NEW DELHI: Last week, India spelt out its emerging thinking and policy towards its neighbours in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc).

In a public speech, Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran - the chief of the Indian diplomatic service - announced a more assertive approach, to which economic cooperation, leading to a South Asian common market, would be central.

The speech was meant to allay misgivings caused by India's recent decision not to attend the annual Saarc summit heads in view of the political turmoil and disturbed security situation in Bangladesh, and King Gyanendra's coup in Nepal.

However, Foreign Secretary Saran may have ended up rustling more feathers than he bargained for. The neighbours are likely to see his speech as a hubris-driven attempt to declare India's pre-eminence in South Asia and to talk down to them.

"The excessive assertiveness Saran outlined won't go down well with India's neighbours," Zoya Hasan, professor of political science at Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University, told IPS.

Saran's message to policy-makers in Saarc was blunt: "India is today one of the most dynamic and fastest growing economies of the world. It constitutes not only a vast and growing market, but also a competitive source of technologies and knowledge-based services. Countries across the globe are beginning to see India as an indispensable economic partner."

India's neighbours too should seek to share in India's economic destiny and the prospect of prosperity, added Saran. If they didn't, he warned, they will lose out and Saarc would become a "limping shadow" of its true potential.

Said Saran: "India accepts that as the largest country in the region and its strongest economy, it has greater responsibility to encourage the Saarc process ... It has already accepted the principle of non-reciprocity. We are prepared to do more."

However, this will come at a price. According to Saran, India's neighbours must demonstrate sensitivity to its vital concerns, which "relate to allowing the use of their territories for cross-border terrorism and hostile activity for example, by insurgent groups."

And then comes what many will see as a scarcely veiled threat by the Indian foreign secretary: "We need to create a positive and constructive environment by avoiding hostile propaganda and intemperate statements. India cannot and will not ignore such conduct and will take whatever steps are necessary to safeguard its interests."

Aijaz Ahmad, an eminent scholar, who currently holds the Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan Chair at Jamia-Millia Islamia University in Delhi, argues that Saran's assumption implies "that other Saarc members do not have their own vital security concerns and interests."

"Apart from the great asymmetry of power between India and themselves, they also have reason to fear that India could arrogantly assert its hegemonic ambitions, as it did in the late 1980s by sending troops to Sri Lanka and Maldives, and imposing an economic blockade on Nepal," he said.

Saran was emphatic that economic issues must be at the core of Saarc's rationale. Unlike, say, the European Union or Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), ''the countries of South Asia, while occupying the same geographical space, do not have a shared security perception and, hence, a common security doctrine."

It is true that Saarc has not taken up many collaborative projects, nor registered rapid progress towards a regional free-trade zone. But one reason for this is the apprehension among India's neighbours of being overwhelmed.

Bangladesh and Nepal have expressed reservations about accepting a free-trade regime and demanded special treatment as "least- developed" countries. Even Pakistan has been cautious in moving towards a South Asian Free Trade Area.

The neighbours' fears are not baseless. In global forums, India expresses those very fears often vis-à-vis the developed countries. It resists the demand for free trade by hedging it with conditions of fairness and equity - as it successfully did at the World Trade Organization ministerial meeting at Cancun in 2003.

Even under its pro-neoliberal Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, India urges the developed countries to review the current terms of globalization "by making it more inclusive, more just and more equitable."

Yet, within Saarc, Indian behaviour towards its economically weaker neighbours is very similar to the Northern states' conduct towards the South globally. -Dawn/The Inter Press News Service