Locating the social capital

Worldwide, greater regional integration is on the upswing. The "intent to challenge global hegemony through constructing regional autonomy", in the words of the New Left intellectual Wang Hui, is undoubtedly part of this process. In our part of the world, much can be gained from regional integration. First, for each of our countries, the development agenda is more urgent than ever, and there are enormous potential benefits of integration. The expansion of SAARC to include Afghanistan is not a sign of Southasian consciousness spreading beyond its earlier confines. Rather, it is the power dynamics among states that have influenced decisions to include new members and observers. Afghanistan's membership certainly does not change SAARC's status as a grouping of very poor countries. Its largest economy may be one of the world's most dynamic, but it is also home to the largest number of poor people.

Further, there are well-known complementarities among our economies. SAARC has among its members, for instance, one of the most energy-hungry countries in the world, as well as multiple countries with huge untapped hydropower resources and reserves of natural gas. Worldwide, there is little doubt that many of our problems are transnational, which require transnational solutions. A more authoritative SAARC could provide such a framework. Indeed, the time has come to bring down the barriers that Southasian states have erected against region-wide cultural, intellectual and civic life. Pakistani journalist Najam Sethi points out that the "state-oriented and nationalistic" media in India and Pakistan have often exacerbated conflicts when there were signs of flexibility on the part of governments to resolve them. With initiatives such as a Southasian television channel, he argues, the media could become part of the solution to the region's conflicts, and not part of the problem.

Of cement, water and trust
A dynamic SAARC can contribute enormously to all of this. But the challenges should not be underestimated. Recasting claims on resources in the name of a Southasian development agenda would not automatically make them less controversial than national development. For instance, in the case of water resources, the rivers of the Himalaya are not only a source of hydropower, but also lifelines of the region's peoples and cultures. The numerous conflicts between upper-riparian and lower-riparian areas – countries as well as areas within countries – partly reflect that reality.

Southasia's technological and engineering capacity may be world class. But when it comes to managing water resources, the enthusiasm of our engineers for cement has not matched our institutional capacity to reconciling competing interests. The World Bank states that the institutional arrangements that govern the management of water resources in Northeast India are the principal obstacle to utilising this vast resource for sustainable development. Says the World Bank, India's approach to development suffers from "the paternalism of central-level bureaucrats, coercive top-down planning, and little support or feedback from locals." There is widespread distrust of these centralised structures among local stakeholders, who do not believe that developmental initiatives would bring them benefits.

The challenge of building and simultaneously rescaling institutional capacity – of both governments and civil society – is difficult but urgent. It applies not only in the example of the potential recasting of claims on water resources, but also in other situations, notably the internationalisation of production that is so characteristic of our era of 'gated globalism'.

Consider the cement plant at Chhatak, in Sunamganj in northeast Bangladesh. The limestone and shale that it uses as raw material come from across the international border in Meghalaya, via a conveyor belt that is 17 km long. The plant is owned by two multinationals: Lafarge of France and Cementos Molins of Spain. Figuring out the impact on local communities and ecosystems of such production systems requires transnational collaboration of an unprecedented degree. If poorer areas in one country become resource hinterlands of better-off areas in another country, the configuration is no less conflict-prone than the plight of regions such as the Indian Northeast vis-à-vis the rest of India. But it may be harder to articulate grievances and resolve differences using familiar idioms and political models.

Greater integration of Southasia should not be allowed to become a lop-sided process that makes development the domain of technocrats, and silences the voices of those who are most impacted. Political theorist Ashis Nandy says that, for more than 50 years, crossborder smugglers in Southasia have tried to build and maintain a de facto free-trade zone, by resisting governmental obstacles. This form of smuggling requires a particular kind of social capital: trans-national trust. Nandy calls this the poor man's version of post-national awareness.

Can a new SAARC match this awareness? Can an economically and culturally vibrant Southasia also be a region in which the joys of belonging are shared by all?

~ Sanjib Baruah is at Bard College, New York and the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi.