A drive into Washington always carries surprises. Some days it is the flash of motorcades slicing through traffic, while on others, it is a practised-to-perfection rhythm of suited figures hurrying past security barriers, badges swinging, as decisions that shape distant regions are quietly set in motion. Tuesday morning, I hurried across a rain-soaked pathway; June showers turning the streets silver, blurring the edges of buildings and making even DC’s hard power look momentarily subdued.
Inside the Atlantic Council, however, the mood was anything but that. The room where I was headed for a roundtable discussion on the issues plaguing South Asia in 2026 and in years to come was one where the credentials were almost mesmerising. There were people who had advised governments, built companies, worked in multilateral institutions, led civic initiatives, studied public systems and carried the anxieties of their countries into global spaces. They came from different walks of life, but they were bound by one uncomfortable question: if South Asia’s old leadership has failed to change the region’s equation, can the next generation do any better?
Introducing his brainchild NextGen Leaders on these very pages Atlantic Council Senior Adviser Imran Shauket recently argued that South Asia’s next generation of leaders may finally have the ability to change that equation. It is an attractive proposition, not because youth is automatically wiser, but because South Asia’s problems have outgrown the habits of its old politics. The region cannot remain imprisoned by a political imagination built around suspicion, grievance and hostilities when its people are being hit by climate disasters, poor public services, weak health systems, broken education pipelines, joblessness and digital disruption.
Spending my afternoon with this “creme a le creme” revealed a generational shift in how South Asia is being understood. They locked horns over classifications, buzzwords, overarching concepts, and false monoliths, coming up with new ways to engage governments, the private sector, distinguished professionals and the people at large.
Another important insight from the discussion was that the next generation does not want one more hundred-point wish list. It wants focus. South Asia should pick three problems, not thirty.
That the younger voices in the room did not deny the old disputes was refreshing. India-Pakistan tensions remain the elephant in almost every South Asian conversation. SAARC remains paralysed. Visas are restrictive. Trade is politicised. Security establishments remain suspicious of contact. Historical wounds still shape diplomatic behaviour. No meaningful blueprint can emerge by closing one’s eyes to these realities. But what added fresh energy to the conversation was the refusal to let these obstacles become the whole story.
No brownie points for identifying the first and foremost challenge that plagues all of us: climate change. Gone are the days when leaders could mock climate anxiety as a passing obsession, disparaging “the whole climate crisis (as) not only Fake News, (but) Fake Science.”
Today, at least in Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Bhutan and Afghanistan, climate is tied to food security, water availability, migration, urban stress, disease outbreaks and fiscal stability. A biblical flood in Pakistan, a perpetually-threatened Dhaka, glacial melt in the Himalayas or extreme heat across the plains is not just a national emergency. It is part of a shared regional future.
This is where the old politics becomes dangerously outdated. Rivers do not recognise borders. Heatwaves do not recognise borders. Air pollution does not recognise borders. Disease outbreaks do not recognise borders. Yet South Asian states continue to treat information-sharing, disaster forecasting and climate cooperation as if they were political concessions rather than investments in their own citizens’ survival.
The second challenge is what may be called state capacity. South Asia does not suffer from a shortage of speeches, plans, conferences or strategies. It suffers from the inability to implement them consistently. Governments announce reforms, but bureaucracies delay them. Political parties may scream of revolution, but their lips are often sealed when asked about delivery. The less said about institutions, the better. This is why the conversation around artificial intelligence and digital public infrastructure must be handled carefully. Technology is useful only when institutions know what to do with it. For instance, AI cannot repair a broken school system by itself. Nor can it magically whip climate resilience out of thin air.
Pakistan offers one important lesson. Its digital public infrastructure did not emerge because the state had unlimited resources. It emerged because the state needed tools to manage identity, welfare and payments at scale. NADRA established a robust digital identity backbone; BISP and Ehsaas showed how that identity layer could be leveraged to deliver targeted social protection; and Raast introduced a modern, interoperable payments infrastructure. These systems are imperfect, but they are real assets. The next challenge is to connect them more intelligently with health, education, climate adaptation and agriculture.
