BILIA Working Paper 01, 2013

Why SAARC is Less-effective?

A Neo-realist Explanation of Indias Role in SAARC
[Summary]
Noor Mohammad Sarker
In the post-Cold War era, regionalism1 is considered as one of the most important
developments in international relations. The successful regional practices, like the
European Union (EU), have inspired the other regions of the world to seek their own
approaches of comprehensive regional development through a multilateral cooperative
framework.2 Consequently, South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC)
was established in 1985 as the first inter-governmental regional organization in South
Asia. But, after more than two decades, the organization has apparently done so little
compared to the aspiration rested upon it. The successful experiences of regionalism
advocate that, as a regional organization, SAARC seems less-effective to ensure peace
and development in South Asia compared to the other regional organizations of the
world, such as EU.
India, the key regional power in South Asia, bears the larger responsibility in
SAARC.3 The country occupies an advanced and unchallenged position among the other
states in South Asian subcontinent in terms of its political geography, strategic position,
massive demography, superior military base and the huge reserve of natural resources.
Hence, the efficiency of SAARC also greatly depends on the role of India. However,
Indias relative gain manners with her smaller South Asian neighbors have fostered the
environment of mutual suspicion among them. Given these phenomena, since the use of a
theoretical tool on a certain problem could illuminate the roots of that problem and open
the ways of resolving it, Indias role towards SAARC is, therefore, need to be analyzed
theoretically to find out the root problems of the less-effectiveness of the organization.

The detail version of this paper is available in printed form at BILIA. Email: bilia222.info@gmail.com.
Noor Mohammad Sarker works as a Research Assistant for International Affairs in Bangladesh Institute
of Law and International Affairs (BILIA). Email: nmsrdu@gmail.com
1
Regionalism in international relations refers to the integration of a number of states, located in a certain
geographical region, based on their common identity or the sense of collective actions. The process of
integration often expressed through institutional mechanisms. For details, see, Edward D. Mans. eld. and
Helen V. Milner, The New Wave of Regionalism, International Organization, Vol. 53, No. 3, Summer
1999, pp. 589627, available at: http://www.stanford.edu/class/polisci243b/readings/v0002093.pdf;
Louise Fawcett, Regionalism in World Politics: Past and Present, in Regionalism in World Politics:
Regional Organization and International Order, edited by Louise LEstrange Fawcett and Andrew
Hurrell, Oxford University Press, UK, 1995, available at: http://www.garnet-eu.org/pdf/Fawcett1.pdf;
Mary E. Burfisher, Sherman Robinson and Karen Thierfelder, Regionalism: Old and New, Theory and
Practice, MTID Discussion Paper, No. 65, International Food Policy Research Institute, USA, February
2004, available at: http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/bitstream/16137/1/mt040065.pdf
2
Kishore C. Dash, Regionalism in South Asia: Negotiating cooperation, institutional structures, Routledge,
New York, 2008, pp. 1-2.
3
India is the key regional power in South Asia. It has either land or maritime borders with all the SAARC
countries, except Afghanistan. Therefore, the country aspires the regional leadership and, in the way, key
responsibility of regional security and development.

