Will life end at 40 for comatose SAARC?

Not many Gen Alpha, and even a good segment of Gen Z, can connect themselves with the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, or SAARC, as the now dormant and once vibrant and kicking grouping is entering its 40th year, with hardly any celebrations to mark the 40th Charter Day on December 8, except a reception hosted in Kathmandu by the SAARC’s Secretary General.

Quietly drifting into oblivion, the ship of SAARC is sinking, and the pace at which it is happening increases with each summitless year. Its member states seem to be uninterested in reviving it. Their stance is a far cry from the enthusiasm of the grouping’s early leaders. In the early years, the excitement was so high across the region that some began to think in terms of a South Asian citizen identity, what with SAARC leaders talking about borderless travel and trade and India’s then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee promoting common currency during the summit in Islamabad in 2004. 

J.R. Jayewardene, Sri Lanka’s then-president and one of the key architects of South Asian regionalism, said at the inaugural SAARC summit in Dhaka in December 1985: “We are setting this ship afloat today. There may be mutiny on board; I hope not.”

A mutiny did it see. The ship’s planks are loosening up. So much so that what is left of SAARC today exists largely at Track 2 diplomacy, involving largely academics and NGOs. 

SAARC’s fate appears to be of little concern to its leaders, who at the Track 1 diplomatic level are pursuing other, seemingly more beneficial, diplomatic opportunities. Much of the regional cooperation space SAARC had once occupied is now devoted to the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) and, to some extent, to the BRICS and other groupings. 

The movement in this direction comes as South Asia’s biggest diplomatic powerhouse, India, pursues diplomatic drives such as SAGAR and Neighbourhood First policies to fill the vacuum SAARC’s dormancy has created. While SAGAR (Security and Growth for All in the Region) ostensibly promotes regionalism, one wonders whether its Sanskrit meaning—ocean—suggests a subtle assertion of Indian dominance in the Indian Ocean region. The key difference between SAARC and SAGAR is that while SAARC emphasises multilateralism and unanimous decision-making, SAGAR is an India-centric and India-defined regionalism focused on connectivity. The people-to-people and cultural connectivity SAARC has promoted with tender loving care is lacking in SAGAR. 

SAARC largely exists at its secretariat in Kathmandu and at various mechanisms to promote regional cooperation in non-controversial areas, such as agriculture, environment, health, human resource development, science and technology, transport, and women, youth, and children. Even some of these mechanisms are asleep or half-asleep.
SAARC, which represents one-fifth of the world population and 5.21% of the global economy, has not met after the Kathmandu summit in 2014. The next summit was to be held in Pakistan in 2016, but the India-Pakistan spat over cross-border terrorism—specifically the attack on an Indian army camp at Uri in Kashmir—saw India coercing or cajoling other members to join its boycott call or issue statements supporting the summit’s postponement.

SAARC’s long hibernation is a blow to regional peace. Whatever flaws with which SAARC made headway till the 2014 Kathmandu summit, whose motto “Deeper Integration for Peace and Prosperity” appears ironical in hindsight, SAARC had institutionalised a mechanism for leaders to hold bilateral talks and iron out differences on the sidelines of the summit. In the good old years, many a regional crisis of a serious nature had been amicably resolved at SAARC informal meetings between leaders.

If only the SAARC summits had been continuing till today, certainly many disputes that impede peace between India and Pakistan could have been resolved. They include the thorniest issue of Kashmir and the nuclear weapons dispute.

With SAARC stagnant, let alone Kashmir, the two countries cannot even resolve a dispute over the upcoming Champions Trophy cricket tournament in Pakistan. Citing security concerns, India refuses to participate, while Pakistan dismisses these concerns and insists the tournament proceed, rejecting neutral venues for India’s matches. Pakistan has further threatened to boycott any tournament featuring India if India boycotts this one.

Ascribing SAARC’s spectacular failure to India’s Pakistan problem or the not-so-significant issue involving the recognition of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan or the poor progress in SAFTA (South Asia Free Trade Area) is like missing the wood for the tree. The bigger picture is China, which became an issue at the last SAARC summit in Kathmandu, with Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Pakistan supporting a move to include China, which shares borders with three SAARC nations—India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan—as a full member or a member with observer status.Obviously, India was not too receptive to the proposal for a similar reason the US was not too receptive to Russia’s bid to join NATO in the 1990s after the end of the Cold War: there cannot be two dominant powers in one organisation.

However, it is interesting to note that India has partnered with China within the framework of BRICS, an economic grouping without single-power domination, as had been the case within SAARC in the formative happy days. It was said then that the hidden agenda of India’s neighbours was to trap India within an egalitarian regional cooperation framework and checkmate any Indian design to interfere in the affairs of its neighbours. India was not naïve not to know this. But it went along with the idea of SAARC, not only because regional cooperation was in vogue in international relations but also because it believed it stood to benefit. Besides, India knew a big power is a big power irrespective of the schemes of small powers.

But at 40, when SAARC seems to be breathing its last, its members are looking for alternative regional and non-regional groupings to reap economic benefits. Sri Lanka, for instance, is keen to obtain membership in BRICS, and President Anura Kumara Disanayake, during his official visit to New Delhi, sought India’s help in this regard. BRICS is increasingly adopting a global south outlook with non-Western nations knocking at its door. 

But it is no alternative to SAARC. Neither is BIMSTEC, which was formed in 1997. Though India is keen on turning BIMSTEC, a bloc without Pakistan, into an organisation that will serve regional integration goals, the grouping’s achievements in economic terms have not made any significant impact on the lives of the people of the member states—Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. The grouping is yet to finalise a comprehensive free trade agreement for it to emerge as a springboard for greater South Asia and South East Asia regional economic integration. 

Amidst these grim prospects for SAARC, Bangladesh’s interim leader Muhammad Yunus is spearheading a campaign to revive the eight-nation SAARC—Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. 

While most regional groupings make significant progress in economic and diplomatic cooperation, SAARC, a geopolitical hostage, remains in a coma, neither living nor dying.

With or without SAARC, life goes on in South Asia, with a daily struggle for survival. In the meantime, India’s small neighbours, realising India’s growing clout, have learnt to kiss its hand.