With the SAARC summit only days away, the focus should be as much on re-positioning India, both in the regional and emerging global context, as on terrorism and security. Prime Minister Vajpayee set the mood a fortnight ago by referring to a 'common currency' for, and hydro-power cooperation among member-nations. Such issues may sound utopian, yet emerging realities would demand a statesman-like approach from India, and the rest of South Asia.
The India-Bhutan cooperation on the ULFA front has proved a point, since. At one-level, it's still an internal dimension of SAARC cooperation. Outside of SAARC, India has singed a trilateral agreement with Myanmar and Thailand for a highway connecting them all. In a limited way, the road project should neutralize India-focussed security concerns aired over Myanmar granting such a highway to China. Coupled with India's improving ties with the ASEAN, and the slow emergence of BIMSTEC, this could be translated into benefits for more than one South Asian nation, if there is imagination and cooperation.
The world is in a flux after the sudden end to the 'Cold War'. It is still going through the process of readjustment. The US has primed itself strategically even as Europe is lazily working on ways to regain the 'lost glory' and readjust to life without the Soviet Union. In the process, untested China is touted as the bogey-man of the future for Asian neighbours, including India and ASEAN. It is another matter, those that float such theories, and seek to validate them, have no problem doing business with Beijing.
In the absence of State actor(s), faceless leaders with Stateless people, like Osama have been providing the counter-poise to the US. Saddam Hussein was nearly reduced to that when bin-Laden decided to melt away - thus, needing revival. That gives little hope for victimized nations like India, and 'toothless' regions like South Asia. Their fire-power thus gets expended on themselves, the legitimate justification for the same often deriving from State-craft, strategic philosophies - and the historic baggage that nations are unwilling, and often unable to, unload.
The world today is short on ideology, and shorter on charismatic leaders with imagination, who could market them. It thus has no place for a Lenin or a Mao, a Gandhi or even a Hitler. The 'creation' of the Saddam bogey, and the over-stress on Osama are only pointers. In the absence of ideology and charisma, a methodical and manageable multi-polar world seems to be in the making. There is little that a nation like India can do in such a scenario. Yet, there is a lot that regional groupings like SAARC or BIMSTEC or ASEAN can do - more so, by working jointly and collectively.
Such a course would require a lot of flexibility on the part of such nations as India, and such organisations as SAARC. Not only in their relation with, and to, other individual nations and organisations, but also with the rest of the world. India should be firm with change, and change with firmness. So should SAARC, whose socio-economic and politico-military situation could tempt it to lend greater strategic depth and position to third nations and groupings than its geo-political position would justify, demand, or command. It is the willingness or the readiness of individual member-nations of SAARC that would seem to make the difference.
India and the SAARC could consider taking time off from building up military might, which incidentally would be enough only to fight itself, but not any other. They also need not strategize for third nations like the US and China, because that is what it ultimately could turn out to be, if member-nations followed one or the other of the 'threat-perceptions'.
The world can take care of itself, and does not require or expect SAARC to do the job for it. Instead, South Asia requires SAARC, and the peace and prosperity such cooperation can usher in. But then peace has to precede prosperity, if SAARC at some time can flex its muscle, and tell the world where to draw the line. Well, that could include the US, China and Europe - and not necessarily in that order.
* Views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Observer Research Foundation.
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