Regional cooperation for poverty alleviation and food security in South Asia

The proposed trade integration in South Asia through SAFTA raises some pertinent issues in the context of trade and food security debate in the region. The challenges in terms of loss of livelihood security and fall in the commodity prices in the agriculture sector are some of the apprehensions being raised at various fora, especially civil society organisations. Though simultaneous issuance of the SAARC Social Charter may partially address some of these fears, much more needs to be done. This paper explores the various options available within the framework of regional cooperation for addressing issues like poverty alleviation and food security in the Asian region.The author argues that such an analysis becomes important in context of Doha Development Agenda (DDA) which has called for linking up trade with poverty reduction efforts. The paper suggests joint marketing of various products from Asian developing countries for increasing the market profile, apart from collectively addressing issues like introduction of new technologies for enhancing productivity. The paper also addresses some of the policy constraints such as restricted market access, growing digital divide and emerging non-tariff barriers to be attended on a priority basis.Policy recommendations include:building coherence among various policy endeavours especially in the realm of macroeconomic management strategies, regional integration plan and domestic agricultural policies in the context of food security management and poverty alleviationthe region would not only have to define the role of the regional trade for ensuring food security and avoid price variability but would also have to seriously consider various measures other than trademeasures for promotion of border trade should be viewed for wider economic development at sub-regional and regional level as this may help in widening the scope of complementarities that may exist in the regionefforts must be made for improving the infrastructure related to transit transport, administration and trade facilitationat the national level policy measures include increased investment in research, extension, rural infrastructure, expanded credit availability, input subsidies and other financial incentivesthere must be a deliberate attempt on the part of policy planners to follow the "push the price down" approach so that food security is not adversely affected by the price movementsthe experiences of SEWA and Grameen bank in expanding micro credit programmes in rural areas, and using that as an instrument for income generation, should be built upon.