In the larger South Asia context, air pollution does not follow national boundaries and therefore the solutions for all the airsheds cannot come from any one city or a country. The countries in South Asia – India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Pakistan - that share a common airshed are impacted by the transboundary pollution. More than half of the air pollution across major cities in South Asia is not local but transboundary in nature.
Regional bodies like the SAARC, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, have the potential to foster cooperation on climate adaptation, disaster preparedness, and trans-border pollution control. However, geopolitical tensions, particularly between India and Pakistan, hinder progress.
In the years gone by, India was defined by its religious and cultural strengths, but it has now taken Prime Minister Modi, with a new initiative, to give a boost to India-Caribbean ties through a purely development agenda. It is hoped that CARICOM would set up the mechanisms to get this agenda going. Is it that India is now showing its readiness to take on American and Chinese frontiers aimed at becoming a leader of the Global South if not a world power?
While the South Asian states securitize, local politics has often scapegoated refugee populations, turning majority insecurities into electoral capital – a fear that refugees’ encroachment on physical and political spaces, jobs, land, corner welfare resources meted out by the state and place undue pressures on infrastructure; acase in point the rhetoric against Bangladeshi migrants in India.
With India's growing political and strategic interest in the continent, and inclination to leverage its diaspora as an instrument of soft power, it’s natural for New Delhi to establish a beachhead in Somalia, that straddles the Horn of Africa, the source of the Nile and a gate to the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, through which tens of thousands of vessels pass through Somali waters every year in what is one of the world’s busiest sea-trading lanes, writes Tarun Basu for South Asia Monitor
Delhi has not yet made an official statement, but legitimizing the Taliban at a Camp David ceremony would have had an adverse impact on India’s strategic interests in the region, writes C Uday Bhaskar for South Asia Monitor
For an outsider, the NRC process has come to be perceived as anti-Muslim. This is drawing the line along religious identity—a factor to which the indigenous Assamese Muslim community does not agree, but whose voice has been largely ignored in this massive debate, writes Azera Parveen Rahman for South Asia Monitor
Trump ordering withdrawal of some troops is very much on the cards. The situation in Afghanistan over the next few months is unpredictable, with the internal turmoil and economic situation in Pakistan also deteriorating, writes Lt Gen Prakash Chand Katoch (retd) for South Asia Monitor
Sri Lanka, being an Indian Ocean island nation strategically located at the international maritime crossroads, has significant diplomatic influence in the West due its Christian community, write Srimal Fernando and Mizly Nizar for South Asia Monitor
The creation of a CDS cannot (and must not) be an isolated action because it carries with it a whole new ecosystem that can transform India’s national security paradigm. writes Admiral Arun Prakash (retd) for South Asia Monitor
Why can’t India begin by addressing the Balochistan problem at international forums, especially the heavy-handed suppression and continuing human rights abuses the people of that province face?, writes Nilova Roy Chaudhury for South Asia Monitor
Pakistan's only real option is to provoke large scale communal conflict simultaneously in states like Gujarat, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Assam and Kashmir, which can spread to other regions. That can be blamed on the ruling dispensation's 'anti-Muslim' policies, against which many voices have been raised in India, writes Subir Bhaumik for South Asia Monitor
Showing political will at the highest level is of little help unless it works at ground level. The government must take Kashmiri people, particularly the youth, into confidence to instill buoyancy into every faith-filled Kashmiri's heart, writes Debasish Bhattacharyya for South Asia Monitor
Hundreds of dengue-affected patients are receiving treatment in different public and private hospitals in Dhaka, but hospitals are full to the brim and facing challenges to handle the crisis due to lack of sufficient equipment and manpower, writes Akmal Hossain for South Asia Monitor
There is a clear sense that something is missing in the present relationship between the Indian and Nepali governments. Both should work to develop harmony and trust and mitigate the trust deficit, writes Gaurab Shumsher Thapa for South Asia Monitor
Pakistan will try to enhance terrorist activities not only in J&K but in all of India. Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence may activate and instruct its sleeper cells to carry out terrorist activities in communally sensitive places so that communal riots erupt in the country, writes J K Verma for South Asia Monitor
The Kashmir issue may have been handled deftly at the global politico-diplomatic level, but the abiding challenge for India remains domestic, writes C Uday Bhaskar for South Asia Monitor
PM Modi has made it clear that it cannot be business as usual. The UK would need to carefully consider whether its pre-1947 agenda of promoting an autonomous Muslim state at the intersection of South and Central Asia is a desirable objective for the West, wrties Ambassador Bhaswati Mukherjee (retd) for South Asia Monitor
Pakistan is unhappy that major players which could bail it out at the UN are all embroiled in their own affairs – the US trying to quit Afghanistan and China facing a trying time in Hong Kong, writes Mahendra Ved for South Asia Monitor
