Dr Hemant R Ojha

Talks without action

Leaders of South Asian nations held 17 summits of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) since 1985, and the next summit is planned for later this month in Kathmandu. What does this much celebrated meeting mean to the people of South Asian nations?

Since its establishment in December 1985, has passed three decades. A total of 17 different agreements and conventions have been signed, covering aspects related to trade, development and social welfare. One may wonder about the consequence of these talks and agreements. But their implementation has remained dismally poor, when compared with other similar regional associations in Africa, East Asia, Latin America and North America. This question of under-performance lies at the heart of the debate concerning the future of SAARC, and the question warrants scholarly attention amidst the upcoming SAARC summit in Kathmandu later this month.

Changing context of cooperation

There is a reason to be hopeful, at this particular juncture in the history, about the future of SAARC. The hope come primarily from the context of profound changes in the global and regional political economies – including the rise of India and China as economic powers, increased appreciation of social and environmental connectivity among the SAAR states, the retreat of Western military from Afghanistan, and the election of Narendra Modi as India’s new Prime Minister who appears to be more regionally-oriented than his predecessors. What becomes interesting then is to the question of how and to what extent such profound contextual opportunities and challenges find their way into the discussion table. What makes SAARC more effective is indeed a critical question not only from the point of view of the regional security and development, but also from the viewpoint of global peace and stability.

Challenges – old and new

Until recently, despite India being the largest and most powerful member of SAARC, it showed little interest on the regional association compared to the enthusiasm of the smaller states. One of the reasons for Indian hesitation, from Indian perspective, is that SAARC offers an unfair opportunity to smaller states, which have used SAARC to gang up against India and play with China. But it should also be recognized that small but sovereign states stand to benefit more from working together, offering opportunity to India on providing a leadership to well-functioning regional association. What becomes crucial then is the question of how and to what extent SAARC devises mechanisms for enhancing collaboration among unequal members, through effective negotiation of rules that suits divergent expectations and interests of the unequal member states.

Needless to say, the member states have long-standing bilateral disputes of diverse types, with the one around Kashmir involving India and Pakistan being the most troubling one. The inter-state dispute has gone so critical that some years ago Indo-Pak relations worsened so much so that, a SAARC delegate from one country had to fly from outside of the region to participate in the Summit held in the region itself. Likewise, South Asia is a region of extreme cultural diversity, with over 100 languages and cultural groups. How can SAARC initiate a process of regional integration when even the nation-states fail to achieve democratic representation within the nation-states? The plethora of wars and conflicts which the region has seen means that nation-states themselves are struggling to enhance the legitimacy of the state authority across the society. Amidst such internal representational crisis, several SAARC countries face pressures for federal autonomy, further decentralization of the power, or even secessionism. The current federalisation debate in Nepal following the decade long civil War, and ongoing tensions in India’s North East and Pakistan’s Sindh and Balochistan are examples of this challenge. Given these internal issues, the future of SAARC is significantly linked to the ways in which sub-national, national and regional political processes are dealt with at national level, and how regional level cooperation facilitates or complicates intra-state politics of democratization.

South Asia hosts the world’s largest concentration of poverty, with historically entrenched deprivation of people across gender, class, caste, regional affinity, religion and ideology. With a quarter of the world’s population and the largest concentration of the people living with less than 1.5 dollar a day, what the leaders of SAARC member states talk, decide or fail to decide remains a matter of global concern. How and to what extent SAARC augments member state capacity and strengthen capabilities in tackling this problem is also an important context related to the assessment of SAARC’s future. Given the limited success of Western development aid, alleviating South Asian poverty can benefit from regional cooperation to complement efforts being made at national and sub-national levels. Clearly, SAARC has the opportunity to make the cooperation consequential in terms of overcoming poverty and deprivation, with likely knock on effects on deepening of democracy and widening of human freedom at the grassroots level.

The fact that the countries share river basins, with multiple forms of environmental connectivity across the boarders, is also an important context for the member states cooperation at the regional level. Under the increasingly variable climate, rivers will bring more catastrophic floods across the countries. Besides, as the region faces acute shortage of energy but at the same time have high potential for hydropower generation in the region, South Asia’s energy future is also linked to the success of regional cooperation. This is particularly so as all rivers carrying hydropower flow across the national boundaries and also because hydro projects require high levels of investments, often beyond the capacity of individual smaller states. With Himalayas hosting the third largest ice mass on the earth, feeding six major river systems in Asia, the regional cooperation at South Asia level will have lasting impact on the environmental, energy and livelihoods future of about 1 billion people living downstream in South and South East Asia.

