The video conference among government and state heads of eight South Asian countries on March 15 has generated some hope about the revival of the moribund South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). The conference was the first of its kind after an indefinite postponement of the 2016 SAARC Summit, and suggests that SAARC member countries are capable of collaborating on pressing common issues such as public health and climate change by setting aside their other differences.

The immediate response of other SAARC member states to Modi’s tweet proposing the conference signaled their eagerness to revive the regional body. In the tweet, Modi had also urged SAARC member states to chalk out a strong, common strategy to fight the novel coronavirus.

Some saw the conference as the first step towards the long-delayed 19th SAARC Summit originally scheduled to take place in Islamabad in 2016. Says Nishchal N. Pandey, Director of the Center for South Asian Studies in Kathmandu, “The video conference has renewed hope that the stalled SAARC process would be reinvigorated and we will soon see a SAARC Summit in Islamabad. It also underscores that there is no alternative to the SAARC in our region.”

Similarly, Nihar R. Nayak, Research Fellow with the Institute for Defense Studies and Analysis, a New Delhi-based think-tank, sees this as an opportunity for India, Pakistan and other member countries to revive the SAARC process. “If Pakistan cooperates, it could be an icebreaker. Otherwise, once the corona scare subsides, the tempo will die down.”

After the video conference, Pakistan also proposed to host a meeting of the health ministers of the eight SAARC countries to formulate a “coordinated response” to the health crisis. Other countries are yet to respond to the proposal.

 

Less than meets the eye

Since the postponement of the 2016 SAARC summit, Nepal, as the chair of the regional grouping, has been continuously urging India to agree to another summit. But India has not shown any interest, insisting that the regional environment for such a summit is ‘inappropriate’. Yet India has also expressed its readiness to sit in summit-level talks should they be held outside Pakistan—a proposal Islamabad has rejected outright.

The keenness of the Oli government in the SAARC process has been evident all along. Addressing the SAARC Standing Committee at the SAARC Secretariat in Kathmandu on 8 February 2020, Prime Minister KP Oli did not mince words. Stating that Nepal was eager to hand over SAARC chairmanship, he expressed his hope that “the SAARC member states will come up with consensus to convene the summit at an early date.” He said that as a founding member and current chair of SAARC, Nepal “strongly believes in regional cooperation to promote collective well-being of the people of South Asia.”

But there are also strong views that SAARC-level cooperation will not extend beyond the fight against the coronavirus. India, in this view, proposed the video conference as it cannot tackle the virus on its own given its porous borders with its neighbors. Moreover, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan was notably absent from the conference, sending a junior-ranking minister to take his place. According to Ashok Mehta, a retired general of the Indian Army and an old Nepal hand, “Narendra Modi government right now wants to firmly establish the Hindu agenda inside the country and thus is in no mood to talk to Pakistan. Similarly, Pakistan is also not keen on talking to India.”

Vijay Kant Karna of the Center for Social Inclusion and Federalism in Kathmandu seconds Mehta’s views. But Karna adds that even though he sees no possibility of another SAARC summit-level meeting, the video conference does give a message that “South Asian states can collaborate on common issues like public health and climate change by developing working relations with each other.”

 

India’s focus on BIMSTEC

In lieu of SAARC, India has been pushing the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) since 2016. Accusing Pakistan of sponsoring terrorism on its soil, India has since been promoting the regional group that does not include Pakistan. At a BRICS outreach program in October 2016, India invited state and government heads from BIMSTEC, not from SAARC. Likewise, when Modi was being sworn-in as Indian prime minister for the second time in May 2019, he invited leaders from BIMSTEC countries, unlike his first swearing-in when he had invited SAARC country heads, including the prime minister of Pakistan.

As the Indian Minister for External Affairs S. Jaishankar put it earlier this year: “SAARC has certain problems and I think we all know what it is [sic]… even if you were to put the terrorism issue aside, there are connectivity and trade issues. If you look at why BIMSTEC leaders were invited for PM’s swearing-in… we see energy, mindset and possibility in BIMSTEC.”

Not only government officials, even New Delhi-based think-tanks these days promote the idea that the BIMSTEC platform is more beneficial to India than the SAARC platform.

Yet this is not the view of other South Asian countries. Bangladeshi Ambassador to Nepal Mashfee Binte Shams categorically told APEX some time ago that BIMSTEC could never replace SAARC, as the two entities had completely different purposes. “SAARC brings together the countries of the region that were closely integrated before the British came here and created artificial divisions. Before the British arrived, the region had many principalities and kingdoms but we were integrated and there was a lot of internal trade. So SAARC tries to revive that pre-British integration,” she said. That is also the view shared by other SAARC countries bar India.

But India is not convinced. This is why many reckon the video conference over the coronavirus pandemic might only have been an exercise in India’s power-projection. “As the largest country in this region, India wants to show it has the capacity to play a leading role here,” says Chandra Dev Bhatta, a Nepali political analyst who has closely followed the BJP politics in India. “The video conference was a message that during a crisis India always stands with its neighbors”.