REIMAGINING REGIONALISM: REVITALIZING SAARC FOR A PRAGMATIC SOUTH ASIAN INTEGRATION

The modern panacea for many economic and political ills is regional integration.Globally,regional organizations have served as essential role in promoting political stability,socio cultural exchange,and economic cooperation between neighboring states. South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation(SAARC) was also established aiming at regional integration,collective self-reliance and economic connectivity.SAARC has achieved some success in a number of areas,such as regional conventions on areas like trafficking and terrorism,the South Asian University,and cultural exchange programs.These successes reveal its latent potential when political will aligns.However,for many years,its performance proved to be disappointing because of a lot of political riddles, its ineffectiveness, stagnation, and inability to implement key initiatives. SAARC critics bring up causes for ineffectiveness of SAARC as an argument to look for options beyond SAARC and find alternate avenues for regional cooperation.As a matter of fact,renewed efforts rethinking regional priorities and enabling SAARC to fulfill its promises are need of the hour,not the other way around.The revitalization of SAARC by rethinking regional priorities, enhancing institutional mechanisms, and promoting depoliticized cooperation, in this regard, could be a better option or South Asian integration. Additionally, with a pragmatic way forward, challenges can be turned into opportunities. The study makes the case that SAARC can still be a successful tool for South Asian integration if it adopts a practical and depoliticized approach. Therefore, this paper tries to reestablish the relevance of SAARC in contemporary regional environment by exploring objectives behind its origin, its previous achievements and capacity to bring all SAARC members on the same page for regional growth. Moreover, it tries to proffer the fact that SAARC is still alive and regional states can adopt a collective course of action to make it effective.