The SAARC question

The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) has been dormant for over a decade, almost entirely due to the foreign policy of India. No summit has been held since 2014. The 19th summit, scheduled for Islamabad in 2016, was indefinitely postponed after India boycotted the event. That boycott was ordered by the government of Narendra Modi, who was then barely a year into his first term as prime minister, on the pretext of the Uri Attack about two months before the summit. Since then, India has refused to let Saarc meetings move forward.

This is a disservice to the two billion people that live in Saarc member states, about three-quarters of whom are Indian. A functional Saarc could be a catalyst for closer trade ties and more integration in the region. Unfortunately, over a decade of the Modi premiership has shown that the government prefers disseminating propaganda through the useful idiots in the godi media rather than actually doing the hard work and diplomatic negotiation that is required to make India a regional leader.

India, like the rest of Saarc, is dealing with several problems, and as much as it tries to convince its populace that it is now 'shining', the country has much to do to address poverty and climate change impacts, both of which are difficult to manage without international cooperation. But Modi knows more than historians; otherwise, he would have learned from the success of the EU, or even ASEAN. New Delhi's concern that a strong Saarc could reduce Indian regional hegemony is both self-defeating and historically myopic.

Despite their warring history, Germany, France and other European countries worked together to build the EU. Indonesia, despite its size, chose to help build Asean and push for collective success. India, instead, has chosen to try - and continually fail - to isolate the second-largest country in Saarc. Unsurprisingly, New Delhi's bossy behaviour has led to the failure of other India-led regional organisations such as Bimstec to achieve anything of merit. Reviving Saarc without India is absurd, but reviving it with India is looking increasingly impossible.