BIMSTEC Cannot Replace SAARC

By: Kayhan Int’l 

In a bid to make the 8-nation Kathmandu headquartered SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) further dysfunctional, India or more properly the present BJP-led government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which seems oblivious to the olive branch being extended by the newly elected Pakistani government of Prime Minister Imran Khan, went into full gear last Thursday and Friday in holding in the Nepalese capital (Kathmandu) the 4th summit of the 7-nation BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation).

Ironically, except for Myanmar and Thailand, BIMSTEC’s other five members – India, Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh – are members of SAARC (minus Pakistan, Afghanistan and Maldives), which has its headquarters in Dhaka.

New Delhi, which in 2016 succeeded in scuttling the SAARC summit in Pakistan by pursuing several members to boycott it on Islamabad’s alleged involvement in an attack on a military base in India, claims that its new policy of "Eastward Look” is designed to counter China’s growing influence in the Bay of Bengal rim states in view of the spread of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.

The question that arises is: Can India, which provides 33 percent of the expenditure of BIMSTEC, succeed in luring away the other members from China’s growing sphere of influence, when the fact of the matter is that most of them have have either formally signed on for President Xi Jinping’s ambitious plan to build a modern Silk Road or closely aligned their developmental plans and programmes with those of China’s, thanks to investment lavished on infrastructure projects?

Analysts point out that India, even with US goading (the Americans never help practically), cannot offer its neighbours a viable alternative to the One Belt, One Road Project of an economically-powerful and political-independent China.

They also note that both SAARC and BIMSTEC involve member states that hold similar sets of rapidly developing economies, and the two groupings have similar sizes of collective gross domestic product, markets and population.

SAARC makes up 21% of the world’s population and accounts for over 4% (3.8 trillion US dollars) of the global economy, while BIMSTEC has a combined gross domestic product of 3.5 trillion dollars.

Here, the comparisons, however, end. Over the past 32 years, SAARC has been assiduously nurtured through a multitude of meetings and initiatives, including 18 summits. This has seen it evolve a whole set of conventions, organs and mechanisms and a network of more than a dozen regional centres and other institutions.

In contrast, BIMSTEC, whose secretariat was created in Dhaka only in 2014, has to date a total staff of not more than 10 persons, including three directors and a secretary general.

The vast difference in the size, scale and stature of the two blocs are enough to shatter ambitious expectations and keep BIMSTEC out of unwanted comparisons with SAARC, which should be revived, for the benefit of India and the rest of the member states, as the change of guard in Pakistan and the expected summit in Colombo, Sri Lanka, later this year, may provide a major breakthrough.

Therefore, according to Swaran Singh, Professor of Diplomacy and Disarmament at New Delhi’s School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, how can one anticipate any game-changing outcomes from the Kathmandu meeting since such summits as usually seen as retreats for leaders, taking a break from the squabbling of domestic politics and presenting a talking shop with photo opportunities!
In other words, neither BIMSTEC can be an alternative to SAARC, nor has India the economic and political clout to check China’s growing influence in the region.

So, as Nepalese Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli told his parliament last Friday, while BIMSTEC holds great possibilities, there is nevertheless urgent need to revive SAARC, since these two regional organizations can surely thrive together and even prove complementary.