Common interest

What reforms are needed in the institutional architecture of representative democracies to ensure that political interests would be subjected to public rules? How can parliament reclaim its role as an arena of public deliberation? Can democracies be made to work better for the poor? How do we curb the power of money and religion? We should also find the answers how to ensure growth and check inequalities between social classes and urban and rural areas of our individual nations. We should go in detail into the problems of globalisation, competitiveness and environmental costs, and what is needed to convert our economies into knowledge economies. Another point could be the changing values, particularly the impact on youthful minds of technology on the one hand and of growing religious orthodoxy on the other: what needs to be done to ensure the flow of ideas, to foster the domain of cultural pluralism and to stimulate innovation. The Saarc leaders could take up the question of our foreign relations and dealt not only with the familiar old problems of dealings with neighbours, protection of our interests, and projection of our values, but also new concerns such as the role that our businesses, brands, cultural icons and the diaspora could play in promoting our individual national interests as well as regional interest. Let's see what our leaders do.