Moving ahead with vision and commitment to action

At the heart of SAARC challenge is the lack of commonly held vision and political will, which has become even more crucial in the rapidly changing context. The founding vision of SAARC includes a limited scope – largely related to the economic agenda and security concerns. Economic and social cooperation however ideal remain susceptible to the lack of political will. It is therefore critical that Kathmandu SAARC summit is used as an opportunity to reinforce the political resolve, to develop a shared understanding of effective political cooperation within and around SAARC. The leaders have an opportunity to review and learn from the nearly three decades of SAARC history and practices, while also drawing from the experience of other similar regional cooperation, especially ASEAN.

More attention is needed than given in the past to the question of how bilateral disputes between the members are going to be dealt with, and without explicit and innovative ways to foster cooperation even when there is a difference of views among the members, SAARC will have continued difficulty in the future. The experience on regionalism elsewhere in Europe and other regions show that regional entities can move ahead with success if the members are able to strike “agree to disagree” arrangements, and aim for incremental progress on things that are more doable. Given the complex and highly contested nature of cooperation on certain fronts, especially territoriality and security, it is important to isolate more contentious issues (such as security and terrorism) from less contentious such as economic, social, and developmental issues. This kind of practice is found in other regional cooperation in the World – such as Organization of Americas (OAS). This does not mean that SAARC should avoid discussing political issues that have regional relevance – such as transboundary river management, migration, security etc. It is important to recognize that seemingly technical issues such as climate resilience are deeply political, and keeping political issues outside of SAARC agenda is not also likely to help. It is also unhelpful to argue that the resolution of bilateral disputes should be a precondition for regional cooperation.

While SAARC has struggled to organize itself internally, the issue of engaging with non-SAARC powers has also been critical to chart its way forward. The issue of who should be invited as the observer has remained particularly contested within the SAARC group. What should be the status of China? The role of EU and other non-regional observers has also remained somewhat unclear and at times contested. Some argue that while SAARC is internally not effective, it is even harder to manage different interested observers, who have clear strategic interests. Some argue that a full fledged membership to China will not be beneficial because a) it is not a democratic country, nor a market economy and so its participation could jeopardize democratic functioning of SAARC; b) it also has conflicting territorial claims against India and Bhutan; c) it can influence smaller countries for its vested security interests. Contrary to this view, others suggest that it is important to remain open and to discuss the pros and cons of China’s involvement, and that there could be a more productive and better alternative if India supports China’s membership to interact closely in the domain of SAARC. Pakistani intellectuals argue that China’s entry at SAARC is justifiable because a) China has demonstrated through its changes in foreign policy that it does not aim for interference with the internal affairs of neighbors; b) it can help balance internal asymmetry within the SAARC member states; c) entry of China in SAARC may not increase Sino-Indian confrontation, but help in the efforts of the two countries to advance the relationship in more constructive way. Clearly, the China membership question is critical to SAARC’s future, which needs to be discussed and agreed in Kathmandu, considering the mutual benefits that can result from increased cooperation with China.

It is sensible to see that SAARC had also “agreed to increase interaction and further promote people-to-people contacts at various levels among their countries”, but this is not taking place at the expected pace. As a result, some have noted a trend of increased ‘people’ orientation in SAARC proceedings, but again this has remained limited to a new fad in the SAARC lexicon. People to people interaction continue to be restricted within the formal systems of visa, fellowships or workshops. Amidst this situation, over the past few years, a civil society networking across the region has started under the banner of ‘People’s SAARC’ with its secretariat in Kathmandu.
There is also a need to push the economic integration further, building on the previous agreements and decisions to get most out of SAFTA and SAPTA which have already been instituted, it is important to remove restrictions on the flow of people, goods, and capitals across the region so that economic integration advances with knock on effects on political and social life as well. Discussion on potential transport agreements in the Kathmandu summit is a welcome effort, and so is the talk around establishing a regional development bank. In an age of information technology, and given the world’s high-tech innovations capacity being developed in the region, South Asia can benefit tremendously from shared information networks related to health, trade, security and others.

Conclusion

At a time when regionalism has emerged as an important agenda in the global politics and economy, South Asia cannot retreat from SAARC, despite the poor performance in the past. If SAARC can find ways to give less weight to talk bilateral disputes than in the past, and actively pursue the agenda of common regional interests, then SAARC can also help ease out bilateral stumbling blocks. One should look at the history of European nations, which fought with each other for decades in the past, but now have demonstrated the Worlds’ most advanced form of regional cooperation. For SAARC to move ahead more effectively beyond the Kathmandu Summit in November 2014, it is important to open up more substantive dialogues at more political depths, while recognizing the unique strengths and expectations of the member countries. Maybe a more transformative agenda could be to discuss the relevance of ‘South Asian Parliament’ that legislates regional regulations to ensure compliance to decisions. SAARC also needs to look out – to see what others are doing, and then explore the possibility of inter-regional cooperation for trade. For SAARC nations, acting cooperatively is a necessity, and it is up to the leaders to pave the way for a meaningful cooperation among states and people at different levels.

Dr Ojha is a political analyst specialising on environment and development issues in South Asia.