India’s Role in South Asian Economic Cooperation

　　ABSTRACT: In the process of South Asian economic cooperation, India, as the dominant power in the region, plays a key role. Its regional and domestic development policies have shaped the process of the regional economic cooperation. In the last two decades, India’s attitude toward the regional cooperation underwent a discernable shift, as its enthusiasm for the economic cooperation outweighed its concerns for political and security issues.the regional economic ties have thus been strengthened, and the regional cooperative mechanism improved. However, compared with some other regions, the overall level of economic integration in South Asia is less than satisfactory. Generally speaking, India’s role in regional trade and investment cooperation is very limited.There are several reasons for the limited role India has played in regional economic integration: the wide gap between India and other regional members in terms of industrial base which results in the low trade complementarities; the lack of appeal to Indian investors of small regional members; the high trading cost in the region; and other political and security concerns.