Prosperity in aligned solidarity

As SAARC leaders gather for their 15th Summit in Sri Lanka, it is timely to reflect on how far we have come in realising the vision of SAARC's founders, and where we may have fallen short. Judging by the number of committees and commissions; technical, ministerial and even summit meetings held; as well as reports, resolutions and agreements adopted, SAARC certainly appears to be alive and kicking. But at the popular level, SAARC's existence has not done much to inculcate a feeling of Southasian-ness on the part of the citizens of its member states.

Objectively, we know that there are many commonalities among us Southasians. Most of us share a cultural heritage, enjoy Bollywood films, savour spicy cuisine. We also face common development challenges – ranging from the world's highest levels of malnutrition, degrading poverty, deplorable sanitary conditions and shamefully low status of women. On the positive side, lately we are also beginning to see economic dynamism in some parts of the region, a popular craving for democracy and human rights, and people embracing globalisation with a vengeance, ahead of their governments. But it is rare to see Southasians acting as a group, with a sense of solidarity to overcome their distress or to capitalise on their opportunities. It is as if we are Southasians by origin, but are non-aligned in our behaviour vis-à-vis each other.

Due to the disproportionate size and influence of India compared to other countries of SAARC, most politically active citizens of other countries tend to harbour a deep – often exaggerated – fear and resentment of India. It is common to hear people from Colombo to Kathmandu, Kabul to Comilla, Male to Multan whining about an 'Indian conspiracy', often with fanciful imagery. Outside the Subcontinent, one often finds Bangladeshis and Nepalis, Pakistanis and Sri Lankans more concerned about not being identified as Indians than about being seen as Southasians. Everywhere in the world, the desire for separate identities is more pronounced among citizens of smaller countries and communities; suspicion of powerful neighbours is certainly not unique to Southasia. Nor are such feelings easily remediable. To address this matter, it would probably be in India's and everybody else's best interest for New Delhi to make extra non-reciprocal efforts to demonstrate its magnanimity – with humility – through some form of sophisticated Gujral Doctrine.

Other than publications by the SAARC Secretariat itself, I am only aware of only two region-wide publications of note in the entire SAARC region, one being the South Asia Human Development Report and the other being Himal Southasian. One can find Southasian Studies programmes in several universities in North America and Europe, but I am unaware of any such programmes in universities of the SAARC countries. Likewise, at the United Nations, Southasians rarely act as a group. Unlike Africans, Arabs or Latin Americans, Southasians rarely put up a common position on key policy issues as one might expect, or propose common candidates for senior UN positions. On the contrary, I am aware of several instances in which Southasians have undercut each other by proposing multiple national candidates. Whatever Southasians do as a group at the United Nations or elsewhere tends to be symbolic, ceremonial or formalistic, and rarely strategic.

Prosperity in solidarity
In the international development field, it has often taken non-Southasian organisations or individuals to fully recognise and respond to the commonalities of Southasia. Following the establishment of SAARC, UNICEF took the initiative to reorganise one of its regional offices for Asia, in order to coincide with the SAARC region, a move that ironically was not whole-heartedly supported by all of its member states. The ways most other UN agencies organise their regional work still do not correspond to SAARC's Southasia; some of them are relics of the pre-SAARC Cold War days. The governments of Southasia have done very little to promote or press for these agencies to adopt or adapt to the SAARC-friendly new realities. For instance, the World Health Organisation (WHO) continues to have a regional structure that puts India and Pakistan into different regions, and lumps North Korea with Nepal and other SAARC countries. However, the governments of the Subcontinent seem to have taken no initiative to persuade the WHO to rectify this anachronistic structure.

It is a fact that, at the international level, SAARC is not taken as seriously as are other regional groupings, such as the African Union, ASEAN, the League of Arab States or the Organisation of American States. Whereas many world leaders regard the summits of these regional organisations as worth attending, the SAARC summits are not acknowledged with the same enthusiasm. Indeed, extra-regional powers that seek to influence events in Southasia deal bilaterally with the more influential governments in the region, rather than through SAARC.

All the while, there is also another way to look at SAARC. Encompassing a population of 1.4 billion people, SAARC is the largest of all existing regional economic and political groupings in the world. With its current low levels of human development, but its increasingly vibrant economies, dynamic democracies and judicious embrace of globalisation, it has nowhere to go but up. We Southasians would, therefore, be wise to seek prosperity in solidarity rather than in mutual suspicion and recrimination. Our own solidarity would encourage the rest of the world to take Southasia more seriously.

In the long-term, SAARC's largest member, India, would reap far more mutually beneficial advantages from a prosperous neighbourhood as a collectivity, than it would from bilateral deals negotiated with individual countries whose citizens and opposition parties are likely never to tire of invoking unequal treaties and agreements. If the 21st century is going to be an 'Asian Century', Southasia should strive to position itself at the very heart of this transformation. Leaders gathered at the 15th SAARC Summit in Colombo have a chance to plant the seeds of this transformation, with the confidence that the peoples of their countries are ready and eager for just such a change.

~ Kul Chandra Gautam is former assistant secretary-general of the United Nations and deputy executive director of UNICEF in Kathmandu.