Brave new world, almost

For two days in late April, the information ministers of the SAARC region (except those from Bhutan and Maldives) met and discussed information. Theirs was quite a progressive agenda, and at least at the rhetorical level there seemed to be recognition among these high personages of the proper path to take in information-sharing in South Asia.

There was recognition, but is there commitment? SAARC meets, after all, have always been long on proclamations and declarations and short on follow-up. And South Asian countries are quite good at signing any treaty or agreement on social issues put before them merely because it is the right thing to do. Take the case of the child labour declaration that SAARC social welfare ministers signed a couple of years ago in Rawalpindi, promising to eradicate all hazardous forms of child labour by the turn of century and all forms of child labour just a decade thereafter.