Tag: regional integration

Raising the bar for SAARC: Building Bridges, Linking Dreams

- by Manish Chand

Intertwined Destinies, Interlinked Dreams – expressions like these may appear ornate clichés for sceptics, but in reality it would be an understatement to underscore the enormous stakes each country has in fructifying immense potential of the region. India, the largest economy and the most populous country in the region, is an idealist as well as a realist in its ongoing efforts to revitalise the SAARC as the preeminent forum of regional cooperation and integration. For the India Story can’t be delinked from the state of South Asia, its choices and its conflicts and its surging hopes and aspirations.
In an imaginative initiative, Prime Minister Modi has called for jointly developing a SAARC satellite that could become a powerful symbol of regional solidarity and a realistic vehicle of providing the much-needed data for averting natural disasters and meteorological data to optimise agriculture potential of individual economies and the region. Initiatives like these show that the SAARC grouping, if it wants to, is ready to move into a different orbit, literally as well as metaphorically.
It’s time to raise the sights, dream big and prove that even the sky is not the limit for regional integration.

Read More

It’s time for South Asia: Pitching SAARC into higher orbit

- by Manish Chand

It’s a gloriously sunny day, the kind of weather that should stimulate imagination and inspire some out-of-box thinking in leaders of South Asian countries, who will gather in the Nepali capital to invigorate a 29-year old regional grouping that is still itching to take off.
The summitry atmospherics can be felt everywhere in Kathmandu, with colorful banners proclaiming the tag line of the 18th SAARC summit: “Deeper Integration for Peace, Progress and Prosperity.” The theme song encapsulates in a miniature the abiding mastertheme of the November 28-29 summit, and the driving impulse of the SAARC process itself. And rightly so.
In a way, All eyes will be on Mr Modi’s SAARC debut and his vision for raising the bar for the SAARC dream. Home to vibrant and emerging democracies, growing economies, and home to 1.7 billion people and major religions of the world, South Asia has all the makings of a regional dynamo itching for its place under the global sun. It’s time for the leaders of the region to put a stop to endless visions and revisions and take firm and decisive steps to pitch the SAARC into a higher trajectory.

Read More