India's Home Minister P Chidambaram was reported as saying this week that his Government was mindful that Pakistan's intelligence agency, ISI, would use Colombo as a convenient launching pad to send their operatives to infiltrate India - and therefore, his Government was screening visa applications from Sri Lanka even more thoroughly.

We are not here to ask what credible information the Indian Home Minister has on this score, or if those alleged Pakistani terrorists who attacked Mumbai last November bothered about visas when they came by boat. But coming as it does in the midst of the 31st South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Foreign Ministers meeting, it only underscores the pathetic state of regional co-operation in this part of the world.

While the people of Europeans nations which invaded each other seventy years ago can now travel freely from one country to another, countries in South Asia, with sixty years of independence and no such tragic history, are the very anti-thesis of this unity.

The Indian Government's decision means, effectively, that Sri Lankans applying for visas to India are 'suspects' until proven innocent. This has been the assumption for some years now and the concept of freedom of movement within the region by citizens of South Asia has been limited to grand pronouncements at various SAARC Ministerial meetings.

A classic example is that the SAARC Information Ministers approved a resolution calling for visa-free travel for media personnel, but respective missions haven't even heard of it. The absence of the two key Foreign Ministers -- Pranab Mukherjee (India) and Shah Mahmud Qureshi (Pakistan) -- at the Colombo meeting of SAARC Foreign Ministers this week just went to show how bi-lateral bad-blood still prevails over regional bonhomie.

Clearly, the upcoming Indian parliamentary elections have taken a toll on SAARC solidarity. It was only the other day that Home Minister Chidambaram walked up to Mr. Mukherjee, to ask if he had got the sanction of the ruling party leader Sonia Gandhi to say things against the LTTE.

An Indian columnist writing to this newspaper last week says the Foreign Minister seemed irritated at the questioning, and looking at the vacant seat of Ms. Gandhi, nodded affirmatively. It seemed that Mr. Chidambaram, a Tamilian politician, was mindful of the fallout of this statement in view of developments in Tamil Nadu. Then came the Indian somersault, which others say is a 'recalibration of positions'.

India once again called on both the Sri Lanka Government and the LTTE to stop fighting and to negotiate - just when the LTTE is losing the last square kilometres under its control and looking desperately for a life-line.

It is the same Mr. Chidambaram, who in 2007 said at the Lakshman Kadirgamar Memorial lecture that it is necessary that; "there is peace, stability and security in Sri Lanka", and that India is committed to the unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Sri Lanka.

"India is aware of the asymmetry between India and each of its neighbours, and has addressed the issue with candour and boldness," he added. But these are mere words that draw applause at lectures. The fact is that India is the epicentre of regional instability with so much revolving around its own parochial politics. Ask any of India's neighbours and SAARC member-states, and they will tell you that it is India's domestic politics and internal compulsions that have been the bane of their own stability and wellbeing.

Sri Lanka has had to face the brunt of this - and this includes the misery faced by millions of her citizens living in the North and East for the past thirty years; first by India's hegemonic approach to regionalism, and then by its ruling party's subservience to the pulls of coalition politics and consequently, the dictates of its own regional parties.

As the SAARC Foreign Ministers met, the entire region is in turmoil. Afghanistan and the north of Pakistan bedevilled by the US and western powers trying to quell an armed Islamist movement; Indo-Pak relations nose-diving with charge sheets, accusations and counter-accusations following the November attack on Mumbai; and Bangladesh having to deal with a group of soldiers who have mutinied. Sri Lanka's problems are well chronicled.

This is a region where 31 per cent of the people in general live below the poverty line, i.e. Rs. 100 a day. Yet, the crazed jockeying for votes has seen Indian politicians even congratulate those who have show-cased its warts and all - as was the case with the recent Oscar winning movie.

The SAARC Foreign Ministers non-conference as it turned out to be this week is symptomatic of what ails regional co-operation in South Asia. If South Asian leaders continue bickering like this, there will be no end to cross-border terrorism while regional co-operation and people-to-people contact, will remain a pipe-dream.