BIMSTEC continues to show intent

(MainsGS2:Bilateral, regional and global groupings and agreements involving India and/or affecting India’s interests.)

Context:

• Among the many regional organisations in the Global South, the BIMSTEC is a platform which offers an excellent template for understanding the complexities of engagement among countries which are at different stages of political and economic maturity, and with compound domestic challenges.
• The BIMSTEC is well-positioned to gear shared efforts towards the harnessing of economic, natural, and labour potential of member nations.

Actions and resolve:

• Much like the progress and relevance of multilateral cooperation, the fate of BIMSTEC too needs to be contextualized in a world order that demands action and resolve.
• The geographical limits of BIMSTEC suffer from poor intra-regional connectivity which is fundamental to enhancing economic engagement and the grouping itself is beleaguered by the lack of an institutional structure, operational blueprint, and financial resources.
• However, the BIMSTEC has indeed shown intent in recent years with member nations taking the first steps since the organisation’s inception towards the latter agency, mobility, and funds. 
• These include the adoption of a charter that accords the grouping a legal status; a reduction in the number of priority areas from 14 to seven pillars, pledging of funds to the operational budget to ensure actionable policy measures can be undertaken, enabling improved coordination among the seven member countries, and the signing of memorandums on technology transfer, diplomatic training and a master plan on connectivity.

Rules of realpolitik:

• 21st-century global affairs cannot be categorised into neat boxes but is rather illustrative of complex interactions driven in large part by considerations of national and economic interest while being peppered with engagement formats and goals directed towards common, global solutions.
• These complex interactions are in turn reflective of the composite nature of challenges that the world faces today.
• They are in essence, hybrid affairs, combining universal aspirations such as human rights with a more prosaic system of managed competition.

Function-based cooperation:

• The biggest limitations of multilateral engagement are ineffectiveness and becoming unwieldy—as they comprise several member countries—in terms of certain types of decision-making, particularly, those which are political. 
• This is particularly true of large regional or global organisations, with ASEAN being the exception that proves the rule. 
• To mitigate this challenge, smaller and more focused undertakings began in recent years in the form of minilateral engagement to enable smaller, and more ‘like-minded’ nations to band together for function-based cooperation.

 Unique opportunity:

• Multilateral forums also allow for united articulations of challenges unique to particular regions. 
• Among the BIMSTEC’s common challenges are irregular migration, environmental degradation, transnational crimes, terrorism and insurgencies and drug trafficking, the efforts towards the mitigation of many of which, particularly the issue of migration and climate action, need the involvement of the world’s major powers.
•  India’s G20 presidency in 2023 offers a unique opportunity to leverage New Delhi’s enhanced position in global politics to usher support for BIMSTEC’s necessities and objectives.

Conclusion:

• When the BIMSTEC was ‘revived’ after remaining dormant for over two decades, the degree of optimism overshadowed the underlying scepticism and demonstrated intent, thus, BIMSTEC’s promise holds more sway than its impediments.