The Quad's Critical Minerals Initiative provides an important platform for achieving these objectives. Through coordinated investments, technology sharing and supply-chain diversification, the initiative seeks to create resilient and transparent mineral supply networks. Australia contributes abundant mineral reserves, Japan offers advanced processing technologies, the United States brings investment and innovation capabilities, while India provides a rapidly expanding market and growing manufacturing base.
Renewing the Ganges Water Sharing Treaty could also serve as an important confidence-building measure between Bangladesh and India. A renewed agreement would help restore mutual trust and strengthen regional cooperation over shared water resources. It would further reinforce the role of the Joint Rivers Commission (JRC), which remains a key institutional mechanism for addressing transboundary river issues.
By recognising Pakistan’s role in the Iran crisis, Brussels is signalling that influence in today's international system is increasingly distributed across multiple actors, not concentrated solely in Washington, Beijing, or Moscow. This fits with the EU’s broader effort to develop a more autonomous and flexible foreign policy in a more multipolar world.
China is a major defence exporter for Myanmar, but it has been arming both the Tatmadaw and the rebel forces. China’s aim is to secure its strategic highway through Myanmar to the Bay of Bengal and counter American and Indian influence in the region, including Myanmar and Bangladesh.
When the first COVID-19 case came to public notice in India in January this year, questions in concerned quarters have been raised as to why did it take almost two months to prepare for lockdown and that too with a notice of a few hours to leave many citizens unprepared and more so the migrant and the poor, writes Partha Pratim Mitra for South Asia Monitor
RSS remains quite optimistic about the way the new world order is going to pan out post-COVID-19. It feels that it is the beginning of a new golden era for India, writes Arun Anand for South Asia Monitor
The consequence of continuing the lockdown, even under present conditions, could be grave, as the self-employed people like vendors, plumbers, auto drivers, small automobile workshops etc. as well as poor senior citizens, visually impaired/differently-abled people, who are millions in number all over the country, would be badly hit, writes N S Venkataraman for South Asia Monitor
The legitimacy of a regional organization like SAARC and others alike will be uncertain if strategic measures and procedures to control COVID-19 do not work in South Asia, writes Maj. Gen Binoj Basnyat (retd) for South Asia Monitor
No one can predict what the trajectory of communal relations will be when it is clear that so much will change in the post-corona period not only with regard to Hindu-Muslim ties, but in every other field that the scene in India will be quite different from what it is today writes Amulya Ganguli for the South Asia Monitor
The armed forces, after decades of clamouring, have been accorded a historic opportunity to usher in change and reforms. It is imperative that this opening is utilized with sagacity and deliberate forethought writes Admiral Arun Prakash (retd) for the South Asia Monitor
How much the talk of sharing power with the Taliban is realistic - that raises doubts, as it is impossible for the Taliban to be diverted from their ideology, writes Monira Nazmi Jahan for the South Asia Monitor
We, the people of Nepal should understand that if an unfortunate incident can befall one, it can befall others too. That’s why we all need to stand together, writes Jivesh Jha for the South Asia Monitor
While the South Korean model of aggressive and maximum testing has proved successful; the world is also studying and appreciating the Indian model wherein a densely and an overpopulated nation with limited resources and a not very advanced health infrastructure has been able to control the exponential spread of the pandemic, writes Brig Anil Gupta for the South Asia Monitor
The question whether India’s initiative will develop into a SAARC minus Pakistan or lead to a revival of SAARC itself remains open, writes Amb T P Sreenivasan (retd) for South Asia Monitor
This inability to get any meaningful trade agreement in place speaks volumes about India’s potential future relations with the US with Trump as president, writes Frank F Islam for South Asia Monitor
Lockdown cannot be an option to exercise indefinitely. We need to progressively lift it so that the economic costs will not overwhelm us, writes Mohan Guruswamy for the South Asia Monitor
It wasn't only a favour to the US, Brazil or Israel. India also decided to send HCQ “to all our neighbouring countries who are dependent on our capabilities” and “some nations who have been particularly badly affected" by the pandemic, writes Arul Louis for South Asia Monitor
In South Asia, India has, on the directives of its Supreme Court, constituted High Powered Committees in each state to define criteria for release of both sentenced and unsentenced prisoners, writes Madhurima Dhanuka for the South Asia Monitor
India has about 450 million workers in the informal sector and about a third of them are in the migrant cluster. Even if it is estimated that half of this workforce is grappling with hunger, the numbers are mind-boggling, writes C Uday Bhaskar for South Asia Monitor
