Abstract
The seventeenth South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit was held in November 2011 in the Maldives. As of mid-2013, it looks as though the eighteenth will be held in November 2014 in Kathmandu but, given the way SAARC has been going, that is not too sure (but eventually, it will be held). The SAARC Charter specifies that these should be held once a year or more often, but the three year delay did not set the alarm bells ringing, as a much shorter delay did in the late 1980s, which led to gloom-laden predictions about the early demise of the regional association. So, as the months passed after the 2011 summit, as the region meandered through desultory discussions about a possible foreign ministers’ meeting to prepare for the next one and as the Maldivian’s (as Chair) efforts, sedulously sustained, to go around the regional capitals trying to get agreed dates for that preparatory meeting produced no results, despite the fact that the foreign ministers are to meet twice a year according to the Charter (they finally met in February 2014), there seemed to be a sort of taken-for-granted acceptance that that, probably, was the natural speed at which regional cooperation could go forward in South Asia, for the time being at any rate.
This was not always the case as the first four summits were held right on schedule, but after that initial spurt of enthusiasm, there has been an average gap of two years. Summits were postponed for a variety of reasons: sometimes bilateral tensions, for example, between India and Sri Lanka in 1989, before the fifth summit, when the former did not withdraw its troops from the latter as demanded by them and the latter, in consequence, refused to play host and it was moved to the Maldives; then in 1999, before the eleventh summit, after the Pakistani attacks on India that year as well as the coup d’etat that brought General Musharraf to power. The Indian leaders did not want to share a regional platform with a ‘non-democratic’ leader. So, it was India–Pakistan tension that was slowing down regional cooperation. But in fact, the eleventh summit at Kathmandu, January 2002, took place during a period of greatly heightened tension between India and Pakistan, given the terrorist attacks on India just weeks before that summit, in October and again December, 2001, with the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad having organised the attacks, with India relocating half a million troops along the Pakistan border in response; even so, both leaders attended and even shook hands, seeming to augur an era of improved relations (though the tension resumed immediately thereafter). So, it was not really true that India–Pakistan problems and tensions stood in the way of SAARC’s progress. And, in fact, sometimes there were other reasons for which summits were postponed: Bhutan faced domestic problems in 1991, before the sixth summit, so the King did not want to attend and suggestions that he be replaced by a lower level representative were not acceptable; then before the thirteenth summit, to be held in Dhaka in January 2005, there was the Tsunami and it had to be postponed to November. These are just a few examples from a longer list. The point to note is that, nevertheless, each time, the summits were held and SAARC continued on its way. So, despite the occasional and sometimes even widespread comment that SAARC had come to an end, what is remarkable actually is the desire of all eight leaders to continue meeting, to keep the regional association going.
It is thus reasonable to predict that SAARC will continue to nudge itself forward at varying speeds in future years and this is in line with what happens to regional cooperation associations around the world. They have a remarkably low mortality rate. The Arab Maghreb Union (AMU) is one that nearly died; it has not had a summit or other high-level meeting since 1994, though the AMU Treaty of 1989 requires one summit every six months; then in 2012, the foreign ministers met, so it is not yet dead and resuscitation efforts by the Europeans, which are ongoing, may even breathe new life into it. This happened, to give another example, with the East African Community, founded in 1967, which collapsed in 1977, revived in 1993 and was thereafter reactivated in 1999. Similarly, the Central American Organization was created in 1951; in 1969, it entered a 22-year period of suspended animation; but then after 1991, in a morphed physiognomy, it re-emerged as the Central American Integration System.
