SAARC Starts To Get Serious

SAARC has had the thankless task of bringing together countries that are quite disparate in size, economic scale and geopolitical clout, and to give them a sense unity and direction. Since its birth more than a decade ago, the organisation has been compared to other regional groupings such as ASEAN and the European Community and found to be wanting. South Asians have enjoyed lampooning their own organisation for its impotence and ineffectiveness, little realising that in doing so they are merely laughing at themselves. Not least because of the ingrained and self-serving cynicism of South Asia´s educated classes, SAARC is barely the sum of its parts—the summits, the Secretariat, and meetings of bureaucrats with national agendas. And yet, there remains the possibility of making something of this organisation, to convert it into a dynamic and creative institution to promote a South Asian coming together as much.

At the same time, outside of the SAARC organisation, there is progress being achieved by something called the "SAARC process", which represents the instinctive urge of South Asian civil society to reach out across existing borders and assert historical and cultural identities. Activists have been meeting actively, and cross-South Asian meetings have grown from a trickle to a torrent. It was when businessmen began to show interest in regional cooperation a few years ago, however, that the SAARC process became ´real´ in the minds of many. If they thought they could make money off this thing, then it must really be happening!