In sickness and in health
How border regions can be central to building a post-pandemic Southasia.
(This article is part of our special series Unmasking Southasia: The pandemic issue. You can read the editorial note to the series here.)
In many ways, the call for the regional revival of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 was designed to fail. After all, the geopolitical red tape that followed the creation of the COVID-19 Emergency Fund played to a predictable pattern of gridlocked regionalism, with India and Pakistan at loggerheads about how the funding was to be disbursed. Plagued by chronic trust deficit, weak institutionalisation and stasis, Southasia once again finds itself between a rock and a hard place. This failure raises fundamental questions about how Southasia chooses to engage with questions of benefit sharing, trade-offs and the allocation of risks and burdens within the neighbourhood. But the
Posted on December 19th, 2020
By Sugeeswara Senadhira Courtesy NewsIn.Asia
Colombo, December 18 (Daily News): Gone are the days of military blocs. The new-in is multilateral platforms for economic, trade and strategic cooperation. Sri Lanka became a founder member of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) with much hope of becoming a major economic beneficiary. Before long, these hopes started to recede due to unresolvable differences between two of SAARC’s main members, India and Pakistan.
Then Sri Lanka as well as other smaller members of SAARC started to look for alternative bodies for multilateral economic cooperation. Two such regional associations offered substantial potential for economic cooperation – the Bay of Bengal Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) and the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA).
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19th Dec 2020
Only six years left before the 1996 Ganges Water Sharing Treaty expires. It may appear that six years is a long time to negotiate a mutually agreeable treaty, especially when there exists a long-term treaty and both Bangladesh and India agreed that “it shall be renewable on the basis of mutual consent” (Article-XII). However, for multi-lateral discussion, which we are envisioning through this article, time is of the essence. The authors of this article are of the opinion that a bilateral treaty falls short of a sustainable solution to Bangladesh; it is important to strive to achieve an integrated water-sediment-biodiversity-land use management compact involving all co-riparian nations in the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna (GBM) basin. Besides, the lessons learned from the implementation of the existing Treaty should be taken into account in formulating a new integrated basin-scale negotiation. A critical evaluation of the Treaty will help formulate a more pr
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New Delhi, December 17
In a reflection of their rapidly growing ties, India and Bangladesh on Thursday sealed seven agreements to further broadbase cooperation in a plethora of sectors, and restored a cross-border rail link snapped by the 1965 war with Pakistan.
The restoration of the Chilahati-Haldibari railway link and signing of the pacts, providing for cooperation in areas of hydrocarbons, agriculture and textiles among others, came at a virtual summit between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bangladeshi counterpart Sheikh Hasina.
In his opening remarks, Modi said the holding of the virtual summit immediately after celebration of the Vijay Diwas (Victory Day) assumed special significance and noted that Bangladesh is a key pillar of India s Neighbourhood First policy.
China has embarked on a grand journey west. Officials in Beijing are driven by aspirations of leadership across their home continent of Asia, feelings of being hemmed in on their eastern flank by U.S. alliances, and their perception that opportunities await across Eurasia and the Indian Ocean. Along the way, their first stop is South Asia, which this report defines as comprising eight countries Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka along with the Indian Ocean (particularly the eastern portions but with implications for its entirety). China’s ties to the region are long-standing and date back well before the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949.