Page 251 - DECO503_INTERNATIONAL_TRADE_AND_FINANCE_ENGLISH

Unit 22 : SAARC/SAPTA, ASEAN

development. At the same time the South Asian countries should encourage joint eco-friendly use of Notes
the region’s water and power resources by designing sub-regional projects for manufacturing,
installing and maintaining energy systems including solar energy. These steps will take South Asia
closer to the goal of becoming a Community and hopefully, somewhat later, help it evolve into South
Asian Union. Towards this end, SAARC should create a high-powered Economic Council comprising
Finance/Planning Ministers of each Member State to promote initiatives for regional economic,
commercial, financial and monetary integration so vital to the emergence of an Economic Union.
Poverty Alleviation
We cannot face the world with full pride and dignity unless we eliminate the hydra of poverty that
stalks our region. Each of our countries has the responsibility to concentrate on this theme individually
and in concert with regional partners. It is obvious that while there is no substitute for each of our
nation’s individual efforts, SAARC should take the lead in promoting collaborative efforts to achieve
poverty alleviation. It should be possible for the member States of SAARC to spare a proportion of
their national allocations to meet the challenge of poverty for SAARC’s collaborative efforts to that end.
A common pool in the form of a SAARC Poverty Alleviation Fund should form the basis for such an
effort. In this context one must welcome India’s offer of US $ 100 million to set the ball rolling on this.
Given the dimensions of the problem this is not a big amount but with other Member Countries chipping
in, it should be possible for the SAARC Poverty Alleviation Fund to finance specific projects for
implementation. Member States should also set up National Committees to consult with each other to
monitor progress on such collaborative projects as well as devise programmes to implement the goals
of the SAARC Social Charter. The region has a grave need to meet challenges jointly especially in
combating diseases such as tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS. Fresh initiatives in this direction are necessary.
The academics analyzing the successes and failures of SAARC have long felt that it is important to
create a regional forum for people’s representatives from each member country to interact with their
counterparts from others to discuss issues facing them regionally and to help develop regional
cooperation. Establishment of a South Asian Parliamentary Forum would help achieve that objective.
An Oracle

More than half a century ago, at the first Asian Conference Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru expressed the
hope that the event would stand out in history as a landmark and said :
Strong winds are blowing all over Asia. Let us not be afraid of them but rather welcome them for
only with their help can we build the Asia of our dreams. Let us have faith in these great new forces
and the dream which is taking shape. Let us above all, have faith in the human spirit which Asia has
symbolized for those long ages past.
More than anyone else, South Asia is a party to that dream and that spirit. In this twenty first century
the continent of Asia has set its sights quite high and we stand closer to the fulfillment of that dream.
And yet we are not so close. Much of that hope now rests on the next SAARC Summit in Dhaka, the
thirteenth since its establishment. It was in Dhaka that SAARC’s odyssey began when Bangladesh
put us all together to think and work as a region. Let the Dhaka summit be the harbinger of a new
dawn for the people of this historic region by taking several leaps forward.

High on the heels of the Fifth EU-India Summit came the third ASEAN—INDIA
Summit on November 11, 2004 at Vientiane, Laos.

It is a happy augury that India’s regional relationships are developing a fresh thrust and a new
momentum. In a world of shrinking distances, rising expectations and soaring new dreams, the
human family has to learn to sink its differences and maximise cooperation all around to carve a new
destiny. In that historic journey, entities like the EU, ASEAN and increasingly SAARC standout as
important milestones. Regional cooperation will be propelled as much by the historic force of
globalisation as by a new dynamism in bilateral equations.

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 245