Imagine A New SouthAsia
Social Protection in South Asia
Siri Hettige*
In all the South Asian countries, formal protection supported by social legislation is confined to a small minority of households. Informal sector workers, the self-employed, the elderly, casual employees and migrant workers who together constitute the vast majority of the adult population remains outside the formal system of social protection. Families not protected by such systems are extremely vulnerable to market fluctuations, natural disasters and health risks. This situation is unlikely to improve in the near future as governments and international institutions are not prepared to introduce progressive social legislation to extend social protection to excluded groups. On the other hand, social safety nets and self-employment promotion on the basis of micro credit are advocated as a way of ensuring socio-economic security for vulnerable groups but these do not provide adequate social protection.
This paper intends to take stock of the present state of affairs in each of the South Asian country with respect to social protection. The paper will also consider various policy options.
* Siri Hettige is associated with SPARC, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka.
Natural Resource Governance: Way Forward for a New South Asia
Arun Shrivastav*, Abid Qaiyum Suleri**, and Mehnaz Ajmal Paracha***
It is widely accepted that one should think of collective strategies to cope with common problems facing South Asia. Problems such as poverty, disease, hunger, conflicts, negative effects of climate change, energy crisis, governance issues, disasters, and eroding natural resources, etc., are common stumbling blocks to sustainable development in the region. Most of these problems know no boundaries. The same is true for natural resources (to be perceived beyond management) where weak governance is increasing cross boundary issues among South Asian neighbors. The work presented in this paper tries to suggest how one may come up with a collective approach to address natural resources governance in the region.
Political economy of “Natural Resource Governance” is a major focus of this paper. Issues like energy, land, bio-diversity, water and atmosphere governance will be discussed at length using a “people centric view”. It will also discuss the pressure, state and response framework to identify the common pressures facing South Asia. Through this paper collective responses to cope with those pressures are proposed. Broadly, the paper will try to answer the following major questions:
What are the common problems in natural resources sector across South Asia? How are they interlinked with other dimensions of sustainable development and how can one try to address them by following a regional approach?
- What are the options to ensure food and water security in South Asia, and how can they be utilized?
- How can the policies be implemented at the regional level without impinging on the respective national interest?
- How can civil society be strengthened to play its role more effectively on policies around regional natural resources governance?.
- How improved natural resources governance can help in reducing cross-boundary conflicts?
The approach of this paper is to discuss issues regarding “natural resources” from environmental discipline under broader sustainable development paradigm using a trans-disciplinary framework. Trans-disciplinary is a refined version of participatory research where disciplines transcend and those who could be affected by outcomes of the research, either positively or negatively, are involved in designing of the agenda as well as basic research questions. The argument brought forwarded in this paper is that in order to imagine a new South Asia, a region free from poverty, hunger, disease, war, conflict, and social injustice, a collective regional governance of natural resources is important. The mere fact that this paper is not another addition in literature on environmental sciences but a discussion on the political economy of natural resource management, with a way forward to sustainable management of natural resources and that makes it interesting and reader friendly for people from all walks of life.
The paper may serve as a baseline to comprehend the state of natural resources, pressures on natural resources, and existing as well as possible responses to these pressures in South Asia. Thus, it would prove a benchmark work for authors writing on this subject in years to come. A concept of new South Asia free from “policy-led” poverty and man-made disasters is brought forward. Collective regional responses to issues around natural resources are considered a prerequisite for a new South Asia.
* Mr. Arun Shrivastav is a management consultant. His expertise lies in planning of cross-sectoral programs at community level encompassing watershed protection and management, sustainable food production, health and sanitation, mass literacy, continuing education, computer literacy, and sustainable livelihoods.
 ** Dr. Abid Qaiyum Suleri is Executive Director, Sustainable Development Policy Institute, Islamabad, Pakistan.
*** Ms Mehnaz Ajmal Paracha is a Research Associate, Sustainable Development Policy Institute, Islamabad, Pakistan.
South Asian Parliament: A Step Towards South Asian Integration
Syed Naveed Qamar* and Zulfiqar Halepoto**
Presently, the world is moving towards regional block politics under the premise of enhanced socio-economic development through regional cooperation, integration and linkages. Some very important moves of regional integration are European Union (EU), Southeast Asia (ASEAN), West Africa (ECOWAS), South Asia (SAARC), Latin American (MERCOSUR), North America (NAFTA) and latest move of Mediterranean Union. The idea of South Asian political integration through a common parliament is an effort of looking into the context of newly established discourse of regionalism, unionism and globalization.
South Asian Parliament would be an empowered parliament like the European Parliament. Thereby, all issues of the region or which are common to the region will be decided through a political parliamentary process and not just through the normal bureaucratic or bilateral process through officials. When people push or pressurize their electoral representatives, then things move much faster than merely through officials terms.
Since South Asia is not a homogenous region in terms of demography and population, there is a lot of fear among the smaller countries and in some ways from the Nepali perspective; even Bangladesh and Pakistan are relatively larger countries. However, from the Pakistani and Bangladeshi perspective, India is a large country. This can be resolved by having a bicameral parliament rather than a unicameral parliament with an upper and lower houses where the lower house is purely based on population while the upper house is based on equal representation or voting by each state, no matter how large or small in size. Therefore, the interests are taken care of by both the houses working together so no single house alone can pass any legislation. Both houses must make it acceptable and applicable.
The basic idea is to develop an argument that does not necessarily say, "Here we have resolutions for all the problems in South Asia". We are looking at those things, which seem to be too difficult to achieve at this moment but perhaps will be achievable somewhere down the line, or at a future point in time. There is a need to involve people from the rest of the countries.
Looking at the changing global economic and political realities of regional integration of the world, now the leadership of the region is urging to push forward the idea of a South Asian Parliament in its true sense. It is the responsibility of the governments, political parties having legislators, civil society, media and think tanks to work upon this idea and to devise ways and means, which will make South Asian Parliament a reality in the near future. For the realization of this dream the parliamentarians, civil society, student, citizens, think tanks and media people of the eight SAARC countries should continue to meet periodically and this continuous process will provide a push to SAARC, which will unfold and provide flesh and blood to the SAARC vision. The SAARC experience, till date has shown that neither politics nor economics alone, in isolation, could resolve and expand the concept of regional integration in South Asia. It is only a strong binding between politics and economics that may help develop a political strategy that would dissolve the economic bottlenecks hindering integration.
Political leadership in South Asia has an important role to play. Everything cannot be left to the governments and bureaucrats. A South Asian Parliament is not only the need of the hour but it is our shared responsibility to support this vision.
The paper focuses on background models of regional integration and unionism across world coupled with the proposed structure, objectives and systems and processes of the South-Asian Parliament.
* Syed Naveed Qamar is Federal Minister for Privatization and Investment and Ports and Shipping, Government of Pakistan. He has served as Federal Minister for Finance and Privatisation in 1996, Chairman, Privatisation Commission in 1993, and Provincial Minister for Information Government of Sindh in 1990.
** Zulfiqar Halepoto is a water and environmental columnist and political analyst. He is Secretary of Sindh Democratic Forum (SDF) - a civil society think tank based in Sindh, Pakistan.
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