Promoting Economic Cooperation in South Asia:Beyond SAFTA

During the last three decades, economic growth and development across all the regions in the world, especially in South Asia, have had two increasingly distinct emerging trends and dimensions. One relates to the progressive and dynamic economic growth led by the organized sectors and competitive markets, which have benefitted from Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization (LPG) within and across countries. The other is slow if not stagnant or even regressive growth and development in the unorganized non-market sectors, which have lagged behind at least partly due to LPG. But for the neoliberals at home and abroad, TINA! Or, as Albert Maslow has put it: When the only tool available is a hammer (LPG), everything begins to look like a nail (liberalizable, privatizable, globalizable).