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Kathmandu Friday January 04, 2002 Paush 20, 2058.
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SAARC challenge
The big day has come. The heads of state or
government of the seven members of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation
are assembled in our capital in a continuation of the SAARC process. Kathmandu and its
environs are decked out for the occasion. The authorities have gone more than the extra
mile to make sure about that. It is remarkable how we manage to bring out the spit and
polish when something like national prestige is on the line. The more cynical among us
might say there is more to it than that and nothing so noble either. The public too has
put up with a measure of inconvenience, all in the cause of SAARC. But for all that, SAARC
has had a bad press for most of its 16 year history, and not just because of teething
troubles. Quite apart from the unkind descriptions such as that it is a poor man’s
club, that SAARC summits are little more than photo opportunities and that the only
achievements of the summits is that they have been held at all, the stark reality is
little that is tangible and substantial has in fact been achieved. Whatever was achieved
has remained in a kind of limbo either because it is too meagre or too cumbersome. The
question that looms when talking about SAARC is how has it benefitted the man in the
street in downtown Kathmandu or Karachi or Kolkotta. Failure to answer that question in a
way that people can relate to is the crux of SAARC’s image problem. Apologists for
SAARC invariably point out that it has not had enough time for gestation. Others less
apologetic but no less concerned say SAARC simply has too many odds and ends on its plate.
Still others remark that SAARC leaders tend to go for the broad brush approach such as the
call for poverty alleviation from the sub-continent. Indian prime minister Atal Behari
Vajpayee was himself at it the other day when he spoke in these very terms about the SAARC
agenda for the decade. And almost all SAARC watchers have now has come to the sober
realisati on that it will not amount to a hill of beans until the undying enmity between
the two most important SAARC members finally bury the hatchet.
Which brings one to the one silver lining that is often
touted as redeeming grace of the SAARC process. True it is that the sidelines of SAARC
summit conferences provide SAARC leaders a chance to let off steam and may be even come to
some modicum of understanding. Yet the biggest such understanding that can be reached in
the South Asian context is one between India and Pakistan, over Kashmir. It is precisely
Kashmir that is the spanner in the SAARC works and to say that SAARC is an opportunity to
help undo that deadlock is circular logic. But one can also take the broader view that
Kashmir existed before SAARC and is an issue that goes well beyond SAARC. In that sense,
if Messrs Vajpayee and Musharraf, or at least Jaswant Singh and Abdul Sattar, can manage
to tango together on the sidelines of the 11th SAARC summit, the whole extravaganza will
have been a symbolic success. And the success will be genuine if they also manage to take
a step or two towards undoing half a century of hostility. Yet the Kathmandu summit will
have to do more than just bring Vajpayee and Musharraf and Singh and Sattar together if it
is to write itself into the history books rather than seeing the whole SAARC process
beginning to be written off. The seven SAARC leaders have much weighing down on them. They
are expected to pull out something of substance from a process that has so far paid few
dividends to the billion odd inhabitants of the sub-continent. |
