racecourses and parks. Paris protects its architectural memory even while reinventing itself. Mumbai continues to treat the Mahalaxmi Racecourse as part of its civic inheritance. Delhi, by contrast, appears increasingly comfortable with selective amnesia. One by one, spaces that once gave the city texture — old clubs, maidan-like open grounds, institutions with lived history — are cleared in the name of public purpose or expired leases. The legal case against the Race Club may have been strong; the civic imagination behind the demolition looks thin.

An international city is not created by demolishing what is inconvenient. It is created by integrating the past into a living present so that residents and visitors alike can feel continuity. When livelihoods are discarded without meaningful transition support and when landmarks of grace are reduced to rubble without public conversation about what should replace them, the claim to global status rings hollow. Delhi can have efficient administration and ambitious redevelopment. It cannot, however, keep calling itself an international city while systematically erasing the very symbols that once gave it character and employed its people. The dust has settled on the Race Club. The question of what kind of capital we are building remains unsettled.

• SAS Kirmani