In recent years, we have witnessed
a greater awareness of an emerging South Asian identity.
Notwithstanding some setbacks, the commonality of interests and the
cultural, social and historical affinity between the peoples of the
region, appear to have been gaining steadily over the forces of
divisiveness that have kept countries of South Asia apart for a long
period. The SAARC process has contributed to the process of building
greater cooperation within South Asia. But such an intergovernmental
process remains dependent on the vicissitudes of inter-state relations
within South Asia. Within the South Asian region, there is, therefore,
an increasing recognition of the need for civil society to play a much
more active role in sustaining the process of regional cooperation and
insulating it from the ebb and flow of official relations.
Over the last two decades, a plethora of programs,
coalitions and issues - specific initiatives supportive of agendas for
promoting South Asian cooperation have emerged, albeit with varying
degree of efficacy. However, such initiatives remain of an ad hoc
nature and lack synergy. There is, therefore, an emerging need to
institutionalise the forces working for the cooperation and development
of a South Asian Community. Such a move could not only draw upon the
rich intellectual resources of the region to service the South Asian
Community but also could help in both healing divisions between the
countries in the region and giving a distinct shape to a Civil Society
based on cooperation and shared perceptions on the realisation of a
shared future for South Asia.
Whilst there are several institutional arrangements
at an official level servicing the SAARC process, still there remains
an urgent need for well-argued, well-researched agendas about the scope
for cooperation in South Asia which can serve to guide policymakers as
well as the private sectors and civil society within the region towards
building up a South Asian Community. The rich professional resources
and strong institutions available within the region need to be deployed
in the service of the South Asian countries. Furthermore, the enormous
treasure of human resources to be found amongst South Asians working
outside the region needs, at least in part, to be recaptured in the
service of the region, thereby contributing towards reversing South
Asia's massive brain drain. It is evident that South Asia, today,
commands the wealth of human resources needed to put in place a well
conceived, professionally served and economically sustainable regional
facility which can also provide a focal point for the variety of ad hoc
initiatives currently seeking to promote South Asian cooperation. initiatives currently seeking to promote South Asian cooperation.
A strong, soundly conceived facility could draw upon
not only the ongoing programs for promoting regional cooperation but
could mobilise well-established national institutions to build shared
capacities to service the process of South Asian cooperation. Such a
facility could mobilise individual professional talents both from
within South Asia and by drawing upon the talents of South Asians
working outside the region. Developing such a regional facility could
serve to both develop a sense of community within South Asia and
generate the critical mass needed to build South Asian institutions
which could serve as centres of learning and research which could meet
globally competitive standards. It could also catalyse the emergence of
a number of centres of excellence within South Asia, which could
attract global professional talents and creative ideas. It is intended
to make a beginning towards institutionalising the potential of the
South Asian intellectual community by building such a facility within a
South Asia Centre for Policy Studies (SACEPS) which could play a
catalytic role in realising the more ambitious agenda for building a
South Asian Community. At the outset, SACEPS therefore, attempts to
establish an institutional base, which could be used to reach out to
and network with some of the well-established national institutions
within the region; which can provide the building blocks for a South
Asia community. To this end, SACEPS not only tries to build business
and professional networks within South Asia but also aims to draw
together the initiatives of socially motivated NGOs of the region
towards realising a shared agenda for social transformation within the
region.
The central objective of SACEPS is to activate policy
dialogue and interactions to provide a regional perspective to public
discourse and debates across these countries and also project a
regional profile in the global arena. To service such dialogues and
influence the process of South Asian Cooperation, SACEPS facilitates
considered and technically competent joint analyses that help to raise
the level of policy formulation within the region and serves to
establish domestic ownership over the policymaking process. Such a
process could be promoted in several ways. It could be realised through
assessing the positive externalities of joint action in specific areas;
it could be brought about through processes facilitating specific
instances of cross-country problem-solving; individual countries could
improve the quality of their own policy processes and outcomes with
inputs that identify and provide ready access to cases of good practice
further from specialist expertise drawn from the international domain.
SACEPS strives to establish itself as a depository
for research programs in the region designed to serve the goals of
South Asian cooperation and also serves as a registrar for keeping
track of such research activities with a South Asia focus. Through a
process of dialogue and consultation at the regional level, SACEPS in
this context, intends to periodically assemble activists committed to
promote South Asian cooperation with a view to reducing overlap and to
build synergy in the activities of these various players on the South
Asia field.
The work programme of SACEPS is developed in
collaboration with the participating institutions, which have come
together to build this regional institution. Initially, SACEPS expects
to focus on economic policies dealing largely with trade and investment
cooperation with the belief that building cooperative frameworks for
designing policies in this area will provide immediate benefits to all
countries in the region. There would also be advantages of developing
joint positions for negotiations in various international spheres (such
as WTO negotiations on international aspects of environmental
management, the regulation of intellectual property rights, etc). Other
potential areas that have visible cross-border policy relevance include
planned and unplanned cross-border labour flows, cross-border transport
networks, integration of energy systems, the joint management of
watersheds and river flows along with the efficient and equitable
sharing of water resources united (in preference to being divided) by
rivers flowing through each of their territories. The agenda for
cooperation could be widened further. Each country could benefit from
cases of acknowledged good practice in specialised spheres of social
policy e.g. universalisation of primary and basic education, effective
ways of addressing the problem of child labour, local accountability
systems for good governance at the level of rural and urban
settlements, the experience of specific countries with poverty
alleviation programs. The list of potential topics could be lengthened
further as the SACEPS develops, learns from its own experiences and
takes cognisance of the felt needs of policymakers as well as civil
society. In all this, there is a substantial scope for mutual benefits
from joint policy formulation in specific spheres, from public
discussion, joint policy design and implementation. Such exercises
could have a variety of spin-offs, which would add not only to the
quality of life and governance across the region, but also towards a
substantial reduction in political and military tensions in this
region, paving the way towards developing a more harmonious South Asian
Community.
SACEPS draws upon the institutional strengths of its
national affiliates to develop programs of research and to initiate
programs for training and graduate studies on South Asian development.
In process of its development SACEPS seeks to expand its institutional
affiliations in every South Asian country and thereby broaden the
network of institutional involvement in the process of South Asian
cooperation. SACEPS is, thus, committed to develop itself not in
competition with national institutions in the region or with any of the
ongoing programs of regional cooperation but as a source for
aggregating the resources of all such institutions in the realisation
of a shared purpose.
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