Editorial
The hard realities before BIMSTEC
A strategy for purposeful cooperation is the need
THE BIMSTEC ministerial conference on poverty alleviation in the region is certainly a timely move. And it is so because of the very crucial issues which the region in particular and the world in general happen to be confronted with at the moment. The Chief Adviser has pointed to some of those issues. We may note that tackling those issues are important if the programme against poverty is to have any meaning. In this context, it would be well to recall the very reasons for which the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) was established in 1997; and of course those reasons are all self-explanatory. At a time when regional cooperation around the world on fundamental economic and political issues has become something of a norm, and necessarily so, it is only natural that BIMSTEC too will be expected to throw up the results one desires of it.
We hardly need to remind ourselves of the extent of poverty which dogs the region. That fact, coupled with the recent rise in prices of food across the globe, has clearly upped the pressure on BIMSTEC member states to undertake urgent steps toward dealing with the crisis. One way of tackling the problem is to increase the level and frequency of cooperation, especially when the matter is one of rolling back poverty. BIMSTEC has arrived at a stage where it can seriously reflect on the need to set up a common fund to assist the poorer sections of people among member states. And with food prices being an increasingly bigger problem, it makes sense to suggest that a regional food bank be mulled over. The reason is obvious. With little guarantee that poorer nations can in future pay for the food they wish to buy from nations with good stocks, it becomes important that BIMSTEC nations undertake a long-term program to replenish their stocks and at the same time devise a formula vis-à-vis collective food security among themselves. Apart from that, the growing threat from climate change is an area where the organisation should be formulating a strategy to combat the menace. News on that front does not look good and hence the need for a collective handling of what appears to be impending trouble.
In simple terms, a lot more beef needs to be put on the BIMSTEC bone if it means to become a well-meaning organisation. Nothing could more help that process along than for member states to develop and expand ties in trade, eventually to a point where they can emulate the cooperative patterns of economy observed elsewhere around the globe. In other words, BIMSTEC member states should begin thinking of a free, open market for and among themselves.
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