As the 16th summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation gets under way in Thimpu, it would be easy to dismiss the event as yet another jamboree at which the leaders of the region will meet and talk a lot but achieve little of substance. A quarter-century after it came into existence, SAARC remains an under-performing regional association. The Thimpu summit is expected to yield an agreement on the region's strategy to deal with climate change, and another on trade in services. But many ambitious plans drawn up by SAARC for the betterment of an impoverished region, home to 1.6 billion people or more than one-sixth of humanity, have either remained on paper or moved towards implementation at glacial speeds. A fund for “least developed countries” within the region was once talked about and abandoned. The South Asia Development Fund for building infrastructure is expected to be operationalised at Thimpu a full 15 years after it was initiated. As an engine for the economic growth and development of the region, SAARC is yet to demonstrate any concrete achievements since 2006, when the much-delayed South Asia Free Trade Agreement became operational. It has pushed regional trade up to an estimated half a billion dollars but this is still way below potential. Subjects such as economic integration of the region and a common currency are no longer discussed with any earnestness.
Twenty-five seems a good age to fix the problem that ails the association. Its charter is clear that bilateral issues cannot be brought up in any forum of the association. Despite this, SAARC has permanently been overshadowed by the hostility between India and Pakistan. Both countries have used it as an alternative sparring ground, to the despair of the smaller member countries that see regional cooperation as an urgent necessity for their own progress. SAFTA is a victim, as is the SAARC convention on terrorism. The smaller nations must share some of the responsibility as some of them have used SAARC to tilt towards one or the other side of the India-Pakistan divide. Influential sections of the media in India and Pakistan tend to treat a SAARC event as a match between the two. This time is no different, going by the obsessive focus on a possible meeting between the Indian and Pakistani Prime Ministers on the sidelines of the summit. If these two countries, the biggest in the region, can commit themselves to keeping their rivalry out of SAARC, it would help the association focus on its agenda of regional cooperation. Eventually, this may even help India and Pakistan become good neighbours.