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Hosting its Annual Symposium, the South Asia Initiative at Harvard University brought together scholars and guests representing a myriad of interests who discussed critical issues crucial to the survival of the South Asia region.
The South Asia Initiative, launched by Harvard University in 2003, recently held a two day long annual event titled The Future of South Asia Symposium, that drew over 300 attendees representing academic, business, civil society and governmental sectors.
Addressing wide spanning topics ranging from environmentalism and population aging to politics and state building, the event brought together a very rich and intellectual gathering from all corners of Harvard University and beyond. Among the regional officials who served as panelists were Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States and Hardeep Singh Puri, India’s ambassador to the United Nations. Under the energetic direction of Tarun Khanna, (Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor, Harvard Business School) and Meena Hewett (Associate Director), the South Asia Initiative aims to create an inter-faculty initiative that brings multiple perspectives on issues related to South Asia at the forefront.
SAI supports the work of faculty and students across Harvard and draws the attention of like-minded individuals in the United States and in South Asia through its outreach programs, grant funding, seminars, lectures and symposium that are open to all. With panels featuring Harvard Deans, visiting Fellows, diplomats, private sector representatives, and business leaders, this particular event was designed to tackle some very pressing and complicated questions.
South Asia as a region today faces harsh climate-driven realities and equally disturbing political and social struggles. The event aimed to focus on the challenges and issues facing the South Asian community and to contribute to a better and more realistic future for the region. A panel featuring technology, energy and innovation debated the role South Asia could play in such sectors and the future challenges facing the region making it more vulnerable to climate changes. A region already sensitive to violent natural disasters could soon be facing more frequent occurrences, such as surging waves and melting glaciers, which could severely hamper clean drinking water for a majority of people. Issues from water security to population aging all through South Asia were extensively elaborated upon and featured panelists such as Syed Babar Ali, Winston Yu, John Briscoe, Amitabh Chandra and Jinkook Lee, amongst many others representing the various schools at Harvard University. With a growing population and water scarcity on the rise, water is becoming one of the great existential challenges facing South Asia today. The panel brought to light the grave concerns of water shortage and its risk and variability as well as the crucial need for water management.
On a separate panel, Ambassador Husain Haqqani, remaining true to his trademark appearance, articulately presented the many challenges facing the Pakistani society and described four basic transformations essential in order for Pakistan to embark on the road to progress. He listed a complete transformation into democracy, a transformation from an overly militaristic culture, a transformation into a strong South Asian identity, and a transformation from an over emphasis on faith.
Later, a strong panel featuring Pakistan focused Harvard scholars such as, Asim Ijaz Khwaja, Shahab Ahmed, Asad Ahmed and Ali Cheema, took on the daunting task of dissecting the growing threat of extremism and the vulnerability and legitimacy of democratic state agencies. Hitting the hot topics of state structures, intelligence debacles, democracy and the army and foreign policy as it pertains to India and the U.S made for an exciting and enlightening debate.
The two day long The Future of South Asia Symposium certainly brought together a wide range of scholarly opinion and an equally diverse audience to understand and debate innumerable scenarios and issues facing the South Asian region not only today, but in the near future. The South Asia Initiative continues to play an integral role in facilitating better understanding between people from both ends and serves as not only a rich resource but also an inspiring effort for those interested in the area.
Views of speakers and guests at The Future of South Asia Symposium.
Tarun Khanna
Director – the South Asia Initiative
We were very excited to be able to put together a program with enthusiastic support of everybody that really spanned the gamut of topics: we have a healthy dose of representation of the history of the region, we have a healthy dose of representation of the culture, and architecture and design and aesthetics of the region, all the way to environmentalism and climate change and the very sciences that are today relevant in the region… as well as a special focus on a session on Pakistan given the momentous changes in that country. So it really spans a gamut.
