"SAARC a Hostage to Bilateral Indo-Pak Relations"

Unless there is substantive movement on Indo-Pak relations - which was worsened following recent domestic developments in both countries - there is no hope for SAARC to function as a substantive regional grouping. Srinivasan Ramani of the Economic and Political Weekly says so to Newsclick.

Rishab Baily (RB) - Hello and welcome to NewsClick. The 18th SAARC Summit concluded this week in Nepal with various commentators claiming the outcome from the meeting was far less than expected. The primary breakthroughs of the meeting consisted of 3 connectivity agreements on road, rail and energy. Though only the last of these has still been actually signed. To discuss the takeaways today from the SAARC Summit, we are joined by Srinivasan Ramani from the Economic and Political Weekly. Thanks for joining us Srini. Now rather a blunt question Srini to begin with, SAARC doesn't appear to have actually fulfilled its mandate in anyway. Regional security and cooperation is low, regional trade is abysmal and there's a lack of any sort of political consensus and its activities have often been called sluggish or very often it's considered slow. Why is this the case and is SAARC an experiment actually worth persisting with?

Srinivasan Ramani (SR) - Important point is that, you know, you can't have regional cooperation unless there's some degree of bilateral intent. For example, you have India and Pakistan as part of the SAARC grouping but they have still major outstanding bilateral issues to be negotiated. Of course, India has better relations with other neighbours, with Sri Lanka, with Nepal, etc. But there is a sense that unless you have a series of good bilateral relations, India and Pakistan, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, India and Sri Lanka, India and Nepal, and so on, only then you'll have real regional cooperation. So what is happening is that every time there is a movement towards regional cooperation, problems in bilateral relations actually hold ups and that is not helping in having true regional cooperation in the South Asian Region. That apart, you know, SAARC as a regional body, it should actually consider what this region is all about. After all, this region holds possibly the largest concentration of the poor but for Africa.

So the challenges facing the SAARC countries are unique, they are to do with poverty, they are to do with the fact that most of these are tropical countries and could be affected by climate change far more than other developing countries. There are various least developed, so the challenges are immense and unique. Unfortunately, SAARC countries are not in a position to address these questions from their own perspective, what they are trying to do is mimic other groupings elsewhere and trying to build castles in the air in terms of saying you'll do this and you'll do that but not having any mechanism in terms of pan governmental mechanism, in terms of having various heads of states sitting together and you know, really thrashing out how to address these socio-economic issues, that they've never done. So, I think, having these summits once in a while and then, you know, retrading anodyne statements, that is not going to achieve much.

RB- Which actually takes me on to my next question, which is that the declaration, as you said, is just rife with anodyne sort of declarations, which you can't really object to, but you know are never actually going to be seen on the ground. So, what purpose is this particular meeting solved, I mean, what are the key takeaways from this meeting in Kathmandu?

SR- You know, there is this understanding in liberal international theory that if you keep on talking about something new, ultimately something will be done. Also, that if you have too many hassles on a particular issue, let’s say, India and Pakistan don't agree on Kashmir, but if India and Pakistan keep on talking about other issues other than Kashmir, there might be some kind of revival in relationship so these kinds of meetings and summits do serve a purpose in that sense because it ultimately brings people on board, breaks the ice in some sense and so on but having said that nothing substantive is achieved if only summits are done for the sake of having summits.

RB- It's a little expensive to keep doing!

SR- True, true. But, at the same time, from the declaration one or two things can be, you know, you yourself pointed out that agreement on connectivity, for example, so there is much stock of having roads and rail networks connectivity but again, there are unresolved issues viz a viz borders, so you know, these kind of bilateral problems, only if they are solved, only then you can think of about having regional road connectivity like what we have in the European Union, for example.

RB- So you'd actually say that then there are very few takeaways from this meeting, would you agree with that?

SR- I would say so, because you can never look at declaration of intent and be happy with it. You have to have to look into it substantively what is being done.

RB- Now a lot is made of the fact that China wants to have a greater role in SAARC, I mean, Pakistan has, I think, also been actively pushing for a greater role for China in this region. Why is this and from the India perspective, what are the pros and cons of having greater engagement with China whether it's through a SAARC mechanism or otherwise particularly given India's context.

