India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives and Afghanistan
This is not India and its neighbours. Eight national contexts with radically different scale, fiscal room, demography, institutions and geography, and the largest of them contain subnational variation that a national average conceals.
Broad window
Thu 20 May, about 8:00 PM to 11:00 PM Toronto timeIn New Delhi: Fri 21 May, about 5:30 AM to 8:30 AM. The hours belong to the conversation, not to one region: contributors from anywhere take part wherever the question needs them.
Taking part
Contributor expressions of interest are not open.
The question in play
How must leadership change when the systems people depend on are changing faster than institutions can adapt?
The relay's opening question, carried from Toronto. East & Southeast Asia transforms it live, and this movement receives that version when its own begins.
Regional reality
Regional Reality
South Asia is generating economic growth, digital capability, human ambition and technological possibility at enormous scale, yet access to the systems that convert these capabilities into productive participation remains profoundly uneven. Millions of women remain outside formal economic activity, young people enter labour markets faster than quality opportunities expand, informal work remains dominant, migration often substitutes for limited domestic mobility, and climate stress increasingly determines who can work, live and prosper. The leadership challenge is therefore not simply to create more growth or technology. It is to widen the pathways through which people, firms and communities can participate in economic change and convert capability into genuine social and economic mobility.
Capability → Participation → Mobility
What these three words mean here
Capability
Already produced here, not latent: human and entrepreneurial capability, demographic scale, digital infrastructure, institutional innovation, manufacturing and services, renewable energy potential, diaspora and migration networks, community adaptation, knowledge and skills. The leadership issue is what happens after capability exists.
Participation
The hinge. Whether people and firms can actually enter and keep work, start and grow a business, reach digital systems and public services, get finance, convert education into work, stay in the economy after marriage or childbirth, move safely between places, and benefit from urbanization and regional integration. Inclusion asks whether people are present. Participation asks whether they can act.
Mobility
The outcome layer, and not only migration: economic, occupational, social, geographic, intergenerational, skills and firm mobility, women's economic mobility, movement from informal into more productive activity, learning into earning, capability into opportunity. Participation matters when it changes what becomes possible.
Evidence-grounded synthesisLocked for the programme
The region's inquiry asks not whether capability exists, but who can act on it and whether acting changes what becomes possible. It is organised around:
Pathways into productive participation, not growth alone
Capability that cannot enter the economy
Digital systems that are available but not yet usable by everyone
Climate exposure as a constraint on who can work
Proximity that has not become connectivity
This is what LEAD48's research sees in South Asia: the tensions, the evidence and the questions it raises. It is where the inquiry starts, not a boundary around it. The conversation needs people who can strengthen it, challenge it, complicate it or take it somewhere it has not gone, and a well-evidenced challenge to this reading is as strong a contribution as support for it.
Prevailing conditions Evidence-grounded synthesisLocked for the programme
What is changing here?
Each condition is backed by the sources listed with it. Open a source to see what it says and where it stops.
Growth is outrunning broad productive participation
Economic growth does not automatically produce high employment ratios, formal work, women's participation, broad firm productivity or secure livelihoods.
Detail and scope
Across the region, female labour force participation stood at 33.0 percent in 2024 against 77.4 percent for men, and it varies from 5.1 percent to 56.6 percent between countries. The central challenge is increasingly not growth alone but whether growth creates pathways into productive participation. Capability that cannot enter the economy is not fully available to the system.
Scope: Region-wide, with the size of the gap differing sharply by country and, inside the larger countries, by state and province.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Labor force participation rate, female (% of female population ages 15+), modeled ILO estimate
In 2024 female labour force participation across South Asia was 33.0 percent, against 77.4 percent for men. The country figures differ far more than a regional average suggests: Bhutan 56.6, Maldives 40.5, Bangladesh 38.7, India 32.4, Sri Lanka 31.0, Nepal 27.4, Pakistan 24.0 and Afghanistan 5.1 percent. India sits close to the regional average and more than twenty points below Bhutan.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
South Asia, and each country in the region separately
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate, not a direct count, and participation rates say nothing about the quality, security or pay of the work counted. Much of the unpaid and informal work women do is not captured, so the figure measures recorded participation rather than economic contribution.
Demographic opportunity is conditional, not automatic
A dividend depends on education, labour-market absorption, firm growth, infrastructure, institutions, gender participation, urban systems and productivity.
Detail and scope
A young population is capability. Jobs, institutions and productive systems determine whether it becomes advantage. Read only as opportunity, it invites complacency; read only as risk, it writes off the region's largest asset.
Scope: Sharpest where cohorts are largest and absorption is weakest, which is not the same country in every case.
Digital infrastructure can lower barriers without eliminating exclusion
Shared digital rails cut transaction costs at enormous scale, and access still turns on gender, literacy, connectivity, affordability, devices, language, documentation, trust and how services are designed locally.
Detail and scope
India's payments rail alone carried 24,508.96 million transactions in August 2026 across 752 banks. Transaction counts measure the rail, not the people: digital infrastructure creates possibility, and participation determines whether possibility becomes capability in practice.
Scope: The infrastructure is uneven across the region, and so is the exclusion; neither maps onto national borders neatly.
Source National Payments Corporation of India (2026)
In August 2026 UPI carried 24,508.96 million transactions, worth Rs 29,82,355.95 crore, across 752 banks live on the system. Monthly volume has run above 22,000 million in every month since April 2026. The figures exclude transactions debiting and crediting the same account.
