Special Assignment

26th July 1998

Where SAARC has failed

By. Frederica Jansz

As the leaders of the seven South Asian nations meet in Colombo this week for the 10th summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation (SAARC), it remains to be seen if a road map will be provided for SAARC to address some of the real challenges facing the region and explore the possibility to travel the vast distance between promise and performance.

Will this summit too be yet another ad hoc effort that will come up with a declaration of fragmented recommendations and a shopping list of all the good things SAARC should be doing? There has been a great deal of rhetoric at the meetings of SAARC on poverty alleviation, social development and social justice. Yet the constraints attached to state machinery in implementing these plans and reaching the poor have been played down.

Studies carried out by the UN., World Bank and others confirm that neither the quantity and quality of foreign aid nor the kind of technology transferred from the industrialized countries to South Asia has been sufficient or appropriate.

The South Asian region is one of the poorest, the most, illiterate, the most malnourished, and the least gender sensitive regions in the world, as recorded in the 1997 UN report on Human Development. If there is a significant investment in human development, South Asia could indeed become one of the most dynamic regions in the twenty first century.

SAARC, a grouping of seven nation states was conceived for greater economic and development growth.

Strengthening organizations of the poor, advocacy, and pre-planning and independent poverty monitoring were some of the key issues to be addressed by SAARC. Sadly, SAARC seems to have missed the boat, in that, apart from meeting annually, the seven states have failed miserably in strengthening regional development co-operation, and economic gain, but are instead fighting battles of internal conflicts and struggling to keep the deadlines of numerous security agendas.

According to the Human Development Report for 1997 by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), a staggeringly large number of people of a 1.3 billion population in South Asia live in poverty. Linked to this social injustice is the problem of people living in conflict areas, children out of school, households without secure food or access to safe water and sanitation and hundreds of millions struggling to survive on less than US$ 1 (Rs. 60/-) a day.

A high level committee of officials on poverty alleviation through people based development observed, that 25% of the people in Sri Lanka live below the poverty line, 50% percent of the population live on food stamps, 37 per cent of children below 5 years suffer from chronic malnutrition and over 50 per cent of pre-school children are affected by nutritional anaemia.

At the 1991 SAARC summit, the leaders reflected their concern on the fragmented and painfully slow process in SAARC since its inception to address critical economic and social challenges facing the region and its unpreparedness for the new challenges posed by the globalization process and emergence of other regional economic groupings. Since 1991, several independent groups have been formed in South Asia with various mandates and sectoral interests. But all these groups unfortunately seem to lack coherence and do not appear to identify critical issues rigorously.

As one opinion maker said, what is sad with regard to the ineffectiveness of SAARC is that these seven nations share a cultural commonality which is not being fully developed. The nations can learn from each other.

India is the only big power in the world which a Sri Lankan leader can have personal access to immediately and become personal friends with. The Sunday Times attempts today to assess the challenges facing SAARC, and briefly evaluate the performance of SAARC over the past ten years. Has SAARC made any significant achievements, given its shaky beginning and many limitations?

The report on Human Development in South Asia 1997 asserts that South Asia is the most illiterate region in the world, with 395 million illiterate adults (nearly one half of the world total) and 50 million out-of-school children (over two fifths of the world total). What is missing is not financial resources, but political commitment, for tackling the educational tasks that lie ahead. The report asserts that what remains decisive is the political commitment behind the many education campaigns within South Asia - a commitment that has remained both faint and fragile so far.

The same report maintains that there is evidence to show that South Asia cannot hope to achieve a major breakthrough in development or become industrialized tigers of the future without improvement in basic education and technical skills. It is education that leads to many social benefits, including improvements in standards of hygiene, reduction in infant and child mortality rates, decline in population growth rates, increase in labour productivity, rise in civic consciousness, greater political empowerment and democratization, and an improved sense of national unity.

The general opinion is that SAARC has accomplished very little people -to-people contacts. Recently some Nepalese and a Pakistani were not granted visas to attend a Regional Minority Conference in Bangladesh. Bangladesh embassies within the region acted differently, for some unexplainable reason, in issuing visas to participants for this conference. Sri Lankans and Indians scheduled to attend this conference had no problem obtaining visas. Matters such as this should be addressed by the SAARC leaders as it is a serious lapse in regional co-operation.

