The word SAARC stands for south Asian Association for regional Co-operation.
Late president Ziaur Rahman of Bangladesh first proposed it during his tour to seven countries in south Asia.
He felt that a committee should be formed amongst the south Asian countries for regional co-operation and the other countries of this region also agreed on this, proposal.
Bangladesh first sent a rough declaration for s summit conference and based on this finally a regional association among the seven countries has been formed. It is a voluntary association of the country of south-Asia.
The SAARC includes seven countries of south Asia. The countries are Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives and Sri-lanka. A lot of other names were proposed for this Committee. Such as Association for south Asia, Organization of south Asian forum etc. But ultimately this association was named as south Association for regional Co-operation unanimously.
In the year 1981, a pre-summit conference was held in Colombo of srilanka to discuss on the development of the committee. Secretaries of the seven countries met there and formed a committee of the whole to decide the fields of co-operation. The fields of co-operation are rural development, agriculture, telecommunication, weather, health, family planning and scientific development. A series of meetings were held in New Delhi in the year 1983, Maldives in the year 1984 and in thimpu in 1985. It was decided in these meetings that the first SAARC summit conference would be held in Bangladesh in December 1985.
The first SAARC summit conference took place on 7th December 1985 in the sangsad Bhaban (Parliament House) at Sher-e-Bangla Nagar in Dhaka. The heads of the seven states attended the summit and expressed their eagerness to co-operate with one another. They decided to extend their assistance to the member countries in time of need and they also put emphasis on setting up the disputes amongst these countries. The next venue of the summit was also resided and toll then the summit has been held in each country.
The seven member countries of the SAARC contain a huge number of populations and economy of these countries is still in a developing stage. The idea of SAARC is that if these countries work as a single entity, economic development would be possible at a greater scale that it would be at the individual level.
