Paper short abstract:

The concept of sovereignty in the post-colonial South Asia is antithetical to the concept of supra-nationality. Against this backdrop the proposed study will focus on the logistics of regional cooperation in South Asia.

Paper long abstract:

The objectives of the proposed paper are two-fold: a) to understand the structure and process of decision-making in the SAARC and b) to examine how, in South Asia, the question of state sovereignty comes into conflict with the concept of supra-nationality, the basis on which a regional organization actually works. In fact, it would perhaps be difficult to imagine a functioning regional institution without some amount of supra-national authority. In that sense, an effective regional cooperation may not be realized without a redefinition of sovereignty.

Apart from the colonial past, the nation-building process and the concomitant national security perspective in the post-colonial era have shaped the concept of sovereignty in this region in a particular manner, which seem to be antithetical to the concept of supra-nationality. Although the structure of SAARC was fashioned largely on the ASEAN model, the founders of the SAARC deliberately ruled out the "consensus building procedure" of the latter. Instead they prescribed the procedure of "unanimous decision making". The colonial past and the incidents of partition made them skeptical about the newly achieved sovereignty. Therefore, they did not have any intention to compromise the state sovereignty for the sake of supra-nationality of the proposed regional organization. Against this backdrop the paper intends to study the logic of regional cooperation in South Asia.