EDITORIAL: It is a shame that in the near-four decades since the Saarc (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) Charter was adopted, the platform has been unable to accelerate economic growth, social progress and cultural development in the region.
Worse still, everybody knows that it is Pak-India hostility that has held the whole forum hostage, yet nobody has been able to do a thing about it.
This is incredible because the two countries at the centre of this paralysis are also home to the worst combination of population, poverty and suffering in the world, and understand very well that the money they spend on upgrading their defences – on top of the nuclear deterrent – is much better spent on their economies.
Still, even after 75 years, 38 of which have seen a helpless Saarc try and break the ice, politics of hatred and confrontation has trumped politics of compromise and common sense on both sides.
To be fair, though, Islamabad has extended the hand of friendship a number of times in recent years; including a rare outreach by the Pakistani army chief, calling on both countries to bury the hatchet and work together for a better future for the people of the subcontinent and indeed the whole continent. And it has been New Delhi, especially since the divisive, extremist BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) came to power under Narendra Modi, that has pushed back all such initiatives.
It was hoped that the devastation caused by the Covid pandemic, which pushed millions of people back below the poverty line everywhere, would finally knock some sense into BJP’s strategists, yet the only way the present situation is any different from the past is that it is even more flammable.
This is the age of international alliances with outfits like G20, G50, the ASEAN, BRICS, etc., facilitating trade agreements and innovations like currency swaps that enhance commerce, revenue and the welfare of common people.
As such Saarc, which sought to bind Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka together, was ahead of its time. But what started as a promising initiative in 1985, and never lived up to its promise or potential, effectively ended when India refused to attend the 2016 summit in Pakistan.
That means the last time all countries even bothered to sit together and just go through the motions was in Nepal in 2014. To its credit, Pakistan is still doing what it can to get the ball rolling, extending an invitation to all members, especially India, to join the next meeting due in Islamabad; with the option of participating virtually if some parties do not want to attend in person.
Still, while India has much more explaining, and therefore more make-up work, to do, Pakistan must also get its house in order for any meaningful progress to be possible. Because when its powerful establishment is not selling its anti-India narrative – which it did when General Bajwa made his unprecedented offer of peace – the political opposition always goes to town over any sitting government’s efforts to promote better ties and trade with India in the same way that BJP uses the anti-Pakistan narrative to keep its electoral hopes alive.
This is what Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif meant when he said that people of Saarc countries were “victims of missed opportunities”. Now we have come to a pivotal point in this equation. If Islamabad and New Delhi cannot display the maturity needed to overcome their differences for the benefit of their suffering people even now, then they will not deserve to play the leading role in this region, and there might not be many more opportunities in the future.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022
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