With its humanitarian initiative on a shared strategy to contain the virus, the Modi Govt has kept Saarc relevant
By pledging $10 million to a pool of funds and offering to share expertise to combat the dreaded Coronavirus in South Asia, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has not only seized the humanitarian initiative beyond the borders but has found a good enough reason to revive regional cooperation. With this move, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), which was running aground because of India-Pakistan tension and anxieties among sub-continental nations over dependencies on China, may just become relevant. Skirting the discomfort of politics, there is at least an engagement over shared concerns that has broken the chill among contiguous neighbours. Every nation responded to India’s call although Pakistan did indeed appear churlish and immature by using the platform to raise the lockdown in Kashmir yet again. But Pakistan’s folly has worked to India’s advantage as a benevolent first mover. Like the Kartarpur corridor, the Corona alliance demonstrates that people’s lives are not held ransom to diplomatic concerns. Even Nepal’s Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli, who has been unhappy about the way India was emaciating SAARC by focussing on other regional groupings, joined the tele-conference although he had just had a kidney transplant. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani raised the issue of his nation’s porous borders with Iran and said a united rapid response system based on telemedicine and physical teams could work to everybody’s advantage. Undoubtedly, desperate times call for desperate measures. Although the combined virus cases of SAARC nations may still be on the lower end of the graph, there are fears of escalation given the densely-clustered population in the region. SAARC nations make for 20 per cent of the global population and a flaring spread here could be deeply problematic and accelerate the scare economy. So a coordinated and a uniform containment approach could prevent South Asia from just tipping over. Already, much politics has been claimed over the disease. First was China’s “keep it under wraps” policy and economic heft in global businesses that prevented Coronavirus from being declared a global pandemic. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has been accused of delaying the declaration and labelling Europe the second epicentre. Second, with most pandemic viruses assigned to Asian origins, India and its neighbours would have a greater stigma in the battle going forward, something which has devastating social and economic impacts. Besides, with Western countries crumbling under oversaturated health networks and melting economies, India has to evolve its own template of aggressive containment with resources particular to the region — a protocol which has been upticked by the WHO, too — and use it to battle the menace in this part of the world. Third, India has an experience in handling mass outbreaks, like Nipah, every season and should use it to strengthen its medical diplomacy. In fact, India has already moved fast on issues that will redefine global stakes of the future. Climate change was one, where India led the fight against developed economies and even steered the International Solar Alliance. And if it does manage to get ahead in disease control this time, it can claim an expertise in the region that is anyway bowing to Chinese dominance. SAARC could, therefore, become a platform for new diplomacy.
The resuscitation of SAARC couldn’t have come at a better time. According to a World Bank report, South Asia is “one of the least integrated regions” in the world and given SAARC’s history and existing grids, it could still be the connective tissue for protecting the region’s resources and interests. It could work around political differences much like the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) does, meeting regularly on health, pandemics and cultural activities. There was some momentum recently when 80 agricultural experts and senior officers from SAARC nations addressed climate change and presented their papers at a regional summit. Given the porosity of borders in South Asia, the SAARC module could work in a crisis such as this. Although the Modi Government has consistently amped up the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC), it is largely seen as a strategic and security alliance. Besides, it has not quite yielded a free trade arrangement between Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Bhutan and Nepal. Expressly intended to sideline Pakistan in the garb of a counter-terrorist network, its joint military exercises have not attracted enough traction either. In effect, Bimstec works only as India’s watchdog of growing Chinese interests in the littoral States. SAARC could then work as a sub-continental people-to-people platform that could be used as a humanist, soft tool.