The South Asian region

How is the South Asian region in geographic, political and economic terms?

Geography

With a total area of 5.099.611 km2, SAARC countries represent 3% of the world’s surface. Furthermore, it accounts for the 21% of the world’s population, this is, 1.7 billion is represented by the organization.

When it comes to the borders, with the exception of Afghanistan all six members share frontiers with India, whose population alone represents 17.74% of the total world’s inhabitants.

Economy

Economically, although the main idea in the moment of SAARC’s creation was that of free trade among the member states, trading activities beyond the borders of SAARC’s nations were in fact restricted. However, in recent years there has been an improvement in the economic relations between SAARC members. In addition, activities have been carried out in order to attract direct foreign investments.

As mentioned above, SAARC has not been a representative of economic success during the

past years, especially due to clashes between India, which is considered to be the core of

the organization and the neighboring member states. As a consequence, South Asian

countries have opted for bilateral trading instead of multilateral trade agreements, which

would strengthen the economic power of the nations included in the organization.

However, more recently policies for economic integration have been adopted, including

seminars and conferences to improve cooperation among SAARC nations. In addition, there

is an intraregional trading trend, triggered by the interest Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh

have to promote this kind of trend.

South Asian GDP growth

Politics

Political differences within the organization have always been a core issue. Specifically, SAARC has been unable to fulfill many of its original goals due to inter-state conflicts between the member states. In other words, the concept of regional cooperation is often perceived differently by the different states, and thus regionalism is hard to achieve.

In addition, it has been argued that the organization has an Indo-centric perception, which is generally also shared by global diplomatic actors. Since India represents the vast majority of the population that is part of the SAARC, the country’s neighbors are concerned about it interfering in their affairs. One major fear shared by all member states is the undermining of their autonomy by India, which has influenced cooperative policies of SAARC. Indeed, SAARC is highly dominated by India. This latter country accounts with nearly three-fourths of the total GDP and population of SAARC, as well as nearly 60 percent of its total international trade. Moreover, there is not only tension from the relatively smaller countries towards India, but also on the other way around.

This contributes to the lack of trust that exists among the member states, which are still dealing with conflicts between them.