India, Pakistan, Nepal, and the Maldives are the four countries from South Asia among 120 countries at this year's Democracy Summit. Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Afghanistan were not invited, but Pakistan, one of the most authoritarian and corrupt countries in South Asia with scant respect for human rights, was invited.
India has some deep soul-searching to do as we explore the question: Are we truly a democratic nation? Or is democracy the story we sell to ourselves and the world when the nation and its people know that we are not what we think or claim to be?
Bangladesh still has a terrorism problem and cross-border drug cartels pose a significant threat to its national security. And the elite force remains one of the important agencies to curb terrorism and narcotics control.
The reason we are losing nature boils down, in my mind, to one basic problem: our inability to perceive the difference between public benefits and private profits.
‘Third World’ and ‘Developed Nation’ are terms that are derogatory and ethnocentric in concept. The terns 'Global North' and the 'Global South' can offer researchers, columnists, as well as development partners a politically balanced perspective.
Interestingly, strategies employed during the Covid pandemic are being replicated. Much like the Cowin app was used to track and monitor Covid vaccinations, the Indian government plans an app to monitor every eligible child to ensure that they are up to date with their vaccination schedules
The port can grow to be one of the key hubs of trade and business in South Asia as a result of its geographic advantages and deep-sea port capabilities.
If India focuses on improving bilateral economic and connectivity initiatives with Bangladesh, the economic development of this region is inevitable.
The manner in which bulldozers as tools of retaliatory State violence and punishment are being normalised now is akin to illegal 'encounter' (extra-judicial) killings which have now been normalised by police forces across the country.
I learned, too, that on average, the Gulf countries send half a dozen coffins a week to Nepal with the remains of somebody’s beloved family member. This didn’t just apply to Nepal — workers from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and African countries faced a similar fate.
The root causes behind the food insecurity status of Sri Lanka are two-fold. Short-sighted policies such as the chemical fertilizer ban imposed by the Rajapaksa government generated a domino effect on agricultural production. Additionally, foreign exchange constraints severely limited food imports.
As Mahatma Gandhi said we should be the change that we want to see or in other words we should practice what we preach. That is never the case. So we heard pontification on how we should reduce the carbon footprint to make this world sustainable by people who never practice sustainable living in their personal life.
If trade and cultural relations between Bangladesh and Northeast India improve, the picture of the entire region will change.
Writers of the three winning entries, one from Pakistan and two from India, read their works out online at the Spelt conference to a full auditorium. The meritorious list included four stories from Pakistan, three from India, two from Nepal and one from the Philippines.
The ranking process is a vicious circle wherein higher-ranking institutions can mobilize more resources and vice versa. Unfortunately, those institutions which are not part of this frenzy competition will eventually be excluded from the higher education space dominated by the current neoliberal discourse.
The space industry is keenly looking forward to the Indian government's new space policy and hoping for ease of doing business to take a practical shape.
What applies to India can also work for other nations. So one hopes that world leaders participating in COP27 will reach actionable decisions and obtain the funding already promised by the developed countries to make a serious start to creating a sustainable global environment and avoid further climate change within the next few decades.
There can be no doubt that the direction of the Ukraine conflict may cast a long shadow on India’s presidency.
Taking a cue from Africa, can South Asian countries conduct strategic and collective consultations to build a nest?
