This book is the product of an ongoing dialogue among 47 experts from a diverse range of expertise and backgrounds, including thought leaders from the ranks of policymakers, academics and civil society. These thought leaders and visionaries discuss the likely longer-range trajectories of South Asia’s future as a region, focusing particularly on current regional trends, possible futures and the key factors that will determine whether these trajectories are positive or negative for the region.

Will we even be talking about a “South Asian region” 50 years from now? And will the region still be seen as a threat to global stability? This future-oriented exploration tackles these questions whilst departing from a purely security-based analysis to include factors such as development and human well-being, seeking to shed light on a whole spectrum of current issues that will affect the region into the future.

The essays in this book organically inform the collection’s coherent and nuanced outlook on the region, which offers both an introspective and globally aware perspective of the outcomes of the region’s development. The volume fills the gap in studies on South Asia by exploring its regional identity, as well as the potential of present conditions to impact the future of South Asia and the rest of the world.