— Photo: R.V. Moorthy

VISION FOR THE MEDIA: Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon (right) along with Media Development Foundation Chairman Sashi Kumar (left) and Najam Sethi, Editor of Daily Times, Pakistan, during the Conference of Editors from the SAARC countries in New Delhi on Friday.

NEW DELHI: Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon on Friday called for the free movement of ideas, mediapersons and media products in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) region.

Inaugurating a conference of eminent editors from the SAARC nations, organised by the Chennai-based Media Development Foundation and the External Affairs Ministry, Mr. Menon said the flow of ideas had been more limited than even the flow of goods and services.

Deficit

"We actually have a deficit here in terms of thinking. Where there has been a flow of ideas, it has seldom been direct between the media in our separate countries, it is often intermediated by the rest of us and comes to us through filters," a text of his remarks said.

Asserting that there were very few regions in the world that could match the quality of the media in South Asia, Mr. Menon wanted the editors to suggest what governments could do to encourage cross-border media interaction.

Reporting

On the subject of media and foreign policy reporting, the Foreign Secretary felt there had been "too much intermediation" and "too little direct reporting" in the SAARC region.

"It is only in the last few years that I as a consumer have noticed that we are writing in each other's papers, we do get each other's points of view and some understanding of each other's attitudes ... this is very recent and fragile phenomenon. I think we need much more of this... " he said.

Mr. Menon believed that South Asia was at a stage where a moment of opportunity existed to try and enable SAARC to attain its potential — to use the complementarities that existed between member States.

According to him, economic development in the region had made available capacities and the potential to do things together. Also, countries had several years of experience of living together as States.

Inter-dependence

"We realise the extent of our inter-dependence, the extent to which we need each other, all of us. This has nothing to do with the asymmetries of power, shape, size... India needs a peaceful periphery if we are to achieve our own goals for ourselves. It is in our self-interest to work with the rest of South Asia," he said.

Referring to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's suggestion at the Dhaka SAARC summit last year of reconnecting the sub-continent and linking it up to the larger Asian neighbourhood, Mr. Menon said such a vision would enable SAARC to play its role.

A different view

"We have traditionally looked, I think, at borders as limits, as places in a military sense, in a security sense. Whereas, if you looked at it civilisationally, traditionally borders are zones where nations, where cultures, where civilisations interact and it is only when we use borders in that sense — where ideas flow freely across those borders — that you've seen periods of historical growth, prosperity and of development," he said.

Mr. Menon added that he looked forward to hearing from the eminent editors the way forward in reconnecting the sub-continent to itself and to the rest of the international community.

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