Bangladesh offers another lesson. Its human-development gains did not come from one glamorous reform. They came from decades of community-level delivery, social mobilisation, women’s participation, health outreach and policy continuity. Pakistan has digital systems that Bangladesh can study, while Bangladesh has social-sector delivery models that Pakistan should study. This is exactly the kind of practical exchange that the next generation appears more willing to imagine than its predecessors.
As Ehteshamul Haque, a Bangladeshi-American lawyer, put it: “Health, climate resilience, and digital systems are areas where I see potential for real synergy between Bangladesh and Pakistan. The two countries have complementary strengths, and that is exactly what makes such exchanges worthwhile. Bangladesh’s health and human-development gains came from decades-long, bipartisan, and community-level delivery, while Pakistan has built a real digital public infrastructure that Bangladesh can learn from. However, to move the relationship between the two countries to a more durable footing, Islamabad needs to consider a lasting resolution (such as a formal apology) to the question of 1971.”
That is perhaps the most important reminder for South Asia’s NextGen leaders. They cannot build the future by pretending the past does not exist. The region needs new thinking. Agreed. Still, it needs a line of thought that coexists with self-realisation. Pakistan and Bangladesh can and should cooperate on health, climate resilience, digital public infrastructure, education technology and youth exchanges. But a durable relationship also requires moral honesty.
The third challenge is economic exclusion. South Asia has young populations (when combined, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal become one of the largest “young” countries in the world, with median ages in early-twenties), but youth alone is not a dividend. It can become a burden if education systems fail, if skills do not match the labour market, if women remain excluded, if small businesses cannot scale, and if technology creates jobs for a few while displacing many. The next generation understands this more clearly because it is living inside the contradiction. It is globally connected, digitally fluent and ambitious, but often trapped in economies that cannot absorb its potential.
Gender, in this context, is not merely a rights issue. South Asia cannot unlock growth while keeping half its population undereducated, underemployed or unsafe in public life. Bangladesh’s experience has already shown how women’s participation can reshape development outcomes. Pakistan, too, cannot speak seriously about growth while leaving so much female talent unused.
Another important insight from the discussion was that the next generation does not want one more hundred-point wish list. It wants focus. South Asia should pick three problems, not thirty. Climate resilience, health delivery and digital public infrastructure are obvious starting points because they are urgent, practical and less politically explosive than the region’s core disputes. This is where subregional cooperation becomes important. If the whole region cannot move together, smaller circles can still begin. Pakistan and Bangladesh can work on health delivery, digital systems and climate adaptation. Energy and water are just as crippling a concern for Pakistan as for Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and the Maldives. The point is not to replace formal diplomacy. The point is to stop waiting for formal diplomacy to do everything. Taking another step in the same direction, one figures out how not all cooperation needs to begin with foreign ministries. Sometimes, it begins with artists, curators, doctors, engineers, coders, teachers and donors. This is why the diaspora matters. The South Asian diaspora is no longer merely a source of remittances. It is a reservoir of knowledge, influence, and global connectivity. South Asians abroad work in technology companies, hospitals, universities, financial institutions, think tanks and public agencies. It is also not a monolith, as Imran Shauket emphasised, “Pakistan has to stop talking about the diaspora as a generality.” “There are different diasporas with different utilities,” he said. “Some are a vote bank and a source of remittances; others are integrated into American political, business and policy circles and can create influence; still others are students and academics who may become CEOs, officials or thought leaders in the next 15 or 20 years. Pakistan needs a separate short-, medium- and long-term strategy for each category instead of speaking about the diaspora in general terms.”
(To Be Continued)
The writer is OpEd Editor (Daily Times) and can be reached at durenayab786 @gmail.com. She tweets @DureAkram.