There
is an increasing realisation in New Delhi about the cross-benefits available to
the country on social, political, economic and strategic fronts from its
neighbours as they are bound to benefit from healthy bilateral and multilateral
arrangements encompassing the entire South Asian region.
The idea should be making the rest of the
world see the South Asia region in its geo-strategic and politico-economic
entity without individual nations having to compromise on traditional rights of
sovereignty, as understood in the modern times.
Owing to a variety of reasons, both historic
and management-related, India is the dominant force in South Asia. This fact
cannot be ignored, over-looked or upset. Sovereignty rights do exist without
compromise, but there is a greater understanding in all South Asian countries
that it should be used as a tool for greater integration and inter-dependence,
and not as a weapon to out-shout one another in terms of numbers in
organisations such as the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation
(SAARC). Increasingly, SAARC summits that once used to be a periodic pause have
come to acquire a certain degree of cohesion, direction and cooperation among
member-nations.
This scheme needs to be further strengthened,
so as to make South Asia a single economic entity while dealing with the rest
of the world. Sovereignty would not be compromised if member-nations
volunteered to surrender some to the regional forum themselves. Political
controversies of the India-Pakistan kind have ceased to undermine the relevance
and usefulness of SAARC. Such differences have often come in the way of
regional cooperation taking faster strides. Yet, to expect SAARC to take any
political initiative to try and resolve the problems between the ‘Big Two’ in
the South Asian community is fraught with consequences for the regional entity,
which is still fledging despite being around for 25 long years.
Over the years, a view had emerged among
certain strategic thinkers in India that the neighbours stood to benefit more
from a regional union than was the other way round. The real situation was
always not so – and it continues to remain more so even today. India of the
economic reforms era has to begin looking at South Asian neighbours not as a
challenge in the global job market. It is a synergy all nations can build into
a common cause, particularly in the services sector that they excel in. It is
going to take a long, long way, to ensure that bilateral and regional
cooperation of the kind, but time is no more on the side of South Asia, if it
has to benefit from the existing advantages that once used to be seen as
disadvantage.
Time was not long ago when the world used to
growl at the growing population in countries such as China and India, the
underpinning being that the rest of ‘em all were being forced to produce food
and other consumables for populous countries to consume without any check on
their growth rates on this score. Magically over the past decades, both nations
have become attractive markets not only for goods but also for investments.
Controlled population in the developed world has re-engineered their perception
of Third World countries like India and China for out-sourcing not only the
21st century services sector jobs but also their traditional manufacturing
strengths.
Learning
from the West
South Asia has lessons to learn from this new
and changing perception of the West. New Delhi, to begin with, has to
acknowledge that the entire South Asian region is a market for India and Indian
investments in this continuing era of economic instability in the developed
world. It is not unlikely that the ‘New Cold War’ between the West and China
may lead to a situation where a weakened dollar could hit on the former more
than the latter, both in terms of existing concepts and practices. Big-time
Indian investors seeking to serve even the Indian markets may be attracted by
the comparable costs prevailing in the manufacturing sector in some of the
neighbourhood countries. Likewise, South Asian neighbours of India may find
distinct advantages in doing business with and in India, not available to them
elsewhere, particularly in terms of transportation costs, etc.
Economic integration would still require a lot
more to be done, and thought of. The ‘big-nation-small-nation’ mix in the European
Union and the ASEAN have shown the way for South Asia not to mix up sentiments
with the business of planning for the future. For larger nations like India,
and even Pakistan up to a point, to feel comfortable, nations of the region
should unite not to encourage profligacy and also address governance and
procedural issues in a big way. At the same time, they will have to fashion an
economic model that addresses inherent socio-economic disparities that have
political consequences, as is being evidenced at present in countries of the
region after the IMF-dictated economic reforms came into force. This would be a
departure from the IMF model that all of them have got accustomed to but may
have to deviate from.
In sectors like education and engineering, agriculture
and automobile sector, healthcare and rocket science that India has a lot to
offer the neighbourhood. None of these nations can grudge India for what it is.
The sheer size of its landmass, economy and market has together made it an
attractive investment proposition. There is this realisation in all the
neighbourhood countries that they should also seek to benefit from the current
Indian boom and participate in the processes involved. At the same time, there
is also a need for India and Indians to recognise the talent-pool that these
nations have to offer, particularly in the labour sector. Encouraging this pool
in positive ways alone would help India create the markets that it would need
to seek in the immediate neighbourhood, to benefit from the logistical and
transportation advantages that proximity has to offer.