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Theoretically, the rationales of the hegemonic 4 role played by India towards
SAARC can be better explained by neo-realism, which is one of the most popular
theoretical tools in the discipline of international relations. To neo-realists, like Kenneth
Waltz, the international politics is a conflicting domain among the states those are
devoted to pursue their own national interests. The theory argues that, such anarchic 5
nature of international relations is spontaneous, since there is no supranational authority
functioning effectively to regulate the behavior of the states. Therefore the strong states
tend to pursue the relative gains from their weaker counterparts, for which the anarchic
structure within the relationship among these states continues ceaselessly.
In view of that, the anarchic regional structure out of the Indias role towards the
other SAARC members resemble to the neo-realist justification of the anarchic nature of
regional international relations. Firstly, India tends to pose her hegemonic nature towards
the other smaller South Asian neighbors by utilizing the power asymmetry among the
SAARC states. On the one hand, it places India into an advantageous position among all
of them. On the other hand, it provides India the scope to emphasize on bilateral
initiatives rather than multilateral platforms. These attitudes by India resemble to one of
the core arguments of neo-realism that the exercise of the dominant postures by the big
powers over the smaller ones is a constant reality of the anarchic international structure.
SAARC was established with the aim of bringing about some significant
contributions for ensuring a comprehensive regional cooperative mechanism, which
would be consensual as well as future oriented.6 The organization was also inaugurated
with a motive to make the member states work together to guarantee the widespread and
sustainable development in almost all the sectors, whether it is political, economic or
social. 7 But, historically, the constant reality of the power asymmetry among the member
states of SAARC often has made the entire mechanism of the regional cooperation
jeopardized. Among all the SAARC members, given that India is the largest one in terms
of area, population, military and economics, the country appears as the primary regional
force.8 Even after the inclusion of Afghanistan, India alone covers more than half of the
entire landmass of South Asia. In terms of demography, the total number of population of
4

Neo-realists make use of the concept of hegemony to describe a condition of the world or the regional or
the sub-regional politics in which one state is in a dominant position over the others. For details, see, Jill
Steans, Lloyd Pettiford, Thomas Diez and Imad El-Anis, An Introduction to International Relations
Theories: Perspectives and Themes, Longman, UK, 2010, pp. 53-74; see also, Scott Burchill, Andrew
Linklater & others, Theories of International Relations, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2005, pp. 29-54.
5
The term anarchy is used by neo-realists to refer to a condition in international relations where there is
no centralized sovereign authority above the states to control their behavior by enforcing the rule of law.
For details, see, Jill Steans, 2010, pp. 53-54, op. cit.; Scott Burchill, 2005, op. cit.
6
See, SAARC: Hostage to India-Pakistan conflict, Islamabad Policy Research Institute, available at:
http://ipripak.org/factfiles/ff17.shtml; Zahid Shahab Ahmed and Stuti Bhatnagar, Interstate Conflicts
and Regionalism in South Asia: Prospects and Challenges, PERCEPTIONS, Spring-Summer 2008, p. 3,
available at: http://sam.gov.tr/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Ahmed-Bhatnagar.pdf
7
See, Proceedings of Peoples SAARC 2007, Kathmandu, Nepal, March 23-25, 2007, p. 2, available at:
http://www.alternative-regionalisms.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/proceedings_peoples_saarc07_eng.pdf
8
Kanti Bajpai, Indian Strategic Culture, in South Asia in 2020: Future Strategic Balances and Alliances,
edited by Michael R. Chambers, USA, November 2002, p. 252; Gopal Krishna, India and International
Order: Retreat from Idealism, in The Expansion of International Society, edited by Hedley Bull and
Adam Watson, Clarendon Press, Oxford, UK, 1984, pp. 270-271.

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all the other member states of SAARC does not even match with the Indias figure. The
country also maintains the largest number of military forces as well as the military
expenditure compared to the other states of the region. Culturally, India also has much
more diversity than the rest of the countries of SAARC.9 Besides, Indias location at the
centre of the region has contributed to be termed the region often as Indo-centric region
or Indian subcontinent.10
The apparent lopsided privilege on the part of a single country, India, over the
others reveals to a major imbalance within the regional framework, SAARC. This unfair
condition gives the country the driving seat of regulating the interstate relationship in
South Asian region. Consequently, power unevenness between India and the rest SAARC
members generates the environment of suspicion on the dominance of one over the
others. Neighboring states have always been doubtful about Indian foreign policy
postures within the region, whether it is a bilateral or a multilateral initiative.11 As the key
regional power, with a view of acquiring global-power status, India always tends to
project the big-brother attitude towards her neighbors.12
Indias hegemonic nature towards SAARC countries could be better exemplified
by analyzing the Indira Doctrine13, which promotes India as uncontested regional
hegemon recognized both from inside as well as from outside the region. It is often
argued that, such hegemonic nature of India to her neighbors has been an outcome of the
strategic outlook of the countrys policymakers those are largely influenced by the

