Reviving SAARC will be difficult but it can be done, says the former Foreign Secretary of Bangladesh. This time, however, government must play facilitator and let business and civil society get on with the job of advantageous regionalism.
Since the first meeting in Dhaka in 1985, the ten SAARC summits thus far have been fairly predictable occasions. They have been heavy on ritual, with the inevitable speeches singing the glories of regional cooperation and lamenting the slow progress thus far. Meanwhile, don't we know it, everyone else has marched forward, leaving us poor South Asians simply getting poorer. So much for the eradication of poverty by 2002. While everyone readily understands that in this age of globalisation there is no alternative to building a strong regional grouping, we South Asians will insist on doing everything possible to ensure that we remain a divided region. Who will our leaders blame this time? Years of misgovernance have come home to roost; there is no one other than ourselves to blame for the sorry mess we find ourselves in; the heads must wake up to the fact that they must join hands to give the 1.3 billion people of the region a better future.
True, 11 September 2002 and the global recession will make life infinitely more painful for all our countries, although more so for some than for others. But the WTO ministerial conference at Doha nearly two months ago made it clear that there are certain things South Asia must do to get ahead— we must work more closely together as a regional grouping and move swiftly to a free trade area; we must develop our infrastructure on a collective basis; we must remove all the existing barriers to trade and investment; and we must function as a single economic market if we are to survive and escape from this quintessentially South Asian poverty trap.
No longer, therefore, can we afford to let this be yet another SAARC Summit that is heavy on ritual and poor on substance. The people do seek a miracle, and that is to see bold and imaginative leadership. Of course we are all painfully aware of the many bilateral differences that exist. We cannot wish these away, but we cannot any longer afford to wait to resolve all these difference in order to make progress on a regional basis. This, then, should be the first decision of the Summit- that, come what may, SAARC will be put on the fast track. Or, to be more precise, the process of regional cooperation will be put on the fast track, but there will be some differences this time around. Governments will simply play the role of the facilitator; they will join hands to remove the bottlenecks that impede cooperation in all spheres, and provide the infrastructure. And, rather than government, it will be the private sector, civil society groups and NGOs that will be encouraged to move forward, undertaking joint projects and developing new networks.