Q. India is one of the founding members of the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), a multimodal transportation corridor, which will connect (UPSC Prelims 2025)
Answer:
India to Central Asia to Europe via Iran
Notes: The correct answer is
[A] India to Central Asia to Europe via Iran. The International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) is a major strategic and commercial initiative designed to reduce the time and cost of moving freight between India and Eurasia.
- Route and Connectivity: The corridor is a 7,200-km long multimodal network involving ship, rail, and road routes. It connects the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf to the Caspian Sea via Iran, and then extends to northern Europe via the Russian Federation.
- Key Nodes: A critical component of this corridor for India is the Chabahar Port in Iran, which provides a bypass to Pakistan for reaching landlocked Central Asian republics like Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan, eventually reaching major hubs like Moscow and Saint Petersburg.
- Economic Impact: Compared to the traditional Suez Canal route, the INSTC is estimated to reduce transit time by about 40% (from 45 days to roughly 25 days) and reduce freight costs by nearly 30%.
- Founding Members: India, Iran, and Russia signed the agreement for the INSTC project in 2000. Since then, several other nations including Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kazakhstan, and Belarus have joined the initiative.
The INSTC is often viewed as India’s strategic response to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), specifically the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), by securing an alternative energy and trade highway to the resource-rich Central Asian region.