Much has changed in South Asia since the 18th South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Summit held in 2014. India-Pakistan tensions, a persistent stumbling block for the regional grouping, have further deteriorated over the years. In May 2025, the two nuclear-armed neighbors even engaged in a brief conflict, further threatening the region’s fragile security and stability. Their relationship is unlikely to improve in the immediate future.
Similarly, India-China relations reached a historic low after the deadly Galwan Valley clash in 2020. Although there have been some improvements in recent months, the relationship remains fragile. Nepal-India ties have also experienced fluctuations over the past decade. India imposed a blockade on Nepal in 2015, and another dispute erupted in 2020 over the publication of new political maps. Only in recent years has a semblance of normalcy returned.
India-Bangladesh relations too have seen instability. Ties deteriorated after Bangladesh’s long-time Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fled to India in the wake of the student-led movement of 2024, which later evolved into a broader political uprising. India is now facing pressure from Bangladesh’s new ruling forces to repatriate Hasina. Meanwhile, the rise of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Jamaat-e-Islami has altered regional dynamics, improving Dhaka’s relationship with Pakistan. The two countries are now working to establish direct sea links between Karachi and Chittagong to boost bilateral trade, raising New Delhi’s eyebrows.
In Afghanistan, the Taliban’s return to power in 2021 has further complicated the regional landscape. No South Asian country has formally recognized the regime. As India cautiously improves its contacts with the Taliban, tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan have grown more hostile.
Meanwhile, internal political transformations across SAARC member states have weakened earlier commitments to regional cooperation. The GenZ-led political wave in Nepal has, at least temporarily, sidelined traditional parties that had long championed the SAARC process. In Bangladesh, Hasina’s exit has removed one of the region’s strongest advocates of SAARC, and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan shows little interest in it. Sri Lanka, still recovering from its recent economic crisis, is slowly returning to normalcy.
A generation of leaders who were once deeply invested in SAARC is now out of power and losing influence. Their successors, with limited grounding in SAARC’s history and purpose, are less inclined to prioritize regional integration.
India remains the central pillar of SAARC. Without India’s willingness and leadership, revival appears unlikely. Over the past decade, India’s global stature has grown significantly, and it is poised to become the world’s third-largest economy by 2030. As SAARC has stagnated, India has increasingly promoted BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation) as an alternative platform. Although other SAARC members do not view BIMSTEC as a true replacement, they are not in a position to revive SAARC without India’s consent. Yet India continues to fund SAARC institutions even as it publicly blames “one particular country” for obstructing progress.
During this period, China’s influence across South Asia, long considered India’s strategic backyard, has grown considerably. Except for Bhutan, all South Asian countries have signed on to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). China, an observer in SAARC, has deepened its engagement amid intensifying US-China rivalry. Both global powers are now vying for influence over smaller South Asian states.
It remains unclear how the US and China view SAARC’s relevance in a rapidly changing geopolitical environment. Historically, India has viewed SAARC with suspicion, wary that smaller neighbors might unite to pressure New Delhi or use the platform as a collective bargaining bloc. In the current climate, such concerns may be even stronger. At the same time, South Asian countries increasingly prioritize sub-regional or bilateral cooperation over SAARC-level initiatives. Filling the vacuum created by SAARC’s inactivity, China has been exploring alternative cooperation mechanisms for South Asian states, excluding India. It has already established the China-South Asian Countries Poverty Reduction and Cooperative Development Center in Chongqing. Recently, Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar suggested that a trilateral initiative involving Bangladesh, China, and Pakistan could be expanded to include other regional nations.
Despite SAARC’s stagnation, the need for regional cooperation has become more evident than ever. The Covid-19 pandemic exposed the region’s vulnerabilities. Political instability has increased fragility across several member states. The US-initiated tariff wars further weakened regional economies. According to the World Bank, intra-regional trade in South Asia accounts for barely five percent of total trade—far below ASEAN’s 25 percent. Greater regional integration might have helped member countries better withstand recent economic shocks.
In Oct 2025, seven prominent economists issued a statement lamenting the absence of serious bilateral or regional trade dialogues in South Asia, despite being the world’s fastest-growing region. They noted that the gap between actual and potential trade continues to widen. More regional trade, they argued, could provide much-needed stability amid global trade volatility and help South Asian economies deepen their integration into global value chains.
Climate change is inflicting catastrophic damage across the region. Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and India have all experienced an alarming rise in floods and landslides in recent years. Sri Lanka’s devastating floods this year caused significant loss of life and property—yet SAARC remained inactive throughout the crisis.
During the early months of Covid-19, there were signs of revived regional engagement. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi held talks with SAARC leaders and proposed collective health initiatives. But these efforts soon fizzled out. As the US under Donald Trump cut funding for key priorities such as health, climate, and development, SAARC could have stepped in by creating its own fund, but no substantial action followed.
Today, SAARC continues to fade from relevance, despite limited activities still being carried out by the Secretariat in Kathmandu. Most regional leaders no longer prioritize SAARC, and many have even stopped issuing messages on SAARC Day.
In the years immediately following the 2016 summit postponement, reviving SAARC was still raised in bilateral meetings, particularly by Nepal and Bangladesh. Leaders such as KP Sharma Oli and Sheikh Hasina often urged India to move forward with the summit process. But in recent years, the SAARC agenda has effectively disappeared from bilateral discussions. The Taliban takeover in Afghanistan only deepened uncertainty since no South Asian country recognizes the Kabul regime, raising questions about its participation in future summits.
The SAARC Summit is supposed to convene every two years on a rotational basis. The last, the 18th Summit, was held in Kathmandu in Nov 2014. The 19th Summit was scheduled for Pakistan in 2016 but was cancelled after India announced a boycott. As chair, Nepal made several diplomatic attempts to revive the process, but all proved futile. It has now been a full decade since heads of state last gathered under the SAARC banner.
Other SAARC mechanisms have also stalled. The Council of Ministers, the second-highest body, last met formally in Pokhara in 2016. Informal sessions held annually in New York since 1997 have not taken place in recent years due to India-Pakistan tensions and uncertainties around Taliban representation. The Standing Committee of Foreign Secretaries last met in March 2016. Only the Programming Committee, led by joint secretaries, continues to meet virtually.
For now, the future of SAARC remains deeply uncertain. The regional environment is not conducive for hosting a summit anytime soon. India’s changing relationships with its neighbors, shifting geopolitical dynamics, and growing political instability across several member states all point to a bleak outlook.
