International Affairs of South Asia

 SAARC AFFAIRS:

1. New flash  page have contain the knowledge of saarc affirs in the South Asia. Afghanistan will be welcome in Delhi as the eighth member of Saarc when the 14th summit is held here in April. China is keen to become an observer member of the group and the United States has already been accepted. So what else has changed for the group which turned 21 on December 7, 2006? Suppose Prime Minister Manmohan Singh were to test the truth of this query and he deliberately read out the declaration of the first Dhaka summit instead of a fresh one drafted for the Delhi meet, would many people notice the absurdness?
2. Whatever be the state of the nearly imperceptible changes within the Saarc dynamic, we cannot ignore the fact that the dramatis personae have changed, and so dramatically too. Gen Hossain Mohammed Ershad was the host of the first Saarc summit in Dhaka in 1985. Among the guests were Rajiv Gandhi and Gen Zia-ul-Haq. The kings of Nepal and Bhutan were present. Messrs Junius Jayewardene and Maumoon Abdul Gayoom brought up the southern flank of the South Asian cluster representing their island nations, both strategically ensconced along the arterial routes of the Indian Ocean.
3. If there was political instability in South Asia in 1985 there was palpable instability in 2006 too. The instability in 1985 was rooted in the Cold War. Today it stems from the so-called war on terrorism. The original recipe for this latter war was the copyright of President Bush. South Asian countries dole out its reheated version to their citizens, making it difficult to say which is worse. It is curious at any rate that Afghanistan, which was and still is at the heart both the rain sources of south Asia's instability the Cold War and the War on terrorism member. So much for progress Let's look back a little.
4. In India, Rajiv Gandhi took power a rebels who had their bases in the Western hemisphere. More rebellions have mushroomed in India since then, and not waned. Relatively speaking, the country bears a semblance' of stability, but a stability predicated on increasingly coercive methods of the state, not transparent, accountable democracy. Not surprising then that Prime Minister Singh s stated priority in 2006 Not Was to deal firmly with terrorism and naxalism, a name given to assort. Maoist groups comprising the extremely' poor that straddle the country. The full weight of Dr. Singh's resolve will be felt in the future. Ershad on his part had usurped power from Gen Zia-ur-Rehman, husband of the current Bangladesh prime ministers, after a bloody coup. Rehman himself had grabbed power after slaughtering virtually the entire family of Mujib-ur-Rehman, Bangladesh's first elected leader. Leftwing liberals though depleted were still around in 1985. Today they have given way to rightist Muslim groups in Bangladesh, so much so that Mujib's daughter, considered a secularist, is planning to align with the mullahs she had once considered reactionary.
5. The story of Pakistan's transition from one military coup to the next is best captured by the presence at the helms of Gem Pervez Musharraf at the last two Saarc summits, although he is sworn to check the forces of religious terrorism that were unleashed by Gen Zia. Of the other guests in Dhaka, Junius Jayewardene had assumed dictatorial powers after shutting out chief opponent Sirimavo Bandaranaike from the electoral fray. Sri Lanka 'a democracy continues to function under a tenuous pact with its people and the press, which both function increasingly grudgingly under the watch of the military prerogatives have been the ruse to shut out dissent in Colombo. The war north against Tamil rebels in the northis used widely to stifle the press. Gayoom’s questionable definition of democracy has enabled him to become Asia's longest serving President. His situation hasn’t changed much since 1985 and there have been reports of closer defense ties between the Maldives and India, the country that once saved his job by dispatching a naval patrol to thwart a rebellion.
6. By comparison the two kings who came to Dhaka in 1985 appeared to be more stable at that time than their avowedly more Parliament-bound neighbours.The year 2006 saw all that changing dramatically, decidedly for the better in the case of Nepal and hopefully for the better for Bhutan too. The King of Nepal was killed in a mysterious palace massacre and his successor was overthrown by a popular upheaval. The king of Bhutan however abdicated in favor of his son recently, perhaps to pursue his remarkable philosophy whereby nation states are deemed better off if they count their Gross National Happiness as opposed to GNP or GDP format. From this perspective there is still some hope from this landlocked neighbor of China and India.
7. Perhaps the most under-stated change that shook South Asia in 2006 does not even figure in the Saarc resolutions. It was the emergence of Nepal's maligned Maoists as inveterate democrats. The experiment will no doubt reverberate through the region. And Maoist leader Prachanda's unstated dictum — that democracy actually flows from the barrel of the gun — would continue to worry the region's leaders, especially India.
8.  In 1985, the Dhaka Declaration had expressed deep concern at the continuing crises in the global economy. The leaders had r "underscored that deteriorating economic and social conditions had seriously retarded developing countries." In 1985, the worry was the sharply falling commodity prices, deterioration in the terms of trade Intensification of protectionist measures, spiralling debt burden and a decline in the flow of external resources, especially concessional assistance, had caused a serious setback to the economic development of the developing countries.
9.  Further, the leaders "acknowledged that the countries of South Asia, who constituted one-fifth of humanity, were faced with the formidable challenges posed by poverty, underdevelopment,    low levels of production, unemployment and pressure of population compounded by exploitation of the past and other adverse legacies."
10. The leaders were conscious of their individual and regional strengths, their potential as a huge market, their substantial human and natural resources and the complementarities of their economies. They were confident that with effective regional cooperation, they  could make optimum use of these capacities for the benefit of their peoples, accelerate the pace of their economic development and enhance their national and collective self-reliance. They were convinced that their countries,which had made important contribution to the enrichment of human civilization, could together play their due role in international relation and influence decisions which affected them.
11. In Dhaka - in 2005, the Saarc summit was seized more or less of the same issues. There was one small change though. A report in a Bangla newspaper while commenting on the Saarc's spurious anti- Poverty measures carried this vignette:
12. "On the eve of the Saarc summit in Dhaka, the Bangladesh Government tried to physically remove all the beggars from Dhaka city streets until November 14. Dhaka city has become off limits to beggars as they may cause embarrassment and security concern in front of the foreign dignitaries. Police force has actively worked to apprehend most beggars whose figures range from 27,000 to 100,000. Their presence in the capital city will definitely undermine the Saarc agenda for poverty alleviation in south Asian countries," the Bangla newspaper observed.
13.  As we celebrate the progress of overarching boundary and Other disputes that dog almost all of Saarc countries, no matter how incremental they are or how prone to subversion, the truer picture of the region in 2006 remained one of grinding poverty, of simmering social volatility and brazen state repression. The transition from Cold War rivalries of 1985 to the collective fight against terrorism continues to ring the death knell for the region's poor and the marginalized. The arrival of Afghanistan on the podium promises to make it only that much more ironical.

    

    Saarc Affairs