SAARC’s Revival Dilemma: Bangladesh, Maldives Push For Restart, India Holds Back

New Delhi: The renewed calls by Bangladesh and the Maldives for the revival of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) have brought the dormant regional grouping back into focus, but a revival remains a distant prospect.

SAARC is an economic and political group of eight South Asian countries including Pakistan.

“We have made our position very clear when it comes to regional cooperation,” External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said in response to a question during a regular media briefing here on Tuesday.

“India favours strong regional cooperation and has been working towards it for several decades now.”
Without specifically mentioning Pakistan, Jaiswal added: “Everyone in South Asia is aware of which country and what activities are stymying SAARC. After all, cooperation does require goodwill.”

However, SAARC has been virtually rendered ineffective as a bloc, largely due to non-cooperation on the part of Pakistan on issues like connectivity and counter-terrorism.

After the cross-border terror attack from Pakistani soil on an army base at Uri in Jammu and Kashmir in September 2016, that year’s SAARC Summit scheduled to be held in Islamabad stood cancelled after other members of the group joined India in boycotting it. Since then, no SAARC summit has been held to date.

But recently both Maldives and Bangladesh have separately made a case for reviving the grouping.

Addressing the 61st Independence Day ceremony of his country on Sunday, Maldives President Mohamed Muizzu described SAARC as an important regional organisation and said reviving it was essential for peace and stability in the region.

“The Maldives calls on all parties with differing views to come together around the table, prioritise regional development and peace, and work in a spirit of cooperation,” Muizzu was quoted as saying.

“If there are difficulties in doing so, the Maldives stands ready to take the initiative and serve as a mediator to help advance those discussions.”

For Male, therefore, SAARC revival serves two purposes: it reinforces the Maldives’ role in South Asian diplomacy and provides smaller countries a collective platform for dealing with challenges where their individual bargaining power is limited.

The Maldives faces vulnerabilities related to climate change, rising sea levels, food and energy security, maritime security and economic dependence on tourism. Regional cooperation can potentially help address these concerns.

The Maldives also has a strong interest in maintaining a South Asian diplomatic identity.

Although Male has increasingly expanded its engagement with the Arab world and other external partners, SAARC could be an important institutional platform for the country.

SAARC was formally established on December 8, 1985, with the signing of the SAARC Charter in Dhaka, Bangladesh and the secretariat-general of SAARC was set up in Kathmandu.

In 2007, Afghanistan became the eighth member of the organisation, further expanding its reach across South Asia. As of 2021, SAARC collectively represents 3 per cent of the world’s land area, 21 per cent of the global population, and contributes 5.21 per cent (equivalent to $4.47 trillion) to the global economy.

A crucial part of SAARC’s agenda is the South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA), which was signed in 2004 and came into effect in 2006. This agreement aimed to reduce tariffs and create a free trade zone across South Asia. SAARC also focuses on other areas such as poverty alleviation, food security, and trade facilitation.

But SAFTA failed to help boost regional trade amid mistrust between India and Pakistan.

Overall, the areas of cooperation among SAARC member countries are economic, trade and finance; human resource development and tourism; agriculture and rural development; environment, natural disasters and biotechnology; social affairs; information and poverty alleviation; energy, transport, science and technology; and education, security and culture.

In February this year, Bangladesh Foreign Minister Khalilur Rahman reaffirmed his country’s unwavering support and commitment to revitalise the SAARC process. During a call on him by the Secretary General of SAARC, Md Golam Sarwar, the Minister expressed Bangladesh’s readiness to take proactive initiatives to strengthen and revitalise the SAARC process.

Then again, earlier this month, during a meeting between the national security chiefs of the BIMSTEC regional bloc held in New Delhi, Bangladesh had called for the revival of SAARC.

“It would equally be worthy to draw on the complementarities and good work advanced through other regional cooperation frameworks in our shared geography, namely SAARC,” Brig Gen AKM Shamsul Islam (Retd.), Defence Adviser to Bangladesh Prime Minister Tarique Rahman, said in his national statement at the meeting.

“Most of the countries in this room are witnesses to the norms, institutions and practical mechanisms developed within SAARC over the past four decades, which have led to considerable convergence of ideas and initiatives.”

For the new government in Dhaka, there are several reasons why SAARC has renewed relevance.

The region remains one of the world’s least integrated economic regions despite its geographical contiguity and enormous population.

Intra-regional trade remains far below its potential, while barriers to transport, investment and movement of goods and people continue to restrict economic integration. A functioning SAARC could provide an umbrella for tackling these problems precisely.

The current government in Bangladesh appears keen to pursue a more diversified foreign policy, maintaining ties with India while also engaging Pakistan, China and other regional actors. A revived SAARC would provide Bangladesh with an institutional setting in which it could pursue this broader diplomatic approach without having to choose between competing regional alignments.

“Under the current regime, Bangladesh-Pakistan relations have improved a lot, not only on the economy, but also in people-to-people ties and security,” Prabir De, a professor at the New Delhi-based Research and Information System for Developing Nations (RIS) think tank, told ETV Bharat.

“So that is why they are thinking that, you know, if we can have greater cooperation within SAARC, that might help Bangladesh, you know, in terms of their export, in terms of their people-to-people contacts on a regional basis.”

According to De, the Maldives’ interest in the revival of SAARC is that its exports might pick up.

“In terms of tourism, in terms of other cooperation, the Maldives sees opportunities in the revival of SAARC,” he said. “The country is also very vulnerable to natural disasters.”

With SAARC being defunct over the years, India has been giving more importance to the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) in terms of regional cooperation.

The BIMSTEC, which came into existence in 1997, comprises seven countries lying in the littoral and adjacent areas of the Bay of Bengal - Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand.

The bloc brings together 1.73 billion people and has a combined GDP of $5.2 trillion as of 2023.

Bangladesh is an important member of BIMSTEC and has increasingly supported connectivity and economic cooperation around the Bay of Bengal.

But BIMSTEC does not include Pakistan or Afghanistan and therefore cannot substitute for SAARC as an organisation representing the whole of South Asia.

Bangladesh’s position appears to be that the two groupings should complement rather than replace each other.

The fundamental obstacle, however, for the revival of SAARC is that the bloc was designed in a way that makes consensus among its members essential. SAARC’s inability to function effectively is largely a consequence of the deterioration in India-Pakistan relations.

India is not simply one of eight members of SAARC. It is the largest member by population, territory and economic size, and is geographically central to the region.

Almost every major regional connectivity project involving South Asia either passes through Indian territory or depends on India’s cooperation. India also has the largest economic capacity to drive regional initiatives.

Consequently, a SAARC summit without India would have little legitimacy and limited practical significance. As such, the most likely outcome in the near term is continued institutional limbo.

“If there is no India, there can be no summit,” De said. “The bloc’s decisions are consensus-based.”

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