Stephen Philip Cohen, India: Emerging Power, Brookings Institution Press, Washington, D.C., 2001, p. 8.
Rohan Mukherjee and David M. Malone, Indian foreign policy and contemporary security challenges,
International Affairs, Vol. 87, No. 1, 2011, p. 93; Rajen Harshe, South Asian regional cooperation:
problems and prospects, in Engaging with the world: critical reflections on Indias foreign policy,
edited by, Rajen Harshe and K. M. Seethi, Orient Black Swan, New Delhi, 2009, p. 321; David Scott,
India and regional integration, in Handbook of Indias International Relations, edited by David Scott,
Routledge, UK, 2011, p. 118; Shantanu Chakrabarti, Indias Regional Policy Making in Post Cold War
Setting, Societal Studies, Vol. 4, No. 2, 2012, p. 409.
11
Arvind Gupta, South Asia in Indias National Security Strategy, in Grand Strategy for India: 2020 and
Beyond, edited by Krishnappa Venkatshamy and Princy George, IDSA, Pentagon Press, New Delhi,
2012, p. 186, available at: www.idsa.in/system/files/book_GrantStrategyIndia.pdf; A. K. Verma, Indias
trajectory to regional and global power: Risks, Obstacles and Strengths, Sri Lanka Guardian, June 26,
2009, available at: http://www.srilankaguardian.org/2009/06/indias-trajectory-to-regional-and.html; V.V.
Desai, The Political Economy of Regional Cooperation in South Asia, ADB Working Paper Series on
Regional Economic Integration, No. 54, 2010, p. 26.
12
Ronen Sen, Endnote, in Neighbourhood Views of India, edited by Sharmila Joshi, Gateway House
Research Paper No. 7, December 2012, p. 95.
13
Indira Doctrine was formulated in 1983, see: http://www.sangam.org/articles/view2/446.html;
According to the Indira Doctrine, South Asian states should firstly look within the subcontinent for help
with their domestic political problems. Secondly, the presence of any extra-regional power in the
subcontinent and/or the Indian Ocean Region would be considered adverse to Indias security interests
unless that power recognized Indias predominance., quoted from Manjeet Singh Pardesi, Deducing
Indias Grand Strategy of Regional Hegemony from Historical and Conceptual Perspectives, Institute of
Defence and Strategic Studies Working Paper, No. 76, Singapore, April 2005, p. 41; for details, see:
Stephen Philip Cohen, 2001, pp. 137-138, op. cit.; see also, David Scott, 2011, p. 120, op. cit.; Bhabani
S. Gupta, The Indian Doctrine, India Today, August 31, 1983, p. 20; Devin T. Hagerty, Indias
Regional Security Doctrine, Asian Survey, Vol. 31, No. 4, 1991.
10

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Kautilyan14 tradition of strategic thinking, which considers the next door neighboring
countries as ari or the enemy. 15 The contrasting observations among the regional
members therefore has formed an environment of mistrust, which in turn has constructed
the entire regional structure anarchic, and the regional organization, SAARC, lesseffective.
As a multilateral organization, functionally, SAARC has also been repeatedly
affected by the hegemonic postures of India. As for instance, from 1985 to 2005, total
eight SAARC Summits have been postponed due to the refusal of the member states to
join the Summits. For five times out of eight, the cancellations have come from India
alone. 16
Moreover, given the sharp disparity of power between India and her South Asian
neighbors and the projection of the dominant nature by India towards the other regional
members, Indian pursuit of bilateralism instead of multilateral engagements has made the
SAARC less-effective as a regional platform. 17 India feels comfort to deal the political
disputes with her neighbors in a bilateral basis because of two possible reasons. Firstly,
while India involves in any bilateral engagement with her neighbors, at the very first
point, she obtains the commanding position over the counterparts because of the apparent
power-asymmetry.18 Secondly, since it is a bilateral platform, even after realizing the
relative advantageous position of India, the counterpart may not bring the issue into any
multilateral platform, either in regional, like SAARC, or in international, like the United
Nations (UN).19 Therefore, India has never agreed to discuss these issues into the
regional platform of SAARC, while apprehended to lose the commanding position over
the neighbors realizing that the fellow countries might agree on the anti-Indian sentiment.
A number of scholars might argue that the SAARC Charter itself prohibits the
inclusion of any bilateral issue in the table of discussion.20 Since it is a consensual accord
among the SAARC members, India alone could not be blamed for the reluctance of the
inclusion of bilateral disputes in SAARC forum. However, some contradicts with that
14

