Stronger roots to BIMSTEC

(MiansGS2:Bilateral, regional and global groupings and agreements involving India and/or affecting India’s interests.)

Context:

37 years ago on December 8, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) was established by Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka to promote economic growth in South Asia and Afghanistan acceded to SAARC later.

Weakened SAARC:

South Asia, that is India’s neighborhood, is important for India’s national interests and this is best captured in the current government’s ‘neighborhood first’ policy.
The deterioration in India-Pakistan relations has coincided with the incapacitation of SAARC, much to the delight of Pakistan.
Pakistan has adopted an obstructionist attitude within SAARC by repeatedly blocking several vital initiatives such as the motor vehicles agreement, aimed at bolstering regional connectivity.
A weakened SAARC also means heightened instability in other promising regional institutions such as the South Asian University (SAU), which is critical to buttressing India’s soft power in the region.
Since South Asia cannot repudiate regionalism, reviving SAARC by infusing political energy into it and updating its dated Charter will be an ideal way forward but in the current scenario, this is too idealistic.

Looking at BIMSTEC:

The intraregional trade and investment in South Asia are very low when compared to other regions such as the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and Sub-Saharan Africa.
So, the next best scenario is to look at other regional instruments such as the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral, Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC).
In recent years, India seems to have moved its diplomatic energy away from SAARC to BIMSTEC which resulted in BIMSTEC, after 25 years, finally adopting its Charter earlier this year.

About BIMSTEC:

The Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) is a regional organization comprising seven Member States lying in the littoral and adjacent areas of the Bay of Bengal constituting a contiguous regional unity.
This sub-regional organization came into being on 6 June 1997 through the Bangkok Declaration having seven Member States: five deriving from South Asia, including Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and two from Southeast Asia, including Myanmar and Thailand.
The objective of building such an alliance was to harness shared and accelerated growth through mutual cooperation in different areas of common interests by mitigating the onslaught of globalization and by utilizing regional resources and geographical advantages. Unlike many other regional groupings, BIMSTEC is a sector-driven cooperative organization.

The BIMSTEC Charter:

The BIMSTEC Charter is significantly better than the SAARC Charter as unlike the SAARC Charter, Article 6 of the BIMSTEC Charter talks about the ‘Admission of new members’ to the group.
This paves the way for the admission of countries such as the Maldives.
Notwithstanding the improvements, the BIMSTEC Charter, to boost economic integration, does not contain the flexible participation scheme of the kind present in the ASEAN Charter.
This flexible scheme, also known as the ‘ASEAN Minus X’ formula, allows two or more ASEAN members to initiate negotiations for economic commitments.
Thus, no country enjoys veto power to thwart economic integration between willing countries.
A flexible ‘BIMSTEC Minus X’ formula might have allowed India and Bangladesh or India and Thailand to conduct their ongoing bilateral free trade agreement (FTA) negotiations under the broader BIMSTEC umbrella.
This would have eventually strengthened BIMSTEC by enabling the gradual and incremental expansion of these binding commitments to other members.

Conclusion:

BIMSTEC should not end up as another SAARC and for this, its member countries should raise the stakes with a high-quality FTA offering deep economic integration would be an ideal step.