European green laws represent a major shift in the relationship between trade and environmental sustainability. For South Asia, they create both risks and opportunities. While compliance costs and market access challenges are real, these regulations can also accelerate the region's transition towards greener and more resilient economic development. The long-term success of South Asian economies will depend on their ability to integrate sustainability into industrial growth strategies while ensuring that environmental goals complement, rather than hinder, broader development objectives.
India's Gen Z seeks opportunity, purpose and impact. The cockroach's greatest lesson is not survival but service—quietly sustaining ecosystems through recycling, resilience and adaptation. As young people lead the journey towards sustainability and Net Zero, the question is not whether they are cockroaches, but whether they will learn from them.
India maintains a separation between civilian and military nuclear programmes and remains outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Consequently, the PFBR is not under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards.
The reactor that has now gone critical at Kalpakkam, on the Bay of Bengal coastline in Tamil Nadu, is not the end of that journey. It is, more precisely, the end of the beginning. The real test is whether India can now scale fast breeder capacity rapidly enough to make a material difference to its energy-mix building on the Kalpakkam template, the industrial supply chains it has validated, and the engineering confidence it has earned.
If India and China choose collaboration by setting aside strategic suspicion in the climate domain, they could fundamentally reshape the trajectory of the 21st century, as they have already demonstrated individually through their pursuit of clean energy over the past decade. More importantly, such a coalition could revive the COP28 fossil-fuel phase-down pledge, which stalled at COP29 in Baku and appears to be drifting further at COP30 in Belém.
The Indus and the Ganges are dying slowly, and with them disappear species that evolved over thousands of years within these waters. If current patterns continue, future generations may inherit rivers that exist geographically but are biologically empty. South Asia still has an opportunity to reverse this trajectory, but only if environmental protection becomes a shared regional priority rather than an afterthought.
Climate migration isn’t just about the loss of land. It is about the loss of memory, culture and home. When people are driven out of the places where they were born, few things that matter are merely economic. Over the next decades, the world will confront a fundamental dilemma. Can humankind handle the climate crisis in a surer way? Or will the future consist of millions searching for a new place to call home?
The constraint on India’s expansion is fissile inventory, particularly between 2035-2045. At present, the breeder program depends on plutonium from a limited set of eight unsafeguarded reactors. Meanwhile, India has accumulated spent fuel from uranium imported for its safeguarded reactors. This significant plutonium is lying idle because we lack safeguarded reprocessing facilities.
The 11th NPT Review Conference is a pivotal moment for the global nuclear order. Its importance lies not only in the specific outcomes it may produce but also in what it represents: a test of the international community’s ability to cooperate in the face of shared existential risks. Success would reaffirm the relevance of the NPT. Failure would deepen existing divisions, weaken the treaty’s credibility, and increase the likelihood of a renewed nuclear arms race.
The choice of the next SG will determine whether the UN regains relevance or slides further into insignificance. A woman leader would not only break a glass ceiling; it would show the UN retains the capacity for renewal. A male candidate seen as a P5 compromise would confirm fears that global leadership remains a private club for the powerful.
A revised version presented on 1 October reflects the Western double standards and the continuous desire of the UNHRC to bend over backwards to please the West. The most shocking aspect is that the recommendations in the report were made without consultation with the Government of Sri Lanka.
Op Sindoor was motivated by the Security Council statement on “the need to hold perpetrators, organisers, financiers and sponsors” of the Pahalgam attack accountable and it targeted terrorist camps in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir, he said.
Rulers and decision makers must deter aggression and a calculated pursuit of violence in today's world” by nations “impelled by political goals such as territorial expansion or domination, or by deviant nonstate actors and terrorists who sow fear and destruction due to their deviant belief systems”, he said.
When asked about the Mumbai 26/11 attackers who came from Pakistan and the presence of internationally declared terrorists like Hafiz Saeed, the mastermind of that attack, and even Osama bi Laden in his country, his response was: “You know this is the kind of discussion I would like to avoid”.
India on principle would be opposed to a meeting of the Council on the issue because it considers that disputes with Pakistan are bilateral matters under the 1972 Simla Agreement between its leaders and there should be no third-party involvement. However, the Council is empowered under the UN Charter to convene a meeting on the issue.
Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif told a TV outlet that there was “an immediate threat” of a confrontation
Pakistan, which is on the Council as an elected member, went along with the sentiments of other members in endorsing the statement, committing itself – at least on paper – to bringing those involved to justice
Amnesty International has documented the massacre of about 100 Hindus by ARSA at Ah Nauk Kha Maung Seik in Rakhine State in August 2017. It said that there were other killings of Hindus and abduction of Hindu women whose lives were spared when they agreed to convert to Islam. The massacre of Hindus took place on August 17 before ARSA launched a coordinated attack on several Myanmar security posts on August 25, setting off retaliatory attacks by Myanmar forces on Rohingya.
In keeping with the day’s theme, Harish also said, “We stand united with the UN membership in condemning incidents of religious intolerance against Muslims”. “With over 200 million of its citizens practicing Islam, India is home to one of the largest Muslim populations in the world”, he asserted.
