A SAARC alternative?

With SAARC inactive, Pakistan urges a new South Asian bloc free of power struggles and dead ends

The eight-member SAARC, now dysfunctional for more than a decade, needs a new lease of life. It cannot be resurrected in its present edifice as it has its genesis in the hegemonic ambitions of a member state that had led to its demise by all means. A similar South Asian regional bloc can be created by inviting member states that believe in equality in interstate relations and do not wish to dominate by virtue of economic and military strength.

Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar was quite apt as he said that South Asia could no longer afford to remain trapped in "zero-sum mindsets", political fragmentation, and a wayward regional architecture.

Dar minced no words in saying that Pakistan supports any initiative that is "open and inclusive", and a forum where multilateral elements could come to interact in a synchronised manner to further geo-economics. Addressing the 5th Conclave hosted by a think-tank, the foreign minister exhibited largesse as he said "India could also be invited" in the new protocol, but the new platform should not be held hostage to "anyone's" rigidity.

SAARC has been defunct since 2016 when India boycotted the summit in Islamabad, as Bangladesh under Sheikh Hasina also followed suit. The bloc was generous enough to embrace Afghanistan as it had a vision of trans-regional integration for the collective good of all member states. That dream, however, could not materialise as bilateral tensions between India and Pakistan came to camouflage it, and subdued all grandeur initiatives of regionalism.

As China, Bangladesh, and Pakistan have recently formed a troika of networking, it provides substance for reincarnating a SAARC-type bloc. All that is desired is a unanimous code of agreement to let it be intra-governmental and not supra-regional by any member state. It's high time for India to realise that it is failing regionalism and is not fulfilling its role as a responsible member state.