SAARC: fish don’t fly

Hold tight, each one of you

Snake-tails of your own

Country, religion, convictions

The way people hold each other

On a sinking boat.

–Noman Shauk, Dubati Nau Par

After the Islamabad tamasha, it is clear that SAARC is yet to grow out of the shadows of infantile rivalry between India and Pakistan. The regional grouping has failed to evolve into an independent identity.It has not come of age, despite having crossed 18, the age at which most Southasians become eligible to vote. As expected, the now-on-now-off India-Pakistan peace parley hogged the headlines. The summit that had given General Pervez an opportunity to play host to Premier Atal was pushed to the background. Before the heads of the Seven Sisters meet next in Bangladesh, SAARC runs the risk of another spell of uncertain hibernation.

After the third try, medley of SAARC leaders did agree to establish the South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA) by 2016, but the mechanism to achieve that seems to have been left deliberately vague. Other than that, the Islamabad meet will be remembered more for the shervanis that Vajpayee ordered with the tailors of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto than anything else. Trade may open doors ajar, but for a true Southasian Community to develop, some politics needs to be introduced into the frail organisation.

Apolitical outfit

SAARC was established by the heads of state and/or government of countries with autocratic leanings—back then Bangladesh and Pakistan had military rulers (Ziaur, Ziaul), Bhutan and Nepal had autocrat monarchs (the kings Birendra and Jigme), and India and Sri Lanka were led by democratic but domineering personalities (Rajiv and Premadasa). There were no surprises when the regional grouping was designed as a convivial club, a sanitised organisation sans politics.

The administrative nature of the organisation has proved a mixed blessing. It has helped the Secretariat of SAARC remain operational, though far from fully functional, even when its members have squabbled in extremis. But the secretariat cannot do much else than survive. The secretary generals and seven directors working at the gloomy headquarters of the organisation in Kathmandu lack the mandate as well as the standing to intervene in any constructive way on any issue.

Colin Powel it was who convinced Vajpayee that there was no alternative to holding talks with Pakistan, with the summit providing a good cover. Beijing had to use its leverage with Islamabad to make the ruling junta relent and allow Musharraf to respond to overtures from New Delhi. Christina Rocca has had to periodically travel to the Subcontinent to ensure that the various Southasian establishments keep talking to each other. Meanwhile, all that the secretariat of SAARC could do was wait for yet another summit to materialise.

If SAFTA is to gain momentum within the given time frame, and if any other regional programmes are to be added to the SAARC agenda, the very philosophy and structure of its secretariat has to be reformulated. From a centre of well-paid file-pushers lacking in agency, it must be transformed into a proactive institution with the ability to influence events and trends.

The vision presented by the Eminent Persons Group to the SAARC Heads of Government in 1998 was an attempt to redefine and restructure the organisation for the challenges of the new century. Frankly, it was not bold enough to address the aspirations of new generation of Southasians, but even that seemed to have been too forward-looking for our unimaginative leaders. Subsequent summits have refused to discuss the Eminent Persons' recommendations, but the need to re-invent this umbrella organisation of all Southasian states has hardly gone away.

One of the ways of beginning the process of change would be to turn the SAARC secretariat into a semi-political office with the ultimate goal of establishing a full-fledged regional Parliament, a Southasian Court of Justice, and even an Executive with trans-border authority and responsibilities. Someone has to dream it up to set the ball rolling. More than half of all Southasians are youths. They are more likely to be receptive to new ideas than the granddaddies and grand-uncles who control SAARC's secretariat from the various foreign ministries of Southasian capital cities.

Media stars

With all due respect to Bangladesh's QAMA Rahim, the administrative character of the post of secretary-general is a hindrance to making SAARC a visible organisation. Rahim may be a competent diplomat, as was the Lankan Nihal Rodrigues before him, but there is no way he can call Chandrika Kumaratunga on the phone for a tête-à-tête. Diplomats are trained never to extend themselves beyond the decorum of "protocol, alcohol, and no-toll". The reform has to begin at the top, and it is hard-boiled politicos like Benazir Bhutto, Laloo Yadav, Sheikh Hasina, Sharad Pawar or Sher Bahadur Deuba who should be leading an assertive SAARC secretariat. They will not hesitate to throw their weight around and create enough media interest to sustain regional agendas of the organisation.

