~It is a great pleasure to be here with you. As our Information & Broadcasting Minister has just said, I have somewhat delayed my departure for my tour abroad to share some thoughts with you on this important occasion.

Meetings of SAARC forums are welcome opportunities for exchange of views and perspectives among various strata of our societies, contributing to greater mutual awareness and better understanding. A Conference of Information Ministers is particularly valuable, since they frame our national policies on dissemination of news, views and perceptions through our mass media.

I have recently returned from an India-ASEAN Summit meeting in Bali, where we took many momentous decisions about closer integration between India and ASEAN. We concluded a framework agreement on comprehensive economic cooperation – including free trade – barely a year after commencement of negotiations. We advanced towards an open skies policy for passenger traffic and for cargo services. We also discussed some significant sub-regional cooperation initiatives for BIMSTEC and the Mekong Ganga Initiative. Later this month, we will host an India-European Union Summit in Delhi, where similarly many new proposals for economic cooperation are on the anvil. In Moscow this week, I will also be discussing the multi-modal North-South transport corridor linking India, Iran and Central Asia with Russia.

I am mentioning all this, because such experiences in regional and sub-regional cooperation hold a lesson for SAARC.

Since its inception in 1985, SAARC has been struggling to emerge from the concept to the practical reality of close regional cooperation. The concept is to harness our abundant natural resources, our talented human energies and our industrial synergies to accelerate growth and development in our countries. We are yet to achieve this.

Post Cold War alignments and the technology revolution, have set in motion trends which we can ignore only at our peril. ASEAN is, of course, an old example of the triumph of economic organization over political differences. We can also see how post Cold War Europe has forgotten its former political divisions and accepted differential economic development, while expanding the European Union. Innovative regional and sub-regional arrangements are being launched in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean region – including countries, which have a history of bitter hostility towards each other.

This is a dominant trend in today’s globalising world. It is time that we recognize what it means for all of us in South Asia. If SAARC cannot organize itself, it will simply miss the boat. Other alignments will develop, to seize the economic opportunities offered by closer integration. We cannot forever be challenging logic and mocking economics.

I would like to take this opportunity to re-affirm that India is fully committed to the effort to build on our commonalities and shared aspirations for equitable development. I often hear the argument that our unequal physical sizes and economic strengths inhibit equal cooperation. I believe these very factors can be turned to mutual economic advantage by creating inter-linkages, which can enhance confidence and trust. The collective size of our markets creates economies of scale with obvious impact on costs of production and competitiveness.

We invite all our SAARC neighbours to participate in India’s economy, rather than be apprehensive about it. We have repeatedly expressed our willingness to enter into preferential trading arrangements and free trade agreements within the SAARC framework. We are equally willing to do so with SAARC countries individually. With Nepal and Bhutan, we have had such special trading arrangements for decades. With Sri Lanka, we have gone a considerable distance down that road. We are making a beginning with Bangladesh also. As I said at the Kathmandu SAARC Summit, we are also willing to have special and differential treatment for the least developed SAARC countries.

All this has immediate relevance to Information Ministers, since the media today plays a crucial role in moulding opinions and shaping public attitudes. Technology changes have today led to an explosive expansion in media platforms – including newspapers and magazines, TV channels and radio stations, and the Internet. The mass media can no longer remain the monopoly of governments. Private initiative has permeated every sphere of media activity. There is a surge in the flow of information, education, entertainment and culture among the peoples of the world. At the same time, it has become economically viable to develop platforms for dissemination of programmes of special interest to specific communities.

This revolution in communications presents great opportunities to SAARC countries. We need to use the technologies, rather than try to suppress them. We should try to ensure that our populations have free access to all the media platforms in our region, so that they remain completely up-to-date, not only about major political events, but also economic, cultural and sociological trends in all our countries. In this way, the media can be a powerful force for information rather than propaganda, for education rather than prejudice, for awareness rather than misinformation. We can carry regular SAARC news programmes on national TV and radio channels. We should properly publicise and project SAARC activities within and outside the region. Information on developmental programmes and cultural events in individual SAARC countries should be aired in all the other countries of the region. This free flow of information, news, views and perspectives can do more for regional cooperation than any political exhortation. Since we are committed to SAARC, let us try this method.

For this Information Ministers’ Conference, you have a rich agenda. It includes the evolution of a SAARC-recognised Regional Media Forum, annual conferences of editors from SAARC countries, training facilities for media persons and a SAARC Media Development Fund. I hope you will also consider constructively India’s suggested guidelines on Trans-national Satellite Broadcasting in our region. I hope you will approach this agenda with the objective of genuinely strengthening all-round regional cooperation in information and media. To show India’s commitment to this process, we would be willing to offer - under our technical and economic assistance programme – 12 seats to SAARC countries in training institutions for various media disciplines.

I will conclude by extending my best wishes for your discussions at this Conference. Your deliberations should open new windows of cooperation. There is an overwhelming desire for friendship and cooperation at the level of the people of our region. We, as politicians, should respond to this demand.~