The Hindu : The seven sisters of South Asia

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Saturday, Jan 18, 2003

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The seven sisters of South Asia

By Lakshman Kadirgamar

The future of SAARC will not lie in the hands of Governments. It will lie in the hands of the people.

THE TITLE of this lecture is not "SAARC: where is it going''. With conscious intent I pose the question: "The Seven Sisters of South Asia: where are they going?'' The nuance is deliberate. It reflects my view that SAARC — the South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation — comprising seven states is a grouping of legal entities. States are devoid of hearts and feelings. They are permanently locked into a pattern of elaborate political and diplomatic manoeuvre which may or may not, at any given point of time or on any particular issue, reflect accurately, or at all, the interests and aspirations of the people at large whom they are supposed to represent. SAARC is state-led, government-driven.

The metaphor of the sisters, on the other hand, conjures up an image of kith and kin, a shared home in our vast sub-continent, and in the language of the Colombo Declaration at the 10th SAARC Summit in 1998, "heirs to a profound common civilisational continuum of great antiquity which constitutes a historical basis for sustaining harmonious relations among the people of the region". The sisters are mothers. Their children — the peoples of South Asia — are thus, by definition, first cousins. Sisters may suffer estrangement from time to time; more often than not they make up, and family life is resumed. Blood is thicker than water.

The recent rescheduling of the 11th Summit which was to have been held in Kathmandu in 2001 and the indefinite postponement of the 12th Summit which is scheduled to be held in Islamabad in 2003, have raised, yet again, old questions regarding the future of SAARC. One writer holds the view that SAARC is still at the "beginning of the beginning". I do not agree. Much has been accomplished. Certainly, much more remains to be done...

The road from New Delhi to Islamabad is strewn with the boulders of history. Powerful compulsions and influences, domestic and foreign, unpredictable events, seem to render futile the well meant attempts of a few individuals, from time to time, to move those boulders. 1999 began with a brave bus journey to Lahore which lifted the spirits of the entire sub-continent only to end with the battle in the snows of Kargil which brought the work of SAARC to a near halt for two years. In terms of finding a solution to one of the most complex problems of all time, one cannot reasonably expect a regional organisation to achieve in 17 years what the United Nations has failed to achieve in 57; to think otherwise is to condemn SAARC for failing to accomplish a recognised impossibility...

What are the possibilities open to SAARC?... First, the possibility of member-states allowing SAARC to "languish into failure" by neglecting its institutional structure, failing to hold meetings, ceasing to fund the Secretariat, the Technical Committees and regional centres, not implementing important agreements in the Integrated Plan of Action, the Conventions on Terrorism and Narcotics and indefinitely postponing a Summit. In this scenario the relationship between India and Pakistan is vital...

An allied possibility is that without dismantling SAARC — and I have not yet heard or read a reasoned case for that drastic step — India becomes indifferent to it. This is a very real danger if India proceeds alone on a trajectory of economic growth or takes the route of bilateral economic agreements, the Free Trade Agreement between India and Sri Lanka being an example. But in today's world bilateral and regional arrangements are not mutually exclusive, and concentric regional groupings are becoming a common feature of international life.

Moreover, I would venture the thought that it would be very much in India's interests to turn SAARC into a viable Free Trade Area and thus make it an engine of economic growth for the region. I would add a further point. If it is perceived that India is deliberately undermining SAARC it would have a very adverse effect on India's standing in the world community, and a very adverse effect on India's prospects of securing a permanent seat in the U.N. Security Council.

Another possibility is that SAARC could function as an umbrella organisation under which some member-states acting together, as with the Growth Quadrangle concept that SAARC has already accepted, or with neighbouring states outside of SAARC, proceed with economic cooperation at a more rapid pace than is possible under SAARC rules of unanimity. The Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand Economic Cooperation grouping (BIMSTEC) established in 1997 is a good example of that possibility. Another example is the Indian Ocean Rim Association for Regional Cooperation (IORARC), an organisation to which Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka belong, along with sixteen other states.

Yet another possibility is that SAARC will continue to operate in a modest and unspectacular way slowly carrying on with its programmes of activities in the social field, enabling enhanced people to people contacts, increasing intra-regional trade and so on. The trend is certainly against isolation and towards greater cooperation. The most desirable possibility is for SAARC to grow into a fully functional organisation fostering cooperative and even joint action on problems common to the region. For this India is key, for all the obvious reasons that need not be enumerated. If India were to take the lead, since India accounts for about 75 per cent of the land area, population, resources and skills of the region, SAARC could become a regional economic entity of some weight. It is clear that SAARC cannot succeed without India but the other States must help India to participate wholeheartedly. This is where the Gujral Doctrine is important...

The SAARC must adopt a number of new initiatives. It must work much more closely with civil society than before. There is a marked international trend towards the decentralisation of government, the involvement of the private sector not only in economic but in social and cultural activity, the empowerment of various interest groups which have a contribution to make towards improving the quality of life of our peoples. Given the lack of consistent political will, bureaucratic lethargy, institutional deficiencies and lack of funds that Governments suffer from, there is a great deal that Governments cannot, but non-governmental organisations can, do to help the people.

I am optimistic about SAARC... The reason for that optimism is that our cultures are interdependent, deeply common, historically ancient. The links between all seven of us are unfathomable. As ancient as they are, they are deeper than we think. Not only do we look very much alike, we speak languages that have remarkable similarity, our music is common, our culture is common, we are at home wherever we go in this great region of the world. When you have a mass of that kind, a vast number of human beings with enormous potential, potential that is being revealed every day in different areas of life, most recently in the field of information technology, there is surely reason to believe that a bright future awaits our peoples. We are poor but we are full of promise, and when any mass of that kind is full of promise there is hope, there must be hope. Obviously we will meet, periodically, as we have met now, obstacles, difficulties, political problems. That is inevitable in the process of sovereign States trying to work together.

The future of SAARC, I would say, will not lie in the hands of Governments. It will lie in the hands of the people. And it is the people, I am confident, who are going to see to it, who are going to ensure, who are going to insist, that SAARC must be kept alive, functional and positive. It will happen, believe me it will happen. The children of the seven sisters; they will determine the future of South Asia.

(Excerpts from the Tenth Lal Bahadur Shastri Memorial Lecture delivered in New Delhi on January 11 by the writer who is the Sri Lankan President's Senior Adviser on Foreign Affairs.)

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