Many options after Saarc
It may be time for India and like-minded countries to redefine regional cooperation
We are seeing an extraordinary reset of IndiaPakistan ties. New Delhi is exploring avenues of piling pressure on Islamabad to retaliate against the attack in Uri. The latest is Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decision to pull out of the Saarc summit due in Islamabad in November. It is a dramatic decision intended to signal that India will no longer countenance any pretence in India-Pakistan ties. For a long time both sides were content to keep up appearances in the hope that routinised contact can over time yield better understanding of the other’s position. The government has given short shrift to such an approach to unsettle the context in which bilateral ties operate in — which the NDA reckons imposes no costs on Pakistan and allows it to wage proxy war against India.
The PM’s decision effectively ends Saarc as we know it. Bhutan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan have joined the boycott, adding to Pakistan’s isolation. Few will shed tears for the regional grouping, though. Saarc has become a byword for institutional dysfunction; South Asia remains the least integrated region in the world as the regional cooperation agenda was hostage to India-Pakistan clashes. It may be time to rethink what regional cooperation will look like with India and like-minded countries joining together.
India has called for a BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation) meeting next month. The grouping comprises neighbours in South Asia and Southeast Asia. The agenda of isolating Pakistan makes sense if India manages to be a driver of regional growth that leaves out its errant neighbour. People like former foreign secretary Shyam Saran have been urging New Delhi to open unilaterally its market to smaller neighbours as a goodwill gesture. He has called for according transit rights to other countries so that they can build economic links with each other through the Indian land mass. Others have called for crossborder energy grids and road rail, shipping and air networks. This is a grand project that now needs political attention, particularly since China is pressing on with its connectivity enterprises. This is the front that New Delhi needs to focus on since measures using water and trade are either reputationally risky or yield little. For instance, revoking the most favoured nation status to Pakistan will likely be symbolic as the volume of official trade is only $2.2 billion.