India & Ashgabat Agreement

Entire world is going through a change and the changes are welcomed. Recently India came up with a new change & joins the Ashgabat agreement on 3^rd Feb, 18.

First of all, lets see what actually Ashgabat Agreement is? To define in a layman language, it’s a multi-modal transport agreement. And it’s not just for roads, the entire agreement, being a multi modal, also include sea routes.

The motive behind this article is to get all about the Ashgabat agreement and to know the basic plot of some historic facts related to India and the Ashgabat agreement.

Recently, India started trading through Chabahar port to strengthen its trade relation with Afghanistan and other Central Asian countries. But to make the goods reach its various destinations, it needs to pass through a number of countries, which includes Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and other nearby countries. This leads to delay in cargo delivery, as it requires lot of paper work, security check and other formalities.

To overcome this problem, India signed an agreement called Ashgabat agreement, which allows a set of countries to do international trade with minimal number of security checks and thus reducing time and money which increases the ease of trade.

Ashgabat Agreement and India.

India has come to an agreement to establish an international transport and transit corridor between Iran, Oman, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Initial members of the Ashgabat agreement were

1.     Oman

2.     Afghanistan

3.     Turkmenistan

4.     Kazakhstan

5.     Uzbekistan

6.     Iran

And recently on 3^rd Feb, Indian too became the official member of the Ashgabat agreement. Pakistan is also said to be the member of this, but there is no official proof, whether it is a permanent member or not. In 2016, Pakistan formally joined the Ashgabat agreement, but the proposal was not accepted by Turkmenistan and Afghanistan and hence the participation of Pakistan in this agreement is still not confirmed.

How it will affect the Indian trade?

India has established his base at Chabahar port in Iran to trade with Afghanistan. Presently, India cannot trade in Afghanistan from J&K, because that region of connection between Afghanistan and India is occupied by Pakistan and declared as “Aazad Kashmir”, another factor is poor and unfavorable terrain, though the terrain factor can easily be overcome with developed engineering technology and hence the barrier remains to be the “Aazad Kashmir” only.

Tajikistan and Kazakhstan are not the members of this agreement even though they are the geographically very close countries with the member countries.

This would synchronize India’s effort to implement the international North South transport Corridor (INSTC) for enhanced connectivity.

What is “Ashgabat”?

Ashgabat is the capital and the largest city of Turkmenistan in central Asia, situated between Karakum desert and Kopet dang mountain range. To get a more clear idea about its location let’s locate it on the world map.

Earlier the agreement is used to be called as Poltoratsk between 1919 and 1927. Ashgabat is also known as the “Marble city” and you could see some beautiful buildings made of marbles. It’s a very beautiful city and has also booked his name in the gunnies book of world record as having the most white marble-clad building in the world.

Important To Note.

China not being a member country is the best thing about this agreement. China in the last year began the ambitious “one belt one road” initiative, to begin a trade route through the central Asian countries. This could give them an access to Indian Ocean. China is not a country on whom we can trust and the best example can be seen in the case of Hambontota Airport. This airport was built in port city of Hambontota jointly by Chaina and Sri lanka but Chinese ended up with the tag of “Emptiest Airport of the world”, and later on, Sri lanka sold it back to the Chinese. This is something that couldn’t go unnoticed from the world, and hence, they are not seeing China with eyes of trust. So China is still untouched from Ashgabat agreement.