Husain Haqqani
Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United States
Pakistan sits at the crossroads of Central Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East and that puts it in the crossroads of the conflict of these three regions…but we are also actually sitting at the crossroads of opportunity for three regions. That’s one of the transformations we absolutely, absolutely have to accomplish. Lastly, Pakistan needs to work on a transformation from an over-emphasis on faith, which is an integral part of our lives…no one can take Islam away from us and no one is taking Islam away from us. It’s time for us to go beyond this discourse that somehow Islam in Pakistan is going to be in danger. Islam is not so weak…our faith is our faith, we will keep it alive. And instead of that we need to get on with the business of actually moving forward. A nation moves forward through its economic activity, by educating its people, by building institutions of state, by overcoming the challenges to its security, and that is what the Pakistani nation and state hope to accomplish.
Drew Faust
28th President of Harvard University
One of the aspects of your program that I find most exhilarating is the way that it joins together people from all over the University from different fields and different schools in pursuit of the knowledge that we can share across our boundaries.
Under the energetic leadership of Tarun Khanna, the SAI is accomplishing and realizing the vision that it had set before it from the start, which is to develop a dynamic and multidisciplinary approach to the study of South Asia recognizing that the most complex problems we face today need to draw on such a wide range of sources.
Daniel Schrag
Director – Harvard University Center for the Environment
Climate change in South Asia represents an incredible hazard to future economic development and prosperity whether you‘re interested in sea level rise in low lying areas like Bangladesh or whether you’re interested in issues of flooding and water resources or a variety of other issues like temperatures that might affect agricultural yields. Climate change represents a major challenge for continued development in South Asia.
Dr. R.K. Pachauri
Chairman of Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change; 2007 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate
It is entirely true, as we have assessed, that the frequency and intensity of (climatic) events will increase. I wouldn’t suggest that what happened in Pakistan or what happened in Mumbai was the result of human induced climate change but I certainly would like to emphasize the fact that the trend is unmistaken. Over a period of time these events are becoming much more severe and much more frequent and this will certainly get more pronounced in the future.
John Briscoe
Gordon McKay Professor of the Practice of Environmental Health, Harvard School of Public Health
In South Asia excess water is much more of a curse for development than scarcity of water is. So more is not necessarily better if it is distributed unevenly. You also see ground water in particular being a resource on which the subcontinent has subsisted on for the last thirty or forty years and is now heavily overexploited. And then on top of this we have the overlay of climate change.
Ali Cheema
Visiting Fulbright Fellow, Harvard South Asia Initiative
When we think about the process of state building, there is this fact that politics has to be central if we have to move forward. My own view is that democracy is an important precondition for state building. The reason I suggest this is because it will provide basically the scope of bargaining that is required.
Diana Eck
Department Chair of Sanskrit and Indian Studies
This is a resource that has largely not been priced. Water is free. If something is free it’s not surprising that it gets overused. If water is both free to drink and use and free as a waste disposal source it’s not surprising that we have trouble. The good news I think is if one could imagine, socially and religiously appropriate institutions that could create prices for this resource we would see very rapid progress.
Shahab Ahmed
Associate Professor of Islamic Studies, Faculty of Arts and Sciences
The term whether or not Pakistan is a failed state is bandied about regularly. I would argue that Pakistan is a failed state but it is not a failed state in the way people say it is. In fact there was a very interesting report, I believe in the financial times that said that Pakistan is a state that refuses to fail! Everything says it will collapse but it doesn’t collapse, right? It still functions.
Winston Yu
Senior Water Resources Specialist, The World Bank
If we look at how water is managed we see extremely fragmented and inefficient institutions. On the information side, you cannot really manage anything you cannot measure. Throughout South Asia there is a dearth of information, not just on the climate side but also the information and knowledge base about the systems, about water flows and precipitation, is quite weak ... institutions, infrastructure, and information, there are just huge gaps within that.
Syed Babar Ali
Pro-Chancellor, Lahore University of Management Sciences
Water is absolutely essential for life and for our existence. We need to work together and the private sector is putting their shoulders to this challenge to see how technology could be put in, how financial resources from the private sector could be put to use for the larger interests of the future of the country. So it is an ongoing effort.
Roberto Mangabeira Unger
Former Minister of Long-Term Planning, Government of Brazil
Of all the resources that our countries lack, is the resource that we chiefly lack is imagination. Imagination. Imagination … to the rescue.
Arsla Jawaid is Assistant Editor at SouthAsia Magazine. She holds a B.A in International Relations, with a focus on foreign policy and security studies, from Boston University.
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