If South Asia were more prosperous and less divided politically, our skies would be congested with aircraft flying hither and yon keeping pace with our population. Sure, the railways left behind by the British (because they could not very well uproot the tracks and cart them back) serve the purpose of transport in the Subcontinent. But people take the train mainly because they have no planes. Show me one man, woman or child from Sasaram, Bihar, who would not prefer a direct flight to Vellore for a cataract operation rather than a three day schlep on second class three tier, that too sometimes on wooden berths.
And then there is the matter of borders, those frontiers that we are making more sharply defined by the day on the ground so that it is impossible to easily fly back and forth above. There is barbed wire on the ground and warped wires in the brain. Which is why we remain the most backward region in the world after Saharan Africa, where, too, people take surface transport because societies cannot afford the air.
Because South Asia is so poor, the air links between its cities are designed to cater to the ultra rich. (What is known as the all India urban English-speaking middle class (IUESMC) is ultra rich, by the way, by average all-India and South Asian rural standards.) So, imagine the enormous dullness of being when all you have filling our skies are Bata Shoe Company salesmen travelling from Kolkata to Chennai for an annual motivational conference, film starlets flying from Mumbai to Dilli (or Deh'li) to inaugurate a Swatch showroom, Haryana real estate brokers salivating on their way to the Kathmandu casinos, morose Dhaka matrons with appointments to catch at Kolkata nursing homes, and track-two India-Pakistan peaceniks zipping in to Lahore from Dilli (when the flights start, as they will, mark my words, as surely as the cookie crumbles and the poori puffs up) for a round of self-flagellating ('why do we do this to each other, waaah, sniffle sniffle, sharp intake of breath').
My South Asia of tomorrow is made up of a land of gur and honey, where prosperity has arrived because the corrupt decided to share their ill-gotten gold with the rest of the population, and where Jamali and Vajpayee have decided to become pen pals and let each bygone be a bygone. In this brave new egalitarian society, brother will not bash up brother across the LOC, and sloppy kisses will replace eye-for-an-eye, and shouts of 'bhaijaan!' will rend the air making it difficult to concentrate on one's daal roti. In such an incredibly zabardast nayi duniya, friends, there will be prosperity so that there will be a seat in an airplane for everyone. And every city of any note will be linked to every other city of any note.