The Indian decision to create a `50,000-crore
fund to help nations in need would go a long way in fostering better relations
in the neighbourhood, if administered as effectively and efficiently as
intended. The taste of the pudding is in the eating, and nations and people in
the neighbourhood and also elsewhere in the world could appreciate the Indian
assistance, only if it is both adequate and timely. In countries like Sri Lanka
and Maldives, and also in the extended South-East Asian neighbourhood, nations
were appreciative of the Indian intervention when tsunami struck in
end-December 2004. In money-value, the Indian decision to rush Navy, Air Force
and medicines to the affected people in these countries was not as substantial
as on many other occasions. But I t was the timeliness of it all that came to
be appreciated, including the fact that New Delhi had rushed help when parts of
India were also similarly affected by tsunami. In tactical terms, it also
proved the preparedness of the Indian armed forces to rush aid to the
neighbourhood without much of a notice.
Ending
‘Cold War’ perceptions
Independent of economic perception is the
evolving regional strategic consideration that South Asia has to learn to live
as a single unit in overall terms if individual nations have to be secure and
feel secure. Barring India, no other nation in the region has to fear for
extra-territorial aggression of any kind. Their security concerns are domestic
in nature, or are based on their perceptions of India, flowing from a
collective ‘Cold War’ past. In the case of former, linkages are beginning to be
made as to how problems can multiply for everyone if the regional nations did
not work together — or, do not stop targeting one another.
In terms of their perceptions of India, New
Delhi has been doing enough over the past decade and more, to make individual
nations of the region, including Pakistan, feel friendly. India too continues
to be affected by its memories about the role individual nations of the region
could play to make it feel insecure in different ways. Where nations could not
take on India directly, whatever their perception and consideration, they were
known to have provided base for other adversaries of India to do so. Whether it
was a strategy or tactic, their attempts had paid off in terms of making India
feel uncomfortable, if not aggressive.
Steeped in contemporary history as also the
distant past, the chances would not occur overnight, but here again there is a
need for everyone concerned to acknowledge that time is running out, after all.
Political India is however beginning to understand the complexities in
multi-lateral relations, where individual neighbours are seen as trading with
extra-territorial powers, in terms of politics, economic cooperation and
infrastructure creation. There is also an emerging understanding all-round that
their strategic security is closely linked, and any effort at inducting
extra-territorial powers would have an economic and developmental cost to play
— which their domestic constituencies might not countenance hereafter.
In this context, it is necessary for everyone,
including India, to acknowledge that the packaging development aid (in whatever
form) is also a way for extra-territorial powers to acquire strategic depth in
the region. The question now will be to accept certain realities, including
problem areas, and address the issues in a forthright manner in which solutions
are found. A road-map for collective development has to be laid out and
practised in ways in which they do not hamper the strategic security
cooperation that these countries have to adopt – but become part of that
process, too. The step-by-step approach adopted by SAARC may not be fast but it
is the right way. As resolved by them at the Addu Summit in Maldives in 2011,
it would be a good idea if the SAARC nations meet the goals set for them before
the next Summit, and yet fast-track the processes in ways that the political
leaderships would find the need for shortening the deadlines for individual and
collective action, without having to extend them, indefinitely.
Yet, political issues will remain, as between
India and Pakistan, but not exclusive to them alone. Even smaller nations such
as Nepal and Bhutan, for instance, have issues between them. Problems flowing
from governance apparatus and decision-making processes remain. Though most
South Asian nations had inherited the British colonial model,
post-Independence, many have reverted to the pre-colonial model of personalised
decision-making apparatus but under a constitutional, democratic scheme. Though
in India, too, personalised politics is a hallmark, structures of
decision-making remain intact. In Pakistan, at different levels, the armed
forces may have their say. Differences in perceptions among South Asian nations
about the decision-making processes in others have often led to confusion and
consternation. Either they put their heads together to work on a common
governance scheme for them all to draw from, or learn to live with whatever
they have in others, instead, and work together, still.
N SathiyaMoorthy
The writer is a Senior Fellow at Observer
Research Foundation
Minivan News
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