India makes up the larger part of Southasia by landmass and population, and so if India were shining one could make the argument that so would Southasia. But this would only make sense if India's brilliant glow were spread over its one billion-plus population, in which case the economic and social revival in its thousand manifestations would also extend across the Subcontinent and outlying regions.
The gentlemen who rule from New Delhi at the moment would like us to believe in the run-up to the general elections of April-May that India is indeed resplendent, sending off rays of light, sparkling like the diadem catching a shaft of the bright early summer sun. The reality is that India shimmers only for the upper middle classes, the few score million, enjoying the post-modern, post-protectionist consumerist boom. The point that the Indian sun shines for but a few does not demand a debate, although we are aghast at Mrs. Gandhi's Congress Party's inability get the point across. Mrs Gandhi has not been able to challenge the hype and get the message across that over 400 million Indians are underemployed, underproductive, underfed, underclad, undersheltered and undereducated. The academics are crying themselves hoarse, but this is political terrain.
The rest of the Southasian elite would gladly go along with the feelgood vibes emanating from the Jamuna banks, given that their societies are even less egalitarian than India's. And the interests of the Anglophone urban superelites are actually tied together as part of the charmed Southasian circle that is at ease with each other in gymkhanas from Dhaka to Quetta. So when New Delhi claims that India sizzles, the well-to-do in Karachi and Kathmandu are dazzled. And everyone fervently believes in the trickle down which will at some point of time touch the masses. Those who remind of starvation deaths, suicide-prone farmers, labourers pawning blood and kidney, mothers selling children to slave labour, are merely trying to spoil the fun.
These economic upper classes ride the crest of unrepresentative polities, whether democracy or dictatorship. And they meet each other at airport departure lounges all the time, exclaiming at 'what a small world it is'. In reality, it is not that the world is undersized, but that the Anglophones of Southasia are a very small group. Among them, there is no more than two degrees of separation — between the NGO chieftan of Islamabad and the senior bureaucrat in Dhaka and the executive of the Indian multinational in Bombay. Going by this criterion, Southasia is actually already one country.