Kautilya (also known as Chanakya) was an ancient Indian strategist. He was the Brahmin prime minister
of the first Mauryan emperor of the fourth century B.C. and the author of Arthasastra (The Science of
Material Gain). For details, see, Imtiaz Ahmed, State and Foreign Policy: Indias Role in South Asia,
Academic Publishers, Dhaka, 1993.
15
Imtiaz Ahmed, 1993, pp. 216-223, op. cit.; Pranay Sharma, Overcoming trust deficit, Seminar: Our
Troubled Neighborhood, Issue no. 584, April 2008.
16
Shamim Ahmed Rizvi, SAARC Summit Postponement Disappoints Member Countries, Pakistan
Economist, February 14-20, 2005.
17
Charu Lata, India and its Neighbors: Do Economic Interests have the Potential to build peace?, A
Chatham House Report in association with International Alert, The Royal Institute of International
Affairs and International Alert, October 2007, p. 8.
18
Shah Alam, SAARC in the Foreign Policy Objective of Bangladesh, in The Issues and Challenges
facing Bangladesh Foreign Policy, edited by M. G. Kabir and Shaukat Hossain, Bangladesh Society of
International Studies, Dhaka, 1989, p. 145.
19
Manisha Gunasekera, Why is SAARC not Working?, in An Exercise of Worldmaking: 2008, Institute
of Social Studies, Netherlands, 2009, p. 176.
20
See, Article X of SAARC Charter titled as General Provisions, available at: http://saarcsdmc.nic.in/pdf/charter.pdf

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view by arguing that, Indias insistence, as the key regional power, has greatly
contributed to the exclusion of the discussion on bilateral disputes within SAARC.21
Secondly, after more than twenty-five years of its establishment, although
SAARC has addressed several sectors of cooperation among the regional powers, such as
action against terrorism and narcotic drugs, trade, rural development, media, SAARC
institutional mechanisms, agriculture, environment, people, poverty alleviation,
education, nuclear non-proliferation, women empowerment, and so on,22 but the
organization could not address and discuss the major political disputes among the
member states, such as dispute between India and Pakistan on Kashmir, water-sharing
dispute between Bangladesh and India or border dispute between Bangladesh and India. 23
In spite of resolving such disagreements on political and security arenas, the
effective cooperation among the members is obviously unachievable in an anarchic
regional structure.24 It is due to the organization has never been equipped to talk about the
key bilateral disputes in the region. 25 In this regard, again, India, as the primary regional
force, could also not maintain her proper responsibility, either because of the internal
political pressure, or because of her strategic outlook about the South Asian neighbors,
where they are often considered as rivals.
However, the achievements of SAARC in non-political arenas are also not
satisfactory. Still the organization lacks to attain the proper and effective mechanism of
ensuring peace and stability within the region through the cooperation into non-political
arenas.26 Along with the examples of cooperation in few areas like education, media and
environment; prescribed goals have also not been achieved yet on the issue of action
against terrorism, narcotic drugs, and trafficking women and children. Targeted goals
could also not be attained in terms of advancing the regional trade and commerce because
of ineffective implementation. 27
Thirdly, the expansionist nature of India and the following mistrust between India
and her South Asian neighbors consecutively undermine the functioning of SAARC as a
supranational authority to abolish the anarchic structure in South Asia. Hence, the
malfunctioning of SAARC as an effective regional organization is because of the
existence of anarchic international relations among the states within the region. Small
powers within the region look for the balance of power with India, whereas India, being
21

M. Serajul Islam, SAARC: Still limping after a quarter century, The Daily Star, May 8, 2010.
See, Muhammad Jamshed Iqbal, SAARC: Origin, Growth, Potential and Achievements, Pakistan
Journal of History and Culture, Vol XXVII, No. 2, 2006, p. 135.
23
K.V. Kesavan, India and Community Building in Asia: From Idealism to Realism, Ritsumeikan Annual
Review of International Studies, Vol. 4, 2005, p. 17.
24
See, Ralf Emmers, Cooperative Security and the Balance of Power in ASEAN and the ARF, Routledge,
New York, 2003, pp. 1-9.
25
S.D. Muni, Strategic Architecture in South Asia: Some Conceptual Parameters, in Cooperative
Security Framework for South Asia, edited by Nihar Nayak, Pentagon Press, New Delhi, 2013, p. 7.
26
See, Dev Raj Dahal, Track II Diplomacy in South Asia: Limits and Possibilities for Regional
Cooperation, 2010, available at: http://www.nepaldemocracy.org/documents/Track%20ii_drd.pdf
27
V.V. Desai, 2010, p. 29, op. cit.
22

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the key regional power, thrives to achieve benign hegemonic status from its South Asian
neighbors. Such kind of clash in terms of interests and perception as well as the uneven
reality of power disparity between India and her regional fellows continuously
undermines the regional unity and following the effectiveness of SAARC.28
The primary example of the failure of SAARC initiatives to foster regional
development through cooperation among the member states is the case of South Asian
Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA). SAFTA was initiated in 2004 by SAARC to ensure the
gradual increase of intra-regional trade.29 But after more than a half-decade, the intraregional trade among the SAARC countries remains very inactive comparing to their
extra-regional trade. Up to 2011, intra-regional trade in South Asia accounts only 5
percent of the total trade volume of the regional members, compared to the EU intra-trade
figure of around 60 percent and ASEAN figures of around 25 percent.30 The mistrust
among the South Asian members and, particularly, the lack of interest by India to the
advancement of intra-regional trade cooperation remain the key factors behind the failure
of SAFTA. Being the regional economic powerhouse, India sought to provide more
opportunities to her neighbors to foster the intra-regional trade. But, India, through
imposing quotas, tariff and other trade barriers, has sustained a high volume of trade gap
between herself and her South Asian neighbors.31
Thus, if we contextualize that situation offered by the neo-realists, with the
practical example of SAARC as a multilateral regional organization in South Asia, it
seems easier to understand the underlying causes of the malfunctioning of that regional
body. A number of major neo-realist concepts, such as, the power asymmetry, relative
gain, the hegemonic postures of the leading power and the balancing strategies by the
weaker states to ensure their individual survival could simply be applied to the South
Asian realities. For being the primary regional power, Indias role has always been more
focused with regard to the effectiveness of any regional arrangement. But, given the
relative gain preferences, India has often tended to exercise the hegemonic postures out
of her international relations with the smaller South Asian neighbors. Hence, despite the
changing realities of the regional politics, some major foreign policy strategies pursued
by the SAARC members, especially India, have contributed to the maintenance of the
anarchic regional structure as well as have hindered the multilateral cooperation among
them.

28

Raghav Thapar, SAARC: Ineffective in Promoting Economic Cooperation in South Asia, Stanford
Journal of International Relations, May 24, 2006; see also: Shah Muhammad Ikhtiar Jahan Kabir,
Regionalism in South Asia: A Critique of the Functionalist Approach. Academic Press and Publishers
Library (APPL), Dhaka, 2009, p. 102.
29
See, Syed Aminul Hoque and Rezaul Karim Chowdhury, SAARC Campaign Brief, available at:
http://www.equitybd.org/publication/Pubication_on_PSAARC2010/SAARC_Regional_integration.pdf
30
David Scott, 2011, p. 122, op. cit.
31
R. S. Ratna and Geetu Sidhu, Making SAFTA a Success: The Role of India, Research Report,
Commonwealth Secretariat, India, pp. 19-20, available at: http://www.thecommonwealth.org/files/
178426/FileName/SAFTA%20and%20India%20-%20Final%20doc1.pdf

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