In recent years, we have witnessed a greater awareness of an emerging South Asian identity. Notwithstanding some setbacks, the commonality of interests and the cultural, social and historical affinity between the peoples of the region, appear to have been gaining steadily over the forces of divisiveness that have kept countries of South Asia apart for a long period. The SAARC process has contributed to the process of building greater cooperation within South Asia. But such an intergovernmental process remains dependent on the vicissitudes of inter-state relations within South Asia. Within the South Asian region, there is, therefore, an increasing recognition of the need for civil society to play a much more active role in sustaining the process of regional cooperation and insulating it from the ebb and flow of official relations.

Over the last two decades, a plethora of programmes, coalitions and issue - specific initiatives supportive of agendas for promoting South Asian cooperation have emerged, albeit with varying degree of efficacy. However, such initiatives remain of an ad hoc nature and lack synergy. There is, therefore, an emerging need to institutionalise the forces working for the cooperation and development of a South Asian Community. Such a move could not only draw upon the rich intellectual resources of the region to service the South Asian Community but also could help in both healing divisions between the countries in the region and giving a distinct shape to a Civil Society based on cooperation and shared perceptions on the realisation of a shared future for South Asia.

Whilst there are several institutional arrangements at an official level servicing the SAARC process, still there remains an urgent need for well-argued, well-researched agendas about the scope for cooperation in South Asia which can serve to guide policymakers as well as the private sectors and civil society within the region towards building up a South Asian Community. The rich professional resources and strong institutions available within the region need to be deployed in the service of the South Asian countries. Furthermore, the enormous treasure of human resources to be found amongst South Asians working outside the region needs, at least in part, to be recaptured in the service of the region, thereby contributing towards reversing South Asia's massive brain drain. It is evident that South Asia, today, commands the wealth of human resources needed to put in place a well conceived, professionally served and economically sustainable regional facility which can also provide a focal point for the variety of ad hoc initiatives currently seeking to promote South Asian cooperation.

A strong, soundly conceived, facility could draw upon not only the ongoing programmes for promoting regional cooperation but could mobilise well-established national institutions to build shared capacities to service the process of South Asian cooperation. Such a facility could mobilise individual professional talents both from within South Asia and by drawing upon the talents of South Asians working outside the region. Developing such a regional facility could serve to both develop a sense of community within South Asia and generate the critical mass needed to build South Asian institutions which could serve as centres of learning and research which could meet globally competitive standards. It could also catalyse the emergence of a number of centres of excellence within South Asia, which could attract global professional talents and creative ideas. It is intended to make a beginning towards institutionalising the potential of the South Asian intellectual community by building such a facility within a South Asia Centre for Policy Studies (SACEPS) which could play a catalytic role in realising the more ambitious agenda for building a South Asian Community. At the outset, SACEPS will, therefore, seek to establish an institutional base, which could be used to reach out to and network with some of the well-established national institutions within the region, which can provide the building blocks for a South Asia community. To this end, SACEPS will not only seek to build business and professional networks within South Asia but will also aim to draw together the initiatives of socially motivated NGOs of the region towards realising a shared agenda for social transformation within the region.

A central objective of SACEPS will be to activate policy dialogue and interactions to provide a regional perspective to public discourse and debates across these countries and also project a regional profile in the global arena. To service such dialogues and influence the process of South Asian Cooperation, SACEPS would seek to facilitate considered and technically competent joint analyses that help to raise the level of policy formulation within the region and serve to establish domestic ownership over the policymaking process. Such a process could be promoted in several ways. It could be realised through accessing the positive externalities of joint action in specific areas; it could be brought about through processes facilitating specific instances of cross-country problem-solving; individual countries could improve the quality of their own policy processes and outcomes with inputs that identify and provide ready access to cases of good practice in various sectors within the region. Such processes would also benefit further from specialist expertise drawn from the international domain.

SACEPS will seek to establish itself as a depository for research programmes in the region designed to serve the goals of South Asian cooperation and will also serve as a registrar for keeping track of such research activities with a South Asia focus. Through a process of dialogue and consultation at the regional level, SACEPS in this context, intends to periodically assemble activists committed to promote South Asian cooperation with a view to reducing overlap and to build synergy in the activities of these various players on the South Asia field.