Coming back to South Asia, there has, over the years, been a great deal of comment and conjecture about what are the forces that keep the regional cooperation process going or, more often, those that keep it from going. By and large, this begins by comparing what South Asia has been able to achieve in terms of regional cooperation with other regions, chiefly Europe and Southeast Asia. In general, of course, the media have been attracted to the bilateral meetings that are an accompaniment for the summits, in particular those between the Indian and Pakistani heads of government, and occasionally those of India and Sri Lanka, and which may lead to understandings at times of tension. So, leaders like to get together and that could be one of the former kinds of forces. However, in consequence, regional issues get backstaged, with little or no media coverage at all for regional matters. There is a broad agreement among academics, the media and others that SAARC summits tend to become nothing but India–Pakistan (or India–Sri Lanka) summits, and that this adds value to the SAARC process. References are made to the summit in the Maldives in 1997 where India and Pakistan came to agreements on how to go about solving bilateral issues or the Colombo summit in 1998 which saw the first meeting between the Indian and Pakistani leaders after their nuclear tests earlier that year.
One piece of sophistry that is commonly brought out is that India’s hegemonic ambitions or policies obstruct regional cooperation; that India is focused on global matters and has no time for the region; or that there is hardly any intra-regional trade because manufacturing and industry are so advanced in India that free trade would crush the miniscule efforts of the smaller neighbours, so India will gain the most. However, the logical consequence of this latter would be great enthusiasm by India for SAARC, which has never been the case. There is a long list of other arguments about this, such as, politics and democracy, economics and trade, culture and nationalism, all of which are brought out from time to time by interested parties, and all of which are equally unconvincing.
It is to be noted in this regard that whether a SAARC summit provides the occasion or not, where governments are to agree, there is no dearth of channels to find the means do so, and the heightened media interest generated by a SAARC summit usually leads to playing to the gallery and even to the possibility of setbacks on bilateral matters. Leaders commit the same fallacy, mixing up the cause and effect sequence between the bilateral and the regional, believing that poor bilateral relations hinder progress in SAARC and, conversely, that improved bilateral relations can lead to greater progress in SAARC. The reality could be that successful regional cooperation may perhaps help reduce bilateral tensions, while the reverse is not true and may even have retrogressive effect. No better evidence for this is needed than the fact that SAARC has continued to grow and expand its activities, although not one of the major bilateral problems in the region, certainly none of those between India and Pakistan, is anywhere nearer solution.
One can, in any case, be reasonably sure that SAARC will amble along, achieving a little from time to time, having meetings at different levels, but it will not collapse.
The lead article of this issue of South Asian Survey is by Melissa Kerr Chiovenda who, in a specific take on a situation that is agitating academics, diplomats and the media around the world, writes about the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), contrasting the work of this association with that of the Feminist Majority Foundation (FMF), both dedicated to drawing world attention to the abuses against women during the Taliban regime and the need to fully restore their rights. However, the first was based in Afghanistan, while the second was based in the USA. For some years after the late 1990s, the two worked in harmony; then early in the new century, there was disagreement and disjuncture. In particular, RAWA criticised US and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) action in Afghanistan, while FMF supported this action. Their campaigns are carried out in mediascapes, using Arjun Appadurai’s theory of imaginary landscapes, that are uneven and ideoscapes that are disjunctured. The question is whether RAWA should be censured for maintaining its ideals and thereby contributing to this disjuncture.
Madhumita Das next covers the Naga national movement’s territorial aspirations in the context of neighbouring states’ Naga populations and the Government of India’s minimum requirements. The Naga national consciousness is not old, having originated in the years between the two world wars. From early on, once that consciousness originated, there was a demand for the integration of all Naga-inhabited territories into Nagaland. In the case of Manipur, this would have the most severe implications, but there are also claims on Assamese territory, as there are on Arunachal Pradesh. However, there is also discord among the Nagas themselves, making reconciliation among them a vital need. It is now for the Indian state and the Naga national movement to explore forms of substantial non-territorial autonomy as a solution to the problem.
Based on a study of 245 households in Kolkata’s slums, Saswati Chaudhuri profiles Kolkata’s poor within the Sustainable Livelihood Framework, which highlights the concept of vulnerability to understand the condition of the poor. This shows that the poor are earning income as a coping strategy to adapt to the high costs of living in an urban environment and not as a consumption modifying strategy. These poor are not only vulnerable, moving from job to job, almost all illiterate, but have limited access to water, housing, sanitation and health facilities. The verdict here is that there is a need for specific intervention by the authorities, else poverty levels would continue to rise.