SR- Connecting the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation with SAARC, you know, that doesn't sound well, I mean, that doesn't gel well because the SAARC is basically a group of countries that have a very shared history. You know most of these countries actually came out of British colonial rule, and I think Pakistan, India and Bangladesh were anyway part of one geo-political unit, one nation state. Sri Lanka was also, you know, product of British colonial rule, Nepal was independent, technically independent, but there too, the Britishers played quite a powerful role in Nepal. China is not necessarily a South Asian country per say, you could technically call it a North Asian country. The reason why Pakistan is asking for China's inclusion is that they realise that there is an asymmetric relation that the India has viz a viz SAARC. India is the largest country viz a viz SAARC, so, its India dominated grouping so elite in Pakistan feel that any grouping with such a predominant role for India is not in their interest and that's why they want to include China within it. It is not necessarily the reason or rationale offered for the China's inclusion into SAARC. It's not necessarily benign.

RB- Would you put it as a lose-lose situation for India?

SR- I won't say it's a lose-lose situation. I would argue that let's not put the cart before the horse. I would say, first India has to normalise its political relationship with China, so I would say perhaps if India and China have solved the border issues, India and China do not have a hostile geo-political relationship, then may be getting them into a regional grouping would make sense. The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is a different animal altogether. That's a global grouping which actually tries to protect central Asia and north Asia from American influence. The Russians and Chinese have come to some kind of geo-political understanding that they would like to balance US power and prevent American interference or intelligence in that region. So, India being a part of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation serves different purpose. It serves a Pan Asian grouping against an influence of an external power.

RB- Do you see China making India's inclusion in the latter group conditional?

SR- I don't think that Chinese have particularly, I mean, I'm not sure that Chinese are really asking for joining the SAARC as well. China in any case has enhanced its bilateral relations with various south Asian countries, it has very good relations with Sri Lanka, for example, in Pakistan it has a strategic relation.

RB- So in that sense, do you think that this issue is just bogey been raised by countries like Pakistan?

SR- Absolutely, that's the point I have been trying to say. I mean it is just a bogey been raised by countries like Pakistan, say that you are worried about India's big brother status in the SAARC grouping and you want to balance it out by China's inclusion.

RB- Sure.

SR- It only adds a bit more of wrinkle to already complicated geo-political situation.

RB- So going back to something we talked about earlier, the problem in bilateral relations between India and Pakistan and how this is generally kept held SAARC hostage or the SAARC agenda hostage. Do you actually see any signs with thaw in the Indo-Pakistan relationship, I mean, the summit started off with Modi and Sharif barely able to sort of looking at each other and ended this with a warm handshake and so on. But at the end of the day, again, Pakistan has essentially held up the signing up of a couple of agreements claiming, that they don't have internal approvals for these. So, what do you make of all of this, particularly, in the context of Modi's attempts to engage with our neighbours over the last 6 months, he invited all of them for his swearing in ceremony, he has done visits to a lot of these countries.

SR- Again, we have to, you know, separate the wheat from the chaff. The chaff is all about inviting people and making these anodyne statements and saying, you know, “all the feel good” stuff.

SR- looking substantive thing is what is really happening at the domestic level. As we have also pointed out, there are constituencies in Pakistan which are deeply against any kind of thaw in relations between India and Pakistan. I'm talking about the security establishment which who's own rationale or the reason for its being, is Pakistan's hostility viz. a viz. India. The importance of the security sector in Pakistan is basically driven by the fact that they act as some kind of a guarantee against hostile India. So, when you say that, you know, India and Pakistan, the relations will get better, one of the actor which will be weakened by that would be secret establishments in Pakistan and therefore, congenitally, opposed to any kind of a thaw in Indo-Pakistan relations in that sense. And that is why they have always been trying to undermine the democratic establishment, which is the government which would, on the other hand, want a better relation with India for various reasons, because of, for trade and economic reasons and so on, security establishments forever opposed to that kind of engagement between India and Pakistan.

RB- Is that only a one way thing?

SR- No, it's not only a one way thing, I was coming to that point. And, in India also, you have a right wing which before coming to power was being very jingoistic about the way India was dealing with Pakistan. During that point of time, the right wing opposition here was being very jingoistic making noises that India should use hard action against the Pakistan and so on. Now, they have realised that, you know, the constraints once they come to power, then they can't use the same kind of hostile language while in power, but at the same time they too are congenitally opposed to, you know, having a thaw between India and Pakistan in some sense. So, substantively speaking, you have a Hindutva-vaadi Prime Minister in India and you have the resurgence of the security establishment in Pakistan after the recent protests lead by Imran Khan and others, which have weakened the democratic establishment. So, therefore, in such a situation where there are two domestic groupings which have, you know, traditionally not been doves but hawks viz a viz Indio-Pakistan policy, you naturally see that relationships don't get mended so soon.

RB- Well, I think, that's all the time we have today. Thank you so much Srini for joining us and thank you for watching.