Arrested development
The self-congratulatory rhetoric of the inter-governmental merry-go-round will once again be heard at the 15th SAARC Summit in Colombo. In reality, SAARC at (almost) 23 has the mental development of a three-year-old. The proof in the SAARC pudding will not be found in over-hyped summits or crusty declarations, but in the free flow of people, ideas, creativity and culture across political boundaries that, currently, remain jealously guarded by governments and their militaries. Most official SAARC initiatives fail this test miserably. Typical of this arrested development is the SAARC Audio-Visual Exchange, or SAVE.
Announced in 1986 and established a year later, SAVE was to be "a South Asian broadcasting programme covering both radio and television." Its mandate was to "increase the awareness of each other among the peoples of the region through disseminating information on the socio-cultural, economic and technical aspects." SAVE connected Southasia's state-owned, government-controlled radio and TV stations, in order to share selected content for broadcasting in each country. Some joint productions were also to be undertaken. Over the years, some content-swapping has indeed taken place, and the SAVE Committee members have met more than two dozen times. All of this hard work apparently pleased their masters. According to the website of the SAARC Secretariat, "The successive SAARC Summits had lauded the smooth functioning of SAVE programme [sic] as being a useful medium for promoting a South Asian consciousness among the people in the region."