When SAARC - the South Asian regional grouping met in the early years, it used to be ridiculed as the "Beggars' summit" - an oblique reference to the hundreds of millions of people living in abject poverty in the region. Today, no one will dare make such a remark given India's remarkable economic growth in recent years. Thanks to India's new image in the world, there is at least a semblance of reflected glory on the rest of South Asia desperately trying to uplift the living standards of its teeming masses. But what of SAARC itself?

International affairs commentators have pointed out that even a relatively new geographic grouping like Mercosur, the South American economic bloc comprising Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, which is six years younger than SAARC, is making vast strides. Meeting earlier this month they proudly said they were well equipped to face the world food crisis and the energy crunch, the two issues that were being discussed this weekend in Colombo. The perennial problem with SAARC seems to be that there is much activity in the immediate surroundings of a summit, mostly by the host nation, but very little follow-up, which is why these summits have earned the 'talk shop' tag.

What SAARC lacks is dynamism. But for dynamism to be generated the member states must truly be committed to regionalism. For example, the social charter conceived at the 1999 Colombo summit had not reached implementation phase even though it was formally adopted at the 12th summit in Islamabad in 2004. SAFTA - the South Asian Free Trade Agreement -- has come into being, but Trade Ministries of member countries are still negotiating lists of items that will get duty free access. SAFTA also overlaps with bilateral FTAs, and there is concern in Sri Lanka that India is trying to have a stranglehold on the Lankan economy through a CEPA which involves a wider range of economic activity than just trade.
The European Union is often cited as an example where regionalism has succeeded in making the individual member-states a powerful bloc, but it took them decades to present a united front, and they still remain split on a whole host of issues.

In South Asia, quite apart from the lack of willingness and commitment to forge partnerships, the eternal dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir has been the snag in SAARC's progress. And now, we have Afghanistan which is crossing swords with Pakistan over cross-border terrorism. The new member's alignment with the western world, brought about by present circumstances, and its closeness with India as India herself re-aligns with the affluent west, brings a new dimension to South Asian geo-politics. India - the most influential of the now eight sisters - in some ways the pater-familias of the SAARC family is globalising - some say Americanising.

This has heightened regional tension which is cause for concern in China. The big-power politics will undoubtedly have reverberations on the stability of the region, particularly for smaller nations. During the recent debate in the Indian parliament on the Indo-US nuclear 'deal', an influential young politician said that India need not worry what the world thinks about her, as long as India does what it thinks is in her interest.

That is the new Indian thinking; gone is the (Mahatma) Gandhian philosophy, it is now the Indira Gandhi doctrine. And the manner in which New Delhi bulldozed the Sethusamudram project to accommodate the Tamil Nadu state government with nary a by-your-leave from Colombo, is a classic case in point. India's feet-dragging on countering terrorism in Sri Lanka, something she started, is another.

In the early years of SAARC, India had problems with every one of her neighbours, including Sri Lanka. Though this climate has somewhat eased, due to India's unequal size and influence vis-a-vis its neighbours, it must bear a huge burden in ensuring the success or failure of SAARC.

But SAARC must come to terms with itself, and ask whether these summits are just a formal exercise in futility with no real self-belief, or commitment to what is increasingly a worldwide phenomena - regional groupings. SAARC's one-time ambitions to telescope with ASEAN - the economically highly successful South East Asian grouping -- has also lost vigour as individual nations wish to try their own luck with economic partners in Asean rather than seek membership as a bloc.
The South Asian heads of government now in Colombo may well be asked: Whither SAARC?.