It's always been trendy to speak disparagingly of SAARC. And ahead of every summit the media ridicule reaches a crescendo: calling it a feeble and pathetic talk-shop from which we can't expect much. All this has become a self-fulfilling prophecy, how can the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation go anywhere if we are so chronically cynical about it?

After all, what the critics of the regional body forget is that SAARC embodies our collective being, its members are our own governments. Every time pundits in Delhi, Islamabad or Kathmandu mock SAARC we are mocking ourselves because SAARC can only be what we allow it to be. If SAARC has failed, it means we have allowed it to fail. It's not SAARC's fault that it is an idea that is ahead of its time.

It goes without saying that after 13 summits, the organisation could have done better in fostering trust, peace and development in the region. But its founding members have hobbled it with a constitution that makes it virtually impossible to tackle meaningfully anything other than tuberculosis. Its exchange of television programs tends to be an exchange of government propaganda, representing the lowest common denominator in creativity. It's also true that the organisation and its summits have been used as political football by some members. But whose fault is that?

The best way for us to approach SAARC is not to expect anything from it until member states individually and collectively develop the maturity and confidence that is needed to make regional cooperation truly possible and necessary. It needs pragmatism, not dogmatism. It needs member governments and their leaders to look beyond their self-inflicted paranoia. Given the state of its member states, the only plausible use for SAARC must be to raise living standards of a region which has three times more desperately poor people than sub-Saharan Africa.

Next week in Dhaka let's hear the Sumitters present some real ideas on what they plan to do about the obscene poverty that their citizens live in. But as usual, we're only going to hear fine speeches beamed live lip service and grandiose promises from leaders most of whom seem so enamoured with the trappings of power that they forget the poverty trap that mires their peoples.

As for the media throngs in Dhaka, let's for once see them less obsessed with the photo opportunity handshake between India and Pakistan, and more interested in a substantial analysis of promises never kept.