The British colonial masters left the Subcontinent in 1947. Seventy-one years on, South Asian nations are still grappling with the idea of freedom and a just society. Fault lies in the beginning, when disconnected and leadership nurtured in western values and tradition took the responsibility of negotiating the deal of independence. Later they put themselves in the shoes of their colonial predecessors. In a bureaucracy-controlled administration, the confused and divisive political perceptions of the leadership polarised the social structure.
South Asia is often misquoted as a dynamic region and as home to over billion of potential talents. But look a bit closer, and the region is replete with internal tensions-some between countries, but most within countries - they reflect deep fault lines that have existed for many years. Resolving them will take time and require extraordinary and sustained leadership.
Whatever may be the religious or political compulsions, the partition of the Subcontinent was not otherwise carefully planned and so-called smart leaders, despite being proficient in western education, fell into the trap of personal ego and caused a rift that has kept the region in tension ever since the so-called independence. It has cost many thousands of lives and many billions of poor man's dollars and as yet no end is seen on the horizon. Pitiful performance of both social and political leaders of all shades exasperated the nations and jeopardised their future.
The gap between class gaining wealth by political power and the ordinary citizens, who are desperately trying to make ends meet, getting so wide that social cohesion is now at stake.
The leaders in the region, irrespective of their positions in the political power matrix, claim upholding of democratic values and norms to be their major objective for promoting people's well-being. But in practice a bizarre concoction of personal dominance plays out to establish a cult that belies rationality. And occasional show of endearment for leadership is only interrupted by assassinations, coup-d'état and mass movement. Every incident of power transfer was tarnished by conspiracy, hegemony and betrayal in all nations of South Asia.
Urbanised veneer of development reflects only incompetence, corruption and misrule by the vested groups that occupy power. Following the models of institutions of the Western democracies, structures were set up but in the absence of appropriately elected proper representatives of the people, the functioning of those institutions were downgraded to cabals packed with inept sycophants.
Contrary to democratic process, the ruling cliques will only focus on destroying the opposition groups in order to perpetuate themselves in power. There is no inclusiveness and participation of the people in the framing of vision for the nation nor are they allowed to venture beyond the limit set out by the ruling elites. A grand clique of the ruling class consisting of conniving politicians and bureaucratic manipulators benefits only those who support them.
Among the nations in South Asia, India suffers the most for its hegemony, depravation and for utter callousness of its ruling cliques and its failure to connect with the people as well as with the neighbouring nations. Pakistan, from the beginning, failed to establish supremacy of its civilian leadership and has now reached a chaotic midway to collapse. It's a nation which perennially finds itself on the wrong side of right causes and has failed to establish its sovereignty because of continued conflicts between the egocentric leadership of civil and military bureaucracy.
Bangladesh has, on real or perceived grounds, painfully continues to accommodate India's tantrums as it helped the nation during the war of liberation, but irrational expectations will soon be put to test when a new breed of citizenry will replace the current ones who will have no recollection or experience of the liberation war.
Nepal just went through horrific experiences in transforming itself into pluralistic governance and as well as recovering from a massive earthquake. India's dealings with both Nepal and Sri Lanka over the last two decades were a disaster, to put it mildly.
India has the potential of being a catalyst in uniting the South Asian nations and lead the region to greater prosperity by establishing real functioning democratic institutions and encouraging others to do the same. South Asia has great potential of resources and talents and nations around India proved their capability by initiating development on their own and now can support it in establishing its role in international forums. India, on its own, will always be sidelined otherwise or be satisfied with make-believe appreciations.
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