No one can deny the fact that India makes up the majority of South Asia by landmass and population, and that's why better India makes better South Asia. But this is only applicable if India's brilliant glow were spread over its one billion-plus population, in which case the economic and social revival in its thousand manifestations would also extend across the subcontinent and outlying regions.

Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee at the time of the last general elections said that India is indeed resplendent, sending off rays of light, sparkling like the diadem catching a shaft of the bright early summer sun. Election results confirmed that how wrong Vajpayee was at that time. Coming to reality, India shimmers only for the upper middle classes, the few score million, enjoying the post-modern, post-protectionist consumerist boom.

The fact that the Indian sun shines for but a few does not demand a debate, although Sonia Gandhi's Congress Party's ability to get the point across pays dividend to their success in last general elections. Gandhi and now her son Rahul Gandhi able to challenge the hype and get the message across that over 400 million Indians are under-employed, under-productive, under-fed, under-clad, under-sheltered and under-educated.

The rest of the South-Asian elites would gladly go along with the feel good vibes emanating from the Jamuna banks, given that their societies are even less egalitarian than India's. And the interests of the Anglophone urban super-elites are actually tied together as part of the charmed South-Asian circle that is at ease with each other in gymkhanas from Dhaka to Quetta. So when New Delhi claims that India sizzles, the well to do in Karachi and Kathmandu are dazzled. And everyone fervently believes in the trickle down which will at some point of time touch the masses. Those who remind of starvation deaths, suicide-prone farmers, labourers pawning blood and kidney, mothers selling children to slave labour, are merely trying to spoil the fun.

These economic upper classes ride the crest of unrepresentative polities, whether democracy or dictatorship. And they meet each other at airport departure lounges all the time, exclaiming at 'what a small world it is'.

In reality, it is not that the world is undersized, but that the Anglophones of South-Asia are a very small group. Among them, there is no more than two degrees of separation " ? between the NGO chieftain of Islamabad and the senior bureaucrat in Dhaka and the executive of the Indian multinational in Bombay. Going by this criterion, South-Asia is actually already one country.

Those who live secure lives in faux Greco-Roman towers coming up all over with polished marble-floor lobbies and air-conditioning to keep out the evening chill can really feel the rays of shining India touching their face. But then reality strikes looking down just about anywhere, for there are shanties in the shadow of the high-rise without running water, whose occupants defecate in the open nullah over there. Just outside the grand Greco-Roman gates, the dusty road has no footpath and the cobbler has his shop on the street. The child laborer (Tribal? Dalit? Gorkha?) scurries about serving the customers at the chaiwallah's stall.

Everyone has an opinion on the Great Indian Middle Class, without ever defining what where lies the 'middle', are we talking rural or urban, how wide a band are we including within the spectrum, and are we not all wanting to call ourselves middle because we really know that we are upper.The real middle class properly defined as filling the center of the demographic spectrum, surprise, does not speak English and makes up the bulk of the urban and small-town populace, far from rejoicing today suffers in the miasma of unfulfilled expectations.

Unlike for the absolute poor, whose hopes from society are at nil and survival the mantra, the frustrations for the millions of the true middle class come with the chagrin of seeing others 'make it'. That is where the violent revolutions of future South Asia are made.