Reviving SAARC

Dr Shaveta Sharma
The 18th SAARC Summit concluded on  November 27  in Kathmandu, Nepal. SAARC- South-Asian Association for Regional Cooperation was founded in 1985 by seven countries of the South-Asian region viz India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and Maldives. Afghanistan was added as the 8th member in 2007. The latest held Summit has nothing to deliver significant barring two  developments instances- one is the last minute clinched agreement to create Regional Electric Grid and second was the hand-shaking of Indian PM Narendra Modi and his Pakistani counterpart. Friction between the two biggest members of the organisation (India and Pakistan) was quite evident and it amply got reflected in the fact that inspite of handshaking, cold-shouldered body language was clearly visibe throughout the two-day summit. Pakistan managed to undermine two proposed agreements on cross-border road and the rail-traffic; hence no consensus could be reached on either of the two proposed agreements. PM Narendra Modi reitrated the need to fight jointly against terrorism but one can easily question the credibility and sincerity on the part of Pakistan on this issue. Apart from that, there is nothing much to say about the outcome of the Summit.
SAARC was founded to match the success of European-styled unions but to everyone’s disappointment, till date it has failed to do so. In the last 29 years of its establishment as regional organisation, only 18 Summits could be held and even when they were held, they usually did not attract that much attention as EU/ ASEAN Summits do. SAARC could not live up to the expectations and desirability of its founding members and measured on many vital and credible indices; SAARC stood at a much lower cadre when compared with other regional groupings like European Union(EU), Association of South-East Asian Nations(ASEAN), Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation(APEC) to name a few.
With the intent to streamline the work culture and to reform and transform it from a defunct to funct organisation, SAARC member countries must adopt and implement the below-highlighted course of action:
* The tradition of disorganised and irregular summits must be replaced by regular and annual Summits. The provision of holding regular Summits is also enshrined in the SAARC charter.
* Consensus voting must be replaced by 2/3rd majority so as to avoid the lingering and postponing of decisions. New voting patterns would definitely strengthen the decision- making mechanism of SAARC and would also add credibility to it.
* The SAARC charter must be amended with regard to provision that no bilateral conflictual issues would be addressed at the SAARC forum. Avoidance of discussion on bilateral issues among the member countries have not served any purpose till date except in the lethargicness and sub-standard pace of development. In this context, SAARC should learn from the success stories of other regional organisations; most notably EU and ASEAN, which allowed discussions and resolution of bilateral conflictual issues among the members with intent of adding pace to the success of these organisations.
* Apart from practising Track I diplomacy, SAARC members should diversify and employ the options of Track II diplomacy including Confidence Building Measures among themselves. This would help to generate confidence and trust-surplus among them for sure.
* Although SAPTA (South-Asia Preferential Trade Agreement) and SAFTA (South-Asia Free Trade Agreement) were adopted and implemented via forum of SAARC yet these multilateral and intra-regional economic mechanisms could not provide that much dividends as were being expected. The intra-regional trade of SAARC members stood at around US$ 22 billion and constitute only 5% of the total trade of the SAARC members; much less as compared to intra-regional trade of EU and ASEAN. So, economic policy-alteration and credible economic mechanisms should be adopted with the purpose of accelerating the intra-regional economic growth rate which would culminate itself in inter-regional economic growth rate, in distant future.
* With the twin purpose of improvising the graph-chart and cadre of SAARC as a rising and potential regional organisation, the observer status of US, Australia, Japan, China, Iran, EU, Myanmar, South-Korea and Mauritius must be upgraded to ‘Sectoral Dialogue Partners’. The engagement of these extra-regional but potent economic actors would undoubtedly, benefit the credibility and economic stature of SAARC.
* Another initiative which SAARC must employ is that sub-regional ventures in the spheres of infra-structural development (includes air, land and marine); power-generation; border security; curbing terrorism, narcotics, black-money ad money-laundering; promoting trade etc should be initiated. If in the present scenario, regional ventures are a little problematic and too hinder-pathed to move swiftly, then the idea of sub-regional ventures between two or three members with congruent interests, is the best possible and feasible way to start with.
* With the purpose of revitalizing SAARC, the eminent personalities, diplomats, diasporas, business leaders and think-tanks from all the member countries should be given space and must be engaged in the deliberations and decision-making process so as to ascertain the thinking-patterns, insecurities and expectations of one another.
To sum up, it can be articulated that that the success of SAARC has remained a casualty of Indo-Pakistan rivalry and trust-deficit.  If the SAARC members want to taste the success of SAARC as a credible and potential-for-success organisation, there is a need to move one step ahead from mere grand showing and posing for photographs at summits towards making genuine attempts to add to its utility and prospectives.  Besides, problem-avoiding approach would not serve any purpose but problem-solving can do wonders for SAARC…hopefully.
(The writer is working as Lecturer in Political Science in Govt Hr. Sec. School   (Boys) Samba. )

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