Aditya Valiathan Pillai

The Asia Foundation’s Paula Uniacke and Aditya Pillai participated in Global Climate Action Summit events across San Francisco in September. Among Foundation programs they discussed are ones that improve resilience to extreme weather events. In two flood-prone regions along the India-Bangladesh border, The Asia Foundation is working with local wome… Read more

The Asia Foundation’s Aditya Pillai participated in Global Climate Action Summit events across San Francisco in September. Among Foundation programs he discussed are those that improve resilience to extreme weather events. In the Kosi basin, which straddles Nepal and India, The Asia Foundation is conducting a training-of-trainers for roughly 200 el… Read more

Grand experiments in geopolitics often begin by cautiously testing new ways of doing things. Sovereign states calibrate and then recalibrate their visions by expanding and aligning interests with their neighbors, with the hope that the sum of what is achieved is greater than its parts. Recent actions indicate that this is underway in South Asia’s n… Read more

South Asia, generally described as “the least integrated region in the world,” has made remarkable progress in power trading and cooperation on resources over the last two decades. Regional power cooperation has come a long way from exchanges of power between small border towns and early ideas for an energy ring. By 2025, trade could be powered by… Read more

Grand experiments in geopolitics, in the absence of external shocks such as war, often begin by cautiously testing new ways of doing things. Sovereign states calibrate and then re-calibrate their visions for the region by expanding and aligning interests with their neighbors, with the hope that the sum of what is achieved is greater than its parts…. Read more

Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s four-day state visit to India last month, her first in seven years, was productive by any measure. Twenty-two agreements, spanning defense cooperation, nuclear energy, and outer space were inked. The relationship has been one of the bright spots for cooperation in South Asia, and has steadily gained moment… Read more

A group of engineering students trudge up the stairs of an engineering college in the heart of Bangalore’s swanky Electronics City. Flip-flops beat against tiled floors, fingers run through bed-head hair. These bright minds are partly behind India’s unprecedented growth over the last two decades: the young tech-elite who power Indian technology’s heavy hitters like Infosys (whose sprawling campus is across the street), and run global giants like Google and Microsoft. As they fire up their laptops and plug in their headphones, these 50-odd data scientists, software engineers, and computer scientists are turning their attention toward something normally considered beyond their realm.