For India, the failure is particularly significant as its presidency was an opportunity to translate “strategic autonomy”, the current buzzword in foreign policy circles, into multilateral leadership. True, its response is shaped by structural constraints. The country imports more than 85% of its crude oil, much of it from West Asia and Russia. Some nine million of its citizens live in the Gulf. The United States is its largest trading partner. Iran anchors the Chabahar port project and India’s access to Afghanistan and Central Asia. Each relationship is too consequential to risk.
A key consideration for Delhi is Bhutan’s occasional denial or downplay of any Chinese encroachment on its territory, even when satellite data suggests otherwise. This is coupled with a growing perception within Bhutan that India is preventing it from completing its border negotiations with China. Although Thimphu remains closely aligned with Delhi, there is growing interest in expanding its engagement with China.
For India, the opportunity is significant as its robust digital infrastructure and large demographic dividend can create a significant opportunity for adoption and deployment of Artificial Intelligence across sectors, particularly in the care economy. There is an ample room for the development of age-friendly products and services using AI innovation which are of scalable commercial value.
South Asia's higher education ecosystem — with over 1,500 universities and 60 million enrolled learners — is uniquely positioned to absorb and scale new models: work-integrated degrees, on-demand micro-credentials, lifelong learning. The Global South — Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Middle East — shares the same structural challenges. The solutions that work at scale in India, Bangladesh or Nepal will travel naturally to these geographies.
The centerpiece of Modi’s state visit to the US is expected to be a jet engine agreement that can propel Indo-US relations to a new sphere altogether. The application by General Electric to co-produce GE-F414 jet engines in India, along with technology transfer, has already received approval of the Biden administration.
Such is the disparity that at a time when Aida Girma-Melaku, Unicef's representative, reported that Pakistan confronts a triple burden of malnutrition affecting young children, adolescents, and pregnant and lactating women, with 40 per cent of children under the age of five being stunted, Pakistan spent $1.2 billion on imports of luxury cars and electric vehicles for its rich and powerful in the last half of 2022.
For KMMTTP to be a success, locals from both India and Myanmar must be involved as project stakeholders. And India, while economically supporting the project, should also politically back Myanmar's return to democracy.
The worst part of the disaster was not only loss of resources like property but the sexual violence the women in Sri Lanka faced. Apart from lack of proper nutrition, hygiene and clean water and health care, what was impossible to handle was sexual violence along with high cases of rape and domestic abuse.
Although not immediate neighbours in the South Asian region, Nepal and Pakistan face similar social issues and have always helped each other in times of need. And yet there are no direct flights between the two countries.
Unfortunately, the repatriation of the Rohingya refugees might not be a feasible option, given the current circumstances. They have already been in the camps since 2017 with little done. The need of the hour is to devise a long-term solution for their integration into the host society, and assimilation seems to be a more sustainable answer than repatriation
In order to provide small company owners and women traders access to the market, South Asian countries should also adopt regional concepts like the border "haat" (informal markets) used at the India-Bangladesh and India-Myanmar border points.
An alternate strategy for overcoming the North-South divide and altering power dynamics is South-South collaboration. South-South collaboration disproves the idea that knowledge and progress only travel from North to South, giving developing nations the chance to establish their autonomy and create their own narratives.
According to a UN report, three months after the quake in Nepal at least 245 children had been preyed upon by traffickers and that was just the “tip of a growing iceberg”
A trilateral energy sales and purchase agreement between Bangladesh, Nepal, and India are required for any Dhaka-Kathmandu power transaction to be implemented because Bangladesh and Nepal do not have a direct land link.
Pakistan’s nuclear tests of 28 May 1998 not only demonstrated the resolve of the Pakistani nation to safeguard the country's territorial integrity, independence and sovereignty but also the desire to preserve strategic balance in South Asia.
India should make concerted efforts to corner a bigger role in the governance of global multilateral bodies and should get involved in resolving global conflicts and issues. It should take its success to the world, contributing to capacity building wherever required, especially in Africa.
Bhutan is regarded as ‘the kingdom of happiness’ and also has the reputation of being the first to become the one and only carbon-negative country in the world. The international community sees Bhutan as a peaceful and traditional country, and that has helped its policymakers formulate a foreign policy that maintains its unique status in the world order.
The danger is that the cracks in the Constitution are widening. The need of the hour is to find the true meaning of religion. A divisive agenda no matter how strong, will end up dividing the nation and enhancing a culture of division.
Since Pakistan’s birth over 75 years ago, it is the ‘establishment’ that has largely determined who gets political power and when to take it away. Out-of-favour politicians get disqualified from political office, imprisoned, or exiled. Some have been killed.
