'S Asia faces serious challenges despite enormous potential'

The Economic Times , Friday, April 26, 2013
Correspondent :
WASHINGTON: South Asia has enormous potential but the region faces many serious challenges like climate change and scarcity of resources that weigh it down in too many ways, a former top US State Department official has said.

"I have seen the enormous promise of South Asia - its people, its innovations, its culture, exports, and great traditions. Many of the trend lines coming from the region are quite good," Richard Verma, the former Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs, said.

"Extreme poverty is down 15 per cent over the past 20 years; the proportion of poor is lower on Thursday in South Asia than at any time in the past 40 years. Child malnutrition is down 20 per cent. Primary school enrolment is up 15 per cent," Verma said in his key note address to the inaugural dinner of the South Asia Journal in Washington.

Noting that South Asia's economic growth has averaged six per cent per year for the past 20 years, Verma who was a key player in the Obama re-election campaign, said that the region will soon be the most populous in the world; it has the world's largest working-age population, and a quarter of the world's middle-class consumers.

"Unlike its Chinese neighbours to the East, the population is also relatively young; labour productivity in the region more than doubled between 1991 and 2011. And the region, despite the tensions, has incredible religious diversity. There are nearly as many Muslims in India as there are in Pakistan," he said.

He said the region still faces many challenges. "But we also have to keep our eyes open to the very serious challenges that weigh down the region in too many ways, and which give rise to its very uncertain future. Despite the economic growth, South Asia is still home to the world's largest concentration of poor people -- more than 500 million people live on less than $ 1.25 a day," said Verma.

"Child mortality is still too high. Food and fuel are still too scarce, and too many still die from preventable diseases. The climate and resource challenges are stark, which have given rise to a whole new set of tensions.

"Severe droughts, variations in the monsoons, and shrinking Himalayan glaciers brought on by climate change have created a new regional flashpoint over access to clean water," he told a select South Asian American audience in the national capital.

"Politically, corruption still threatens the basic democratic compact with too many, and gender inequality, and increasingly, gender-based violence has grown far too pervasive," he added.

Verma said digging out of some of these holes will require strong leadership, deepened economic and security cooperation across the region, increased people to people ties to build the trust that governments cannot achieve, and a commitment from officials to keep South Asia at the forefront of the policy agenda.

 
SOURCE : http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international-business/s-asia-faces-serious-challenges-despite-enormous-potential/articleshow/19723948.cms
 


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