All regional groupings have their peculiarities, but none more so than SAARC. It may seem pedantic to ask how many countries constitute SAARC, since any student of high-school civics would know the answer. Yet it could also be persuasively argued, by anybody with an average adolescent's social sensitivity, that SAARC is in reality made up of not eight, but nine members. The giant country that lies at the heart of Southasia is, after all, an amalgam of two distinct parts. It comprises the great Indian middle class, the stuff of much contemporary myth; but then there is the rest of India as well, a teeming mass of struggling, suffering humanity that does not even get to field a 'B-team' in international forums. That, though, is largely immaterial, since the 'A-team', the 'nation' at the heart of SAARC, is roughly the size of Britain, Germany, Italy and France put together.
Yet the 'nation' that, by all canons of geopolitical logic, should be the fulcrum around which SAARC revolves, is in fact a reluctant participant, since the 'India A' team entertains vaulting ambitions that go far beyond the narrow regional framework in which history has cast it. If priorities were to be assessed by media coverage, it would appear that 'India A' has little interest in the realities of life for the fifth of humanity that people Southasia. 'India A' would much rather engage in unending celebrations of the corporate takeovers engineered by the big-game hunters among its business community, for sums that just two decades back were roughly the magnitude of the entire country's balance-of-payments deficit.
A mere decade since an Indian first set a tentative foot within that most exclusive of clubs – Forbes magazine's annual celebration of ostentation, otherwise known as the "rich list" – today 'India A' has over 50 members in that august company, of whom no fewer than four are in the top ten. Indeed, this is a 'nation' that has assumed the identity of a historic, civilisational entity; and in that process, it has denied its neighbours a share of the legacy over which they have a right. 'India A' has also twisted that legacy to serve the narrow purposes of nation-state politics, rather than larger civilisational values. As it assumes the mandate to speak on behalf of an entire civilisation, 'India A' will bring to the table a unique sensibility, one that seems curiously out of step with the rest. At this juncture, most Southasian countries have weakly institutionalised structures of governance.
As of this writing, Nepal is without a government; Pakistan and Bangladesh are struggling to find ways towards democratic order, with few viable institutions of political integration, and under real threat that the national armies will step into the breach; for the last two years, Sri Lanka has maintained the appearance of cabinet governance, but has not quite succeeded in masking the existence of a narrow coterie exercising power, in the face of the alienation of the Tamil people and the embitterment of virtually all sections of the traditional Sinhala elite; and Afghanistan has problems that have remained unaddressed for the last seven years, even as it seeks to reckon with national elections due in just over a year. Against this bleak backdrop, 'India A' has, seemingly as a gesture of confidence in its manifest destiny, opted for political instability, all in the cause of pursuing a morally dubious nuclear deal with the US. This is a deal that involves weapons never meant for use, the sole purpose, perhaps, to placate the unfulfilled hubris of 'India A'; and an energy option that provides less than five percent of India's electricity generation, and will never amount to much more.