The Indian government's effort has been to construct an overarching vision for South Asia, so that India does not deal with its neighbours in an ad-hoc and reactive manner, but in accordance with policies that fit into and promote this larger vision.
The vision of South Asia as an integrated and single entity is not new. Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had spoken about our aim to establish a South Asian Economic Union on the basis of a South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA). At the SAARC Dhaka Summit in November 2005, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh elaborated further on this vision. He said that although South Asia is divided by political boundaries, it forms a single geographical and economic unit. It occupies a shared cultural space and inherits a shared cultural legacy. He said that though we cannot erase political boundaries or redraw them, we can certainly work together to make them progressively irrelevant. There should be a free flow of goods, peoples and ideas across our borders in the same manner as in the European Union today. Over a period of time, this would erase the sense of division among our people.
The prime minister emphasised the overriding importance of connectivity to the realisation of this vision. The Subcontinent today is not even as connected as it was before 1947. We must restore crossborder transport linkages through highways, railways, air and sea links, as well as electronic communications. India must start looking at national boundaries not as impenetrable walls which somehow protect it from the outside world, but as 'connectors', bringing us closer to our neighbours. Better connectivity requires a change in mindset.
Border regions, too, must be viewed differently. We must stop seeing them as peripheral, serving only as 'buffer zones' preventing ingress into the Indian heartland. We must rid ourselves of this 'outpost' mentality and accept our border states and regions as being as much a part of our national territory as is the heartland. The idea that such regions must be left largely underdeveloped and remote – as reflected in the outdated system of 'inner line permits', whereby Indians and foreign nationals require permits to enter certain areas – must be jettisoned. Borders connect us to our neighbours, and border regions are extremely important as areas of mutual interaction. This fact should be leveraged for their development. Again, a change in mindset is required.