Published
2026-08 (monthly series, read on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
April 2026 to August 2026
Geography
India
Limitations
Published by the system's own operator, and it counts transactions and banks, not people. Nothing here shows who holds an account, who has a device or connectivity, who transacts and who does not, so it measures the scale of the rail rather than participation in it.
Climate exposure is becoming an economic-participation constraint
Heat, flood, water stress and disaster increasingly decide who can work, for how long, in what conditions, and whether schools, transport and businesses stay open.
Detail and scope
The effects run through working hours, health, productivity, urban mobility, construction, transport, agriculture, informal labour, schooling, infrastructure reliability, business operations, migration and investment. Climate resilience is becoming infrastructure for economic participation.
Scope: Universal in the region and unequal within it: outdoor, informal and low-income work carries the exposure first.
Source World Bank and the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (2026)
A Livable Future: Protecting Jobs and Growth from Extreme Heat in South Asia's Cities
The report "examines how urban heat threatens the creation of more and better jobs in Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka", and states that "extreme heat already subtracts the equivalent of 31 million full-time jobs a year across South Asia", where job-equivalent losses "translate the working hours lost to heat exposure into an estimate of the number of full-time jobs this would represent".
Published
2026-07
Evidence period
Current losses, with city projections to 2030, 2050 and 2080 under a moderate-emissions scenario
Geography
Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka only. Pakistan and Afghanistan are not covered.
Limitations
Covers six of this region's eight national contexts: it does not cover Pakistan or Afghanistan, and nothing in it may be extended to them. The 31 million figure converts working hours lost to heat into full-time job equivalents; it is not a count of jobs destroyed. The report draws that figure from a separate World Bank working paper and does not restate its geographic scope, although the accompanying press release defines South Asia for this report as the six countries. Its projection that GDP could be close to 7 per cent smaller by 2050 comes from an earlier World Bank source, and all future figures are scenario projections.
South Asia is deeply connected to the world while remaining unusually disconnected from itself
Trade, electricity, transport, migration, logistics, energy, climate and digital systems are far less connected between neighbours than distance would suggest.
Detail and scope
Intraregional trade is barely 5 percent of the region's total trade, against 25 percent within ASEAN, and trade between these countries totals about US$23 billion against an estimated potential of at least US$67 billion. Proximity does not automatically produce connectivity.
Scope: A regional condition with national consequences, felt most by the smaller and landlocked economies.
Source World Bank (2026)
Trade, South Asia Regional Integration
"Intraregional trade accounts for barely 5 percent of South Asia's total trade, compared to the ASEAN region where intraregional trade makes up 25 percent. Trade among South Asian countries currently totals just $23 billion -- far below an estimated value of at least $67 billion." The page adds that "it is about 20 percent cheaper for a company in India to trade with Brazil instead of a neighboring South Asian country", and attributes the gap to inadequate transport, protective tariffs, real and perceived nontariff barriers, investment restrictions "and a broad trust deficit throughout the region".
Drawn from the Bank's regional trade work, including its 2018 regional trade report
Geography
South Asia
Limitations
A programme page by an institution that funds regional connectivity work, so it presents the case for it. It carries no publication date, the estimate of potential trade is a projection rather than an observation, and recorded trade excludes the informal cross-border trade that partly substitutes for it.
Inside the region Evidence-grounded synthesisLocked for the programme
One region, several realities
None of these stands for the others.
India
Continental scale, digital public infrastructure at volumes nothing else in the region matches, and live questions about employment, manufacturing, services, urbanization, energy transition, climate exposure, women's participation, internal migration, infrastructure and regional connectivity. State-level variation is wider than the variation between some countries, so a national figure describes almost no one exactly. India is critical to this movement and is not its proxy: its female participation rate, at 32.4 percent in 2024, sits close to the regional average and more than twenty points below Bhutan's.
Source National Payments Corporation of India (2026)
In August 2026 UPI carried 24,508.96 million transactions, worth Rs 29,82,355.95 crore, across 752 banks live on the system. Monthly volume has run above 22,000 million in every month since April 2026. The figures exclude transactions debiting and crediting the same account.
Published
2026-08 (monthly series, read on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
April 2026 to August 2026
Geography
India
Limitations
Published by the system's own operator, and it counts transactions and banks, not people. Nothing here shows who holds an account, who has a device or connectivity, who transacts and who does not, so it measures the scale of the rail rather than participation in it.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Labor force participation rate, female (% of female population ages 15+), modeled ILO estimate
In 2024 female labour force participation across South Asia was 33.0 percent, against 77.4 percent for men. The country figures differ far more than a regional average suggests: Bhutan 56.6, Maldives 40.5, Bangladesh 38.7, India 32.4, Sri Lanka 31.0, Nepal 27.4, Pakistan 24.0 and Afghanistan 5.1 percent. India sits close to the regional average and more than twenty points below Bhutan.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
South Asia, and each country in the region separately
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate, not a direct count, and participation rates say nothing about the quality, security or pay of the work counted. Much of the unpaid and informal work women do is not captured, so the figure measures recorded participation rather than economic contribution.
Federal and provincial delivery, digital transformation, labour participation and informality, fast-growing cities, high climate exposure, energy constraints, infrastructure, local service delivery and institutional capacity. Women's recorded participation, at 24.0 percent in 2024, is among the region's lowest, and provincial systems differ enough that provincial delivery, not national policy alone, decides what reaches people.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Labor force participation rate, female (% of female population ages 15+), modeled ILO estimate
In 2024 female labour force participation across South Asia was 33.0 percent, against 77.4 percent for men. The country figures differ far more than a regional average suggests: Bhutan 56.6, Maldives 40.5, Bangladesh 38.7, India 32.4, Sri Lanka 31.0, Nