It does look like that, given the levels of maturity of the administration of both Pakistan and India. And it will be a pity if SAARC comes to an end. In my opinion, with the wisdom born of hindsight, the original formation of the group was faulty; this was bound to happen.
Honourable Joe Shearer,
I agree with you that it is a pity that SAARC has come to this. Because India vs Pakistan debates get emotionally charged, few members of this forum care to critically analyse the issue.
Without doubt this boycott is India inspired but Indian gov’t is not stupid and the consequences of this action, that is dissolution of SAARC, must have been considered.
Whatever may have been the wishes of the leaders in 1985 when it was created; in my opinion political will to genuinely form a regional economic cooperation forum never existed. This is evident from:
South Asian Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA) reached in 2004 which came into force in 2006 after being ratified by all the member countries; never really worked.
Pakistan never gave India MFN Status. Even though India ostensibly granted Pakistan MFN status, understand that there is so much red tape in the Indian Bureaucracy that at the ground level, the results amount to nothing, hence trade relations among the SAARC countries have not improved by much.
Intra-regional trade is still less than 5% of the trade volume of the SAARC countries. This is because despite MFN status, tariff barriers still remain high and the concept of ‘Sensitive list’ means that countries can regulate the trade by putting whatever commodities they desire in the sensitive list. Moreover in the 30 years since 1985, only 11 SAARC Summits took place which shows how little importance was given to SAARC at the political level.
India’s overwhelming superiority in terms of physical size as well as the economy, intimidates smaller member countries who feel insecure and fear India’s political ambitions for the regional dominance. The pursuit of keeping independent regional identity is an impediment in getting the countries to come together.
There are unresolved border & maritime issues and rivalry between India & Pakistan has always hovered heavily on SAARC meetings. Even though political disputes affect trade relations, such disputes cannot be discussed in the SAARC meetings.
Admittedly based upon 20/20 hindsight, I have come to the conclusion that in the long run, this event may turn out to be a good thing