Bridging The Waters

So when the Indira Gandhi Memorial Trust organised an international conference on the subject, everybody who mattered should have sat up and taken notice. And they did, except perhaps for the Union Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) and to an extent the Indian press.

The aim of the meeting, which had no formal agenda or guidelines apart from its theme, The Making of an Indian Ocean Community , was to let experts and intellectuals from all nations on the Indian Ocean rim—and some from the hinterland—meet, discuss and explore ways and means to form such a community. Obviously, all other nations that use the ocean expressed keen curiosity as well, since any bloc formed on such lines would have a direct effect on their shipping and other interests in the region.

The idea is not new. But perhaps the first serious effort to striking up such an alliance started in Mauritius in March this year, when India, Australia, Kenya, Oman, Singapore and South Africa participated in the Indian Ocean Initiative for Regional Economic Cooperation. While the Initiative라이브 바카라 charter and work programme are still being discussed, the basic proposal calls for interaction among policy-makers, businessmen and intellectuals among member states to help develop and propagate the concept.

Says Dr Aditya Tribedi, deputy secretary (development) FICCI, who represented India at the Mauritius Initiative: "We have very deliberately kept out politics and security concerns and are concentrating on forging an economic club, because including these two subjects would have led to a lot of complications. Instead, we are trying to find ways to expand economic cooperation, reduce tariffs and promote investments."

바카라 웹사이트Earlier, soon after South Africa shook offthe shackles of apartheid, President Nelson Mandela had proposed that Pretoria and New Delhi initiate an alliance of nations on the Indian Ocean rim. The proposal was formally endorsed when the trade ministers of the two nations met in August last year. Besides signing the expected trade treaties, they agreed to work on the modalities for organising an ‘Indian Ocean trading area’.

Apart from being strategically very crucial, the Indian Ocean is a treasure trove of natural resources. Now that more and more mineral-starved nations are turning to the seas for succour, meetings to demarcate and share the oceans and their resources have become a vital necessity. However, no such meeting can be complete without the active participation of India, one of the major players in the region. After all, though it touches three continents, it라이브 바카라 called the Indian Ocean.

In theory, efforts to forge such a grouping seem commendable. But unlike the nations on the north Atlantic and the Pacific, the nations on the Indian Ocean do not have a history of regional integration backed by abundant economic and technical resources. Apart from a slice of the ocean, the only other common factor is perhaps the fact that almost all these countries are developing economies, which have only now begun to realise their own importance in the scheme of things. Differences, both political and social, abound on every other plane. Also,many Indian Ocean countries have forged several sub-groups like the ASEAN, GCC and SAARC, each with its own agenda and different threat and priority perceptions. Some of these associations, like ASEAN, have already formulated their policies vis-a-vis the European Union and other trade blocs, which would have to be considered while charting an overall policy for the region.

But that doesn’t stop Kenneth Kaunda from hoping. The first president of landlocked Zambia and a personal friend of Jawa-harlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi, he feels that such a meeting ground as the conference had been necessary for a long time. "Most western federations flopped due to insufficient preparation. Meetings like these set the tone for future cooperation. For instance, when we seriously start mining the ocean, there are bound to be problems. By discussing these beforehand, we can be prepared to face them. They also help us learn from mistakes made by others who tried to forge similar groupings. Sowho knows, we may be looking at the embryo of great things to come, perhaps even a political grouping," he says.

Australia, however, has been lobbying for a security bloc for the region. But faced with stiff opposition from India and South Africa, who felt that this would generate controversies, Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans backed down, only to start a second initiative, called Track II, to discuss the possibility informally. In fact, sources say the Australians were so angry at their proposal being rejected at Mauritius, that they said they would actively discuss the possible security grouping. That is how the Track II initiative was born. India is also participating in this, though it clearly fav-ours an economic rather than security grouping.

Dr Kenneth Ian McPherson, of the Indian Ocean Centre, Curtin University, Perth, supports the Track II initiative. He cites environmental, social and humansecurity concerns to emphasise that security is not limited to military threats alone. "We must get together to discuss problems peculiar to the region. We can then build on similarities, and identify and resolve the differences," he opines. Though the New Delhi conference was not on a government level, the delegates do have the ear of those in power. "Economics will be the engine that will carry other forms of cooperation forward," says McPherson. For instance, since no country in the region has thecapacity for extensive undersea mining, "why not go in for joint efforts"?

바카라 웹사이트Chinese economist Dr Pu Shan too feels the need for a security accord though for somewhat different reasons. While China is not really an Indian Ocean nation, it has major interests in the area. Pu Shan feels the formation of such a security bloc would enable the region to stand up against the industrialised G-7 powers.

The word "bloc", however, upsets Dr Hja-sim Djalal, Indonesian ambassador at-large for the Law of the Sea and Maritime Affairs, who feels it has negative connotations. "Blocs tend to isolate regions, and for every bloc there will be a counter bloc," he says. According to him, a loose socio-cultural community with political backing would be a far more feasible and productive idea.

But can economic and cultural ties flour-ish, given the conflicting viewpoints of myriad nations that have at times nothing more in common than a slice of the Indian Ocean? Landlocked Nepal and Bhutan, and nations like Kenya, Zambia, and China, don’t even have this basic common denominator. That doesn’t stop them from being ardent supporters of the concept.

So where do we go from here? "We are looking at an economic tie-up among the nations of the Indian Ocean on the basis of the Mauritius Initiative," says Kamalesh Sharma, additional secretary, economic relations, MEA. "This is a structured, intergovernmental process involving continuous interaction among policy-makers, businessmen and academics. This tripartite consultative structure enables us to actually experience the ground realities before we decide on policy. We feel that economic bonding—trade, investments, transport—could lay the foundation for an Indian Ocean Community." A promising start.