Transition to Democracy, Political Capital and the Challenge of Regional Transformation in South Asia: Indian Democracy in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

The search for regional integration in the age of globalization might come across as paradoxical. After all, in an age when border-crossing individuals and capital, border-defeating technology and terror, and border-defying international norms and powers are the salient facts of political life, does it make sense still to talk about the need for regional transformation, or indeed, even to take regions seriously? The emergence of the European Union, and in smaller ways, the ever closer integration of the states of South East Asia, Latin America and more recently, even Africa, are emphatic refutations of the assertion implied in this question. Counter-intuitive though it may sound, states are better placed to compete internationally when they are effectively ensconced in a secure regional hinterland, and can count on regional trade and aid — particularly against natural disasters — and support at the level of global politics. When one turns the general query to South Asia, the record of regional transformation — with the moribund if not still-born SAARC, eternally bickering India and Pakistan, and more recently, the confrontation between ‘South’ India and Sri Lanka on the issue of international sanctions in which Delhi remains less than neutral, the record comes across as dismal relative to other regions of the world, with no particularly encouraging signs of imminent change for the better.