The work programme of SACEPS will be developed in collaboration with the participating institutions, which have come together to build this regional institution. Initially, SACEPS expects to focus on economic policies dealing largely with trade and investment cooperation in the belief that building cooperative frameworks for designing policies in this area will provide immediate benefits to all countries in the region. There would also be advantages of developing joint positions for negotiations in various international spheres (such as WTO negotiations on international aspects of environmental management, the regulation of intellectual property rights, etc). Other potential areas that have visible cross-border policy relevance include planned and unplanned cross-border labour flows, cross-border transport networks, integration of energy systems, the joint management of watersheds and river flows along with the efficient and equitable sharing of water resources united (in preference to being divided) by rivers flowing through each of their territories. The agenda for cooperation could be widened further. Each country could benefit from cases of acknowledged good practice in specialised spheres of social policy e.g. universalisation of primary and basic education, effective ways of addressing the problem of child labour, local accountability systems for good governance at the level of rural and urban settlements, the experience of specific countries with poverty alleviation programmes. The list of potential topics could be lengthened further as the SACEPS develops, learns from its own experience and takes cognisance of the felt needs of policymakers as well as civil society. In all this, there is a substantial scope for mutually benefiting from joint policy formulation in specific spheres, from public discussion, joint policy design and implementation. Such exercises could have a variety of spin-offs, which would add not only to the quality of life and governance across the region, but also towards a substantial reduction in political and military tensions in this region, paving the way towards developing a more harmonious South Asian Community.

SACEPS will draw upon the institutional strengths of its national affiliates to develop programmes of research and to initiate programmes for training and graduate studies on South Asian development. In process of its development SACEPS will seek to expand its institutional affiliations in every South Asian country and thereby broaden the network of institutional involvement in the process of South Asian cooperation. The SACEPS is, thus, committed to develop itself not in competition with national institutions in the region or with any of the ongoing programmes of regional cooperation but as a source for aggregating the resources of all such institutions in the realisation of a shared purpose.

Programme and Activities

Though SACEPS will be physically located in one of the regional capitals of South Asia, its work programmes and activities will involve active cooperation between regional and national institutions. Specific projects or activities will be located in or mounted from different national institutional bases across the region that will act as the initiators or executors of specific tasks undertaken by SACEPS. Such a structure will guarantee that no single country can dominate the institution, its networks or its research agenda and activities.

The SACEPS Policy Research Programme will include components on economic policies, social development policies and issues concerning civil society institutions, local governance and accountability structures as well as practices. The objective is specifically to explore policy dimensions in which there is a strong potential for win-win forms of cooperation on a regional or intra-regional basis. The Research Programme will comprise a portfolio of independent research projects, which may be located in different regional sites, but all of which will be cross-country or region in their perspective and clearly oriented towards promoting a joint approach to South Asian problems. The intention is to stimulate the creation of a variety of regional networks involving specialist researchers, policymakers, activists and NGO practitioners at the individual and institutional levels. A portfolio of regional activities will be developed involving direct interaction in regional workshops with international specialist expertise to act as catalysts. Keeping in view the above mentioned priorities of the South Asian region, the SACEPS Charter will include:

• Designing the architecture of a prospective South Asian Community;
• Providing specific inputs to the policymakers in the region on measures to promote South Asian Cooperation;
• Promotion of research and projects on various aspects of South Asian cooperation: focussing on appropriate policies for promoting such cooperation;
• Serving as a network for academic and research institutions in South Asia promoting joint and coordinated research on issues affecting the countries in the region.
• Serving as a network for NGOs working on various aspects of development of the South Asian region;
• Serving as a dialogue centre for bringing together policymakers, business and professional institutions, NGOs, academics, and members of the civil society engaged in designing and implementing agendas for promotion of cooperation within South Asia;
• Developing a forum for regular meetings of Heads of State, frontline Policymakers, Captains of trade and industry and leading NGOs from South Asia with the eventual goal of establishing the equivalent of the Davos process within South Asia;
• Developing a South Asian academic community by providing a meeting ground for the South Asian academics and researchers located in South Asia and outside engaged in promoting South Asian cooperation as well as addressing issues of common concern;
• Providing academic and training backups to those actively involved in the field of South Asian cooperation and development;
• Publication of South Asian Development Report, monographs, reports, journals, occasional papers and other such academic papers concerning various aspects of development and promotion of the South Asian Community;
• Establishing a Depository Library on South Asian studies; and
• Establishing a South Asian website as a gateway to a global network on South Asian studies and cooperation.