SouthAsia

India still faces significant hurdles in addressing climate change, pollution, and inequality. While India has made significant progress in reducing extreme poverty (Goal 1) and improving infrastructure (Goal 9), it lags behind in areas such as quality education (Goal 4), gender equality (Goal 5), and environmental sustainability (Goals 13, 14, and 15).

The long-term assessment of the CRI 2025, covering data from 1993 to 2022, places India as the sixth most affected country globally due to extreme weather events. Over this period, India reported a staggering loss of 80,000 lives and economic damages amounting to $200 billion.

Nearly half of PM2.5 pollution in the worst-affected countries comes from the burning of fossil fuels, biomass, and agricultural waste – also major contributors to climate change. As extreme weather events worsen due to climate change, air pollution is expected to become an even greater threat, UNICEF warned.

Pakistan can see the writing on the wall and knows that it must refrain from using the heyday of the alliance during the early years of the Cold War as the baseline because that world no longer exists. More importantly, Pakistan is no longer the same.

The global economic growth is driven by strong economic activity in India, alongside recoveries in Pakistan, Bhutan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.

A big challenge for handloom weavers remains the flooding of markets by printed duplicates, which sell at a fraction of the price of handloom fabric.

Sri Lanka's initiatives, coupled with a focus on multi-sectoral policies, reflect a progressive approach to addressing mental health risks across the life course.

Trump’s tendency to view alliances through a cost-benefit lens might lead to heightened expectations for India to share more of the regional security burden.