The South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Foreign Ministers meet on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) meeting has become a convention since 1997. Despite the SAARC Summit meetings being cancelled or postponed, the SAARC foreign Ministers have met regularly to discuss the regional affairs. Lately, since 2018, the India Pakistan conflict has also spilled over to the SAARC foreign ministers meet in New York.

Since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led government came to power in India in 2014, the nomenclature of policies has been either Sanskritised or Indianised. With tech savvy Prime Minister on the steering wheel, the government is communicating with the general public through catchy one-liners that are quite apt for character-restricted social media like Twitter. Latest in this catchy pronouncement is the Foreign Secretary’s 'SAARC Yatra', as he rounded up tours of four neighbouring countries in the first week of March.

The 20th Conference of Parties (COP) to UN sponsored Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is going to be held from 1 to 12 December in Lima, Peru. Since the US-China bilateral climate deal on the sideline of Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) early this month, the world has eerily been watching India's 'breaking news' short of indication of targeted greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction. Between APEC and COP 20 (Lima), the 18th SAARC summit (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation:26-27 November) in Nepal provides a breathing space for India.

In a remarkable display of faith in regional cooperation, the new Prime Minister in Delhi invited all the heads of governments and their representatives of SAARC and Mauritius to his swearing-in. Interestingly, except for a common dinner hosted by the President of India, the SAARC leaders never met as a group. Are we looking forward to a robust, frequent, effective, and efficient regional dialogue on a myriad of issues regarding South Asia, especially on the environment front? Too early to predict, but we shall be hopeful.

The fortitude of cooperation and practical attitude in the investigation of transnational terrorist crimes is indispensable. Indian investigating agencies have been undergoing with many problems in trail of the terrorist related cases in investigations and checks in other countries. Consequently, cooperation between law enforcing authorities of different countries is a vital tool for fighting threats to security. It requires sustained cross border cooperation, coherent regional cooperation and specific global cooperation.

In spite of the seemingly difficult terrain in generating and implementing confidence-building measures in South Asia, all are not doom and gloom. It is thus plausible to make the following conclusions based on existing regional and sub-regional arrangements in South Asia.

India and Pakistan, as the two new de facto nuclear weapon states in the nuclear club since 1998, have embarked upon some meaningful nuclear risk reduction measures through a series of bilateral agreements.

In the era of aggressive globalization, block politics hardly matters. But, economic integration, free trade, GDP growth, connectivity through infrastructure development does matter most to the international system. Where all the leaders have failed to forge a regional cooperation during 22 years of South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) existence, the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) like the World Bank (WB) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) have rekindled hope in SAARC to become relevant, although economically. This is politically incorrect but true.