ENERGY GREAT GAME IN CENTRAL ASIA AND INDIA’S ENERGY QUEST

Abstract

Central Asia is no longer the terra incognito instead of the epicenter of the Asia and widely recognized as the heartland of Eurasia. Located in the middle of Eurasia, Central Asia is surrounded by Russia in the north, China in the East, Caspian Sea in the west and Afghanistan in the south. Because of its unique positioning, the region today is critically important on the world’s geopolitical, energy and transportation network systems. Emerged out of the ashes of dissolution of the largest geopolitical landmass on earth – the Soviet Union, the ‘Five Stans’ (Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan) as a single geopolitical entity has emerged as a new hotspot of global politics by virtue of its huge untapped hydrocarbon potentials and promises of new discoveries. That is perhaps the reason that Central Asia remained in global limelight even after the collapse of the Soviet Union and evolved as the grand chessboard for the countries of the region and beyond. In this premise, this article endeavours to examine the role of energy resources in Central Asian geopolitics and maps out India’s policy options in the ambitious pursuit for oil and energy in the heartland region widely known to be the traditional hinterland of Russia, rim land of the US and new chessboard for China.