The potential for co-operation among the SAARC countries is enormous. As identified in the UN report on Human Development for 1997, South Asian countries are more enthusiastic about opening their domestic markets to outside regions than to each other. There is considerable scope for the entire region to gain through mutually beneficial co-operation among SAARC countries, which could eradicate poverty, combat illiteracy, and spur technical progress.

Most SAARC countries are pluralistic, comprising several cultural, ethnic and linguistic groups. A report titled 'Meeting the challenges' issued after the 1992 SAARC summit pointed out that state structures, political systems and systems of governance had yet to be effectively evolved to take cognizance of this plurality and cultural diversity. In recent years, resort to violence and terrorism to resolve some of the differences between the groups has increased.

Sri Lanka was placed 76th in the 1992 Human Development index above 44 countries with higher GNP rankings. The Maldives ranked 99th in Human Development, 22 places higher than its GNP rankings.

The state of Kerala in India, where a wide range of human rights such as the right to work and participation in decision making were included, has also achieved a high level of human development.

The question that needs to be raised as SAARC meets in Colombo next week, is whether SAARC lacks conceptual clarity of what it is supposed to do.

What is the agenda of SAARC? Is it that too many issues are placed on the table, which leaders find hard to discern within three days. Opinions have been expressed by political analysts that greater focus should be placed by SAARC on areas where commonality could be found rather than on bilateral and contentious issues. What seems to be happening today within SAARC is that there appears to be little vision. Instead, many ideas are taken on board which to a large extent are not cohesive.

Yet, SAARC is here to stay. So is the multifaceted crisis which is deepening in the region. SAARC countries cannot face this crisis individually. The question is whether SAARC should keep moving as it has done in the past decade or whether it should respond with some coherent strategic thinking and vigorous collective action.

Some analysts say that South Asian countries have been caught up in a low growth poverty reproduction syndrome, unable to overcome or manage their economic and social problems. High rates of population growth have made South Asia the world's most densely populated region. This has led to over congestion in cities, urban areas, fertile plains and valleys. The region has witnessed an extensive erosion of its natural resource base.

The region's growing foreign debt burden together with fresh borrowings leads to greater dependency. The overall global economic environment both in economic and political terms, has become adverse As a result South Asian countries which in the middle of this century compared favourably with other Asian developing countries, are now caught in a multifaceted crisis. They are unable to manage or overcome their economic and social problems and are being marginalized in the global system. These problems are being aggravated by adverse global trends.

World renowned economist Dr. Gamani Corea, maintains that the purpose of SAARC is to facilitate motions. He says most developing countries concentrate on regional development but there is a lack of studying this issue globally.

Globalization and liberalization are the order of the day, "like a fast express train," Dr. Corea says. Capital has been flowing at an estimated US$ trillion per day in the global arena, while there has been a revolution in information technology. Yet globalization and liberalization have not been well spread. Dr. Corea says a large number of the developing countries have been bypassed. Many of these developing countries are too deeply enmeshed in trying to deal with internal conflicts, and have ignored the wider global dimensions.

Dr. Corea claims that third world countries should identify areas where exactly their interest lies and adapt and amend where necessary. "A level playing field will not do," he said, adding that in such a case, the stronger side will win. There exists an enormous void at present, Dr. Corea says, in that none of the SAARC nations are looking at the global dimension and no attempt is being made to formulate a common agenda in this respect.

Dr. Corea says a regional consensus on globalization is a major issue to be explored as the overall global economic environment, both in economic and political terms, has become adverse. Global trends are not as conducive now to the Region's interest as they were in the 1960s and 1970s. The eighties has seen a resurgence of growing protectionism in most industrialized economies.

The SAARC countries' share of global trade is unacceptably low. Export incomes cover only two-thirds of the Regions total import bill. The industrialized market economies have not taken any major steps to improve market access for exports from South Asia. On the contrary they have even reduced the existing market access. The World Trade Organisation is not an unmixed blessing. As South Asian countries open up their economies to this inhospitable global system, with its unfavourable terms of trade and the reverse flow of resources, the internal contradictions sharpen, leading to intensification of other conflicts.

Bradman Weerakoon, International Affairs Advisor, of yesteryear says it will indeed be a tedious task for SAARC to be a success story as the grouping started off with a lot of disabilities. In the present context those two countries almost on a war footing with each other, may overshadow the entire purpose and process of SAARC. It is believed that the issue of the recent nuclear testing carried out by India and Pakistan may cast a cloud over and above the other issues, at the July 29-31 summit.

