A serious criticism of SAARC is its non-implementation of decisions taken. The organisation has been criticised variously for being "ritualistic", a "magnificent paper tiger", a "political white elephant", a "talk shop of no consequence", "suffocatingly slow", a "military convoy in a mountainous region", "a regional pastime", a "club of tongues", a "bureaucratic den" and "a losing business venture, yet one you cannot close." The list could go on.
The SAARC process had already begun to face such criticism by the early 1990s, to which the leaders started to react in the various summits. For example, in Dhaka in 1993, the leadership approved recommendations for adopting a more "business-like and functional approach in the conduct of Summit meetings." But the slide has continued. The level of implementation and degree of commitment to decisions taken remains appallingly dismal. The so-called rhetoric-reality gap is ever widening, enough to damage the 'SAARC spirit' itself.
The 6th SAARC Summit, in Colombo in 1991, appointed the Independent South Asian Commission on Poverty Alleviation (ISACPA), which submitted its report the following year. This Commission set rather formidable macro-economic targets: the eradication of poverty in Southasia by 2002, which the 7th SAARC Summit, in Dhaka in 1993, dutifully placed in its resolution. Every subsequent summit declared that it would eradicate poverty from the region by 2002. When 2002 arrived, the ISACPA was reconstituted.
The SAARC Regional Convention on Suppression of Terrorism came into force in 1988, and an Additional Protocol to the Convention on dealing with the issue of financing of terrorism was signed in 2004. However, the failure of several countries to enact enabling domestic legislation has made the Convention toothless. Since 1988, summits have passed the same resolution, asking the member countries to make enabling laws to operationalise the Convention. But not a single action has been taken under the Convention: member countries do not share basic information, and differences persist on the very definition of 'terrorism'. Indeed, the tendency of member states is to keep most agreements at the 'sublime' level of signed document only.