COLOMBO: With one week to go before the Saarc summit several hundred peace and civil society activists have been converging on the Sri Lankan capital, where for three days from July 18 they would try to find “lasting solutions” to issues like survival with dignity, democracy, corporate globalisation, unfair trade practices, fundamentalism, gender bias.

The focus would be on the creation of a “people’s union of South Asia” because they believe that lasting solutions can only be regional, and not through narrow nationalist approach. Participants of the “People’s Saarc” believe that unless regional countries have more trade among themselves, they cannot confront the negative fallout of globalisation and neo-colonialism. Hence the need for a people’s union.

The formation of South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) gave birth to hopes for people-to-people contacts. But Saarc failed to realise dreams for a better South Asia.

The proponents of the new platform believe that the ruling class is under the spell of a development “mania” hammered into them by the champions of economic globalism and integration.

A major feature of this integration is the increased operation of global capital within these countries with minimal restrictions. This process has been accentuated by the free flow of capital with the pro-active intervention of World Bank–IMF and WTO. These institutions provide the synergy necessary for global capital to penetrate small economies.

Multilateral creditors (IMF and World Bank being the most important among these) impose conditions that impinge on economic sovereignty of the debtor country. The governments of these countries are in a rush to open up their market to global capital.

They bend over backwards to align themselves with the aims and objectives of the neo-imperialist forces, led by the United States.

Agriculture is the mainstay for millions of people in South Asia. The current economic trends have plunged agriculture into a crisis. The poor peasant is in distress. Corporate logic, single cash crops, dependence on corporate seeds, fertilisers and pesticides as well as vulnerability to vagaries of the market, has made agriculture cash-intensive.

This has pushed the peasant into a debt trap that often becomes a death trap. Millions are forced to sell off their land and become urban destitute in search of livelihood.

With the globalising of the South Asian economy there is a radical reorganisation of manufacturing activity. The manufacturing process is trans-nationalised, fragmented and dispersed across the country.

It becomes extremely capital-intensive and constantly replaces labour.

The absence of peace is evident everywhere in South Asia, encompassing the political, economic, social, communal and ethnic, fabric of society. Protracted conflicts produce a vicious cycle of civil war, death, displacement of non-combatants and violation of human rights.

The absence of peace is the pretext being used by South Asian governments to suspend democratic and human rights. Democracy and a democratic culture are at their worst; militarism and militarisation are at their peak.

Denial of rights to the citizen is a major concern in South Asia. The present system exploits every crisis for taking away democratic rights and substituting them with draconian powers.

The most reproachable aspect of the ‘war on terror’ is that even if the purported targets are terrorists, the victims are often innocent civilians and their suffering reinforces the terrorists’ cause. The ‘war against terror’ has relied only on military actions and ruled out a political approach and solutions based on dialogue.

The “people’s Saarc’ platform believes that a holistic understanding of peace has to be discovered by rejecting the current dominant culture of war and by cultivating a culture of peace. Peace is a pre-condition for a dignified life.

South Asia is among the world’s most conflict-prone regions thanks to a colonial past and the current war on terror. Democratic process gets derailed all too often, legislatures hardly exist, emergencies alternate with army rule, monarchs lie in wait, armies administer in the name of civilian rule, incarceration without trial, torture and rape are the norm. As if these were not enough, a judiciary committed to the neo-liberal dogma has not helped matters. The course of our democratic journey stands reversed.

What the countries of the South Asia need today is an ability to think out of the box and to dream dreams that can turn the idea of a “South Asian Union” into a reality. The dream for such a “People’s Union of South Asia” could be a creative force that could transcend the reified notion of a post-colonial nation-state.

This would help subvert the narrow nationalist discourse that erects

walls of suspicion, encourages hostilities and intolerance, and prohibits a free interaction of people so as to maintain the hegemony of the ruling classes.

South Asia needs to stop a free trade model that has been responsible for increasing poverty, trafficking of human beings, food insecurity and environmental destruction in the region. All countries in the region must first freeze their defence budget and then cut it at least by 10 per cent every year and divert this amount to social development.