When a phalanx of Indian politicos visited Pakistan some time ago, it was Laloo who kept the cameras tailing him wherever he went. Now suppose, if the Yadav from Bihar were to be the SAARC secretary-general, would he not follow-up the issue of the forgotten Biharis of the Dhaka camps with the governments of Pakistan and Bangladesh in a completely different way? Imagine a Shekhar Suman take on the Laloo-speak calling the 'President' of Pakistan on SAB TV "Arre Mushharraf Sahab, kuchh to Allah ka Kauf kariye, history me nam likhbaiye …". Or to Begum Khalida, "Arre Behana, hamko aapse kuchh kehna hai …". The echo of laughter all over Southasia would be strong enough to force them generate a smile, and do something that their predecessors have consistently refused to do for decades.

The Track II crowd that has made the Wagah-Atari border a celebrated destination has not been able to bring about tangible change in the relationship between the two countries, but they have been phenomenally successful in establishing a line-up of names and faces familiar all over Southasia. Ayaz Amir graces the pages of The Himalayan Times in Kathmandu, Kuldip Nayar gets pride of place in the Dawn of Pakistan, both of them are carried on the pages of The Daily Star of Dhaka, and all of them are talked about in the seminar-circuit from Colombo to Bombay to Calcutta. Lahore's human rights volcano, Asma Jehangir is lapped up by TV cameras wherever she travels. The secretariat of SAARC can show its gratitude to them by declaring them citizens of Southasia.

There is no reason why member countries of SAARC would object to a common Southasian passport for 'eminent regional persons' like Madhuri Dixit, Ghulam Ali, MJ Akbar, in addition to all the current and previous heads of central as well as provincial governments in the region. The prospect of Narendra Modi drawing his Southasian passport with a flourish at the Karachi Immigration Office to prove that he doesn't need a visa to enter the country of a common region is too attractive not to think about. Imagine him calling SAARC Secretary-General Buddhadev Bhattacharya from his cellphone if he were to encounter any difficulty…!

Money matters

To establish its legitimacy with the masses, SAARC needs to come down from its pedestal. Summits are great photo-ops, Track II meets are glamorous diversions for the intelligentsia, and SAFTA holds enormous promise for the emerging business classes, but how about the absolute poor who constitute nearly half of the 1.4 billion population of Southasia?

Deeply enmeshed in security and trade controversies, Southasian leaders have failed to do anything other than paying lip service to the issue of poverty so far. To tackle it, the countries need to pool their resources, and SAARC is a framework that already exists to implement the dream. A mechanism is required to create a common fund to create job opportunities. Something needs to be done, and urgently, to make children of Southasia a common responsibility of all the governments in the region. While UNICEF has had them mouth the slogans, it has not been able to generate commitment among the governments.

The idea of touching the poorest was indeed floated by the Eminent Persons Group, but it chose to limit itself to the LDCs of the region—Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal. Their main concern was how to make "the disadvantaged three" benefit from the regional trade. That is an important issue. But traders everywhere are quite capable of taking care of their interests, by arm-twisting their own governments if necessary. SAARC must concentrate its anti-poverty efforts on the pockets of backwardness in every country of South Asia. Literacy, health and infrastructure projects must be run from a common fund. In the same way, border regions need investments from a common fund that would be free from internal politics of either size.

Imagine a SAARC Development Fund is created where every country of the region devotes a small percentage of its national budgets. This budget is then administered by a secretary-general who is unafraid of taking bold decisions because of who he is (a politician). Part of the fund goes to create a string of ponds to conserve rain-water in the Deccan. Schools are funded in Balo-chistan. Health posts are built in Motihari. Mini hydroelectricity plants are financed in Kumaun. Suppose the fund also has a mechanism—institutions, funds, and authority—for dispatching immediate relief in case of a disaster anywhere in the region.

Aiming for a common rupee and building a trading block are not original ideas. The challenges before Southasia are much more complex and enormous. And fortunately, so are the opportunities. More than one-fifth of humanity, with so much in common, is in dire need of political innovations for the common good. For how long can we keep living, with the clock ticking towards mid-night, without doing something about it collectively?

The leaky boat that we are on—Southasia—cannot be protected by the Islamic Bomb or Hindu missiles. It cannot be kept afloat by—horror of horrors—Buddhist hatred. And it cannot be saved by our heads meeting once in a while to smile and pretend that everything will ultimately turn out just right. In 1986, even SAARC was a bold idea—a huge fish that would carry the sinking boat along for a while. Now is the time to design something else that can fly. Fish don't fly.