Pratip Chattopadhyay next finds that changes in geopolitics as theory are due to globalisation, increasing economic interdependence and the information revolution, though the relevance of terrorism and claims to sovereignty remain as pressing as ever. In this context, South Asia occupies a compact geographic space; it has a history of being interconnected and is Indo-centric or India dominated, this being a major source of dissonance. India will in any case play a key role in the integration of the Indian Ocean region in cooperation with the US. By the 1990s, India’s neighbourhood policy had changed to showing greater generosity and to working with the great powers, through the ‘Gujral doctrine’, through promoting regional cooperation in SAARC as well as other regional groupings like the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) as well as by developing better relations with other regional groups. This was a change from the hard power politics of 1971–90. It remains to be seen if Indian leaders can take the leadership of the region.
Tackling the advantages of sub-regional cooperation, Gurudas Das, Ujjwal K. Paul and Tanuj Mathur find that Bangladesh–China–India–Myanmar (BCIM) looks beyond the national economy for developing the periphery. Sub-regional cooperation has worked elsewhere, promoting rapid trade growth, integrating economies for prosperity. In BCIM, Bangladesh will be able to use its geo-economic advantage fully; China will promote its political–economic interests, get access to India’s markets and resources; India’s border regions will integrate with the other three countries through greater connectivity and multimodal transportation and Myanmar’s socio-economic structure will be reformed in all aspects—agriculture, energy exploitation, transport infrastructure and investment climate. Furthermore, BCIM would showcase the economic advantages of India’s Northeast, be an effective instrument for its development and might even, thereby, facilitate the resolution of conflicting territorial interests there.
Akram A. Khan, Md. Abdus Salam and Mohd. Farhan assess the future of genetically modified (GM) crops in India, given particularly India’s urgent need to grow more food and the fact that the total acreage of land cannot be increased. GM crops are the answer; they use few insecticides and herbicides (hence contribute to the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions); conserve biodiversity, being land saving and are safe, as established by repeated bio-safety tests. Bt cotton is a good example and a success story. But the introduction of GM food crops has faced resistance despite the principle of substantial equivalence having been established, and Bt brinjal is the best example. Such resistance is motivated. Biotech crops need to be adopted on a much larger scale to solve India’s growing food problems.
On the basis of an intensive study of one village in Andhra Pradesh, Eswarappa Kasi describes how sericulture leads to inclusive development. After a general description of sericulture in India after the Green Revolution, in which Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh have taken the lead, the author recounts, in the selected village, the caste structure, the role of women, the kind of inputs needed and also government intervention in support of the sericulture industry. At the end, three case studies of sericulturalists go into greater detail. These sericulturalists have not only raised their own standard of living but the benefits have also cascaded over the entire village. The conclusion is that the state support will continue to be necessary for the continued progress of the industry.
In the next piece, Maheshvari Naidu describes continuity and change in the performance of Hindu ritual by those settled outside India, or, as she puts it, how the Vedic sacrificial ritual or yajna was, in the hands of the Hindus of South Africa, perpetuated in unbroken tradition as well as reshaped through globalising and transnational processes. One example is the invoking of a monotheistic Godhead instead of the many deities that would have been part of the original ritual; another is that all who attend can benefit from the ritual, rather than only its sponsors, as would have been the case originally. These subtle modifications reflect the concerns of a common religious identity within a diasporic context.
Ayesha Farooq and Ashraf Kayani assess the way traditional attitudes to birth, marriage and death have been changing (or not) over a 50-year period, 1960s through 2008, in the village of Mohla, Punjab in Pakistan. This is based on a trend analysis of material exchanges linked to these three events. The result showed that whereas material exchanges linked to marriage changed little, those on the birth of a child and on death have declined in value, but celebrations on the birth of a girl child have increased. Economic factors as well as education seem to explain these changes.
Finally, the editorial assistance provided by Ananya Sharma in this issue is gratefully acknowledged.