Within this group, Mr. Weerakoon says, India may get the support of Bhutan and Nepal, while Pakistan may get some support from Bangladesh. What happens in these situations is that these countries get caught in their loyalties and getting tied up to one side or the other. All this is detrimental to regional co-operation, he says.

For example Bhutan, at the 1991 summit almost acted as a surrogate, when there was tension between India and Sri Lanka. Over the last fifty years the Kashmir issue has played a major role in contributing to tension between India and Pakistan. The other problem is the matter of asymmetry. India is so big in every way compared to the other SAARC nations that it is a very lop sided project to start with. There is a feeling that India is trying to hog the show as it were and throw its weight around. On the reverse side of this coin is that India feels the small countries are ganging up together and will out-vote India in trying to reach consensus. These different perceptions could have been an obstruction to reaching consensus on issues concerning SAARC.

Mr. Weerakoon observes that consensus itself might stand in the way, rather than reaching for a majority opinion. The best that SAARC could perhaps do at this stage Mr. Weerakoon maintains is to move forward slowly but steadily with some vision and purpose at the end.

SAARC countries are today diverting considerable portions of their public expenditure to military, security and other similar areas.

The report of the Independent South Asian Commission on Poverty Alleviation reinforced the conclusion that the magnitude and complexity of this multifaceted crisis is staggering. The region's problems are becoming unmanageable, not only putting democracy at risk, but also posing a threat to the fabric of South Asian societies and South Asia's civilizational rhythm.

This report too got lost on the way because there appear to be too many suggestions and little implementation is then achieved. It is important at this stage for SAARC to understand the pace it can work at rather than take on issues which will merely seem later like banging ones head against a brick wall.

Susil Sirivardana, associate co-ordinator for South Asian Perspectives Network Association (SAPNA) says the Dhaka summit in April 1993 reached a consensus to eradicate the worst forms of poverty in South Asia by the year 2002. The seven heads accepted the recommendations of the Poverty Commission to prepare a separate pro-poor plan as a part of the development plan. Relative to that, implementing the precise framework by the Heads of State has been very "wishy washy," Mr. Sirivardana says.

What was meant by the pro-poor plan was that every government ministry should reflect in its budget what part of its funds would be needed specifically for the eradication of poverty. That is the kind of exercise the Poverty Commission had in mind. Mr. Sirivardana claims that apart from Bangladesh, Pakistan and to a certain extent India, no other country has adopted this policy.

Mr. Sirivardana says the lack of achievement is due to a critical mass missing at leadership level. "Bureaucracy has played a double role. There has been a serious shortage of core trainers in social mobilization, and no effective local government system exists in the rural areas," he says.

The final judgment is that these governments have not moved anywhere to the extent they should have moved in relation to the whole vision of the consensus reached by the Heads of State at the Dhaka summit. The other bench mark is the demands and aspirations of the poor. The poor does not wait. For five years SAARC has been "waffling, groping, and fumbling," on poverty alleviation, Mr. Sirivardana says.

Poverty was identified as a core area at the Colombo SAARC summit of 1991. Mr. Sirivardana says that out of the five core areas identified at this summit only trade and poverty made some progress. The South Asian Development Fund, Food Security Program and a Payments Union have remained stagnant.

According to the report of the Independent South Asian Commission on Poverty Alleviation, Sri Lanka recognized food as an essential entry point to poverty alleviation as far back as 1942 when the food subsidy scheme was introduced to cover the whole country. This scheme gave way to the food stamp scheme in 1979 under which only households whose declared incomes were less than a specified level received food stamps. Restrictions of food stamps to low income groups have resulted in increasing the proportion of benefits accruing to the poor.

This, in conjunction with the Government's other social development schemes, especially in health and education, according to the Poverty Commission report, has helped raise the Physical Quality of Life and the Human Development Index in Sri Lanka to a level comparable to those of middle income countries. In spite of this assessment, the level of poverty in the SAARC region is estimated at 35% to 40%.

SAARC seems to have failed and has been left at a bureaucratic level. There is no two way dialogue, no picking up of good work being done on the ground, while issues of commonality have been ignored. The weakness of SAARC appears to be at state level and it remains to be seen if after a decade of meeting together, South Asian leaders even at this stage will be able to reach common ground. The time bomb of poverty is ticking as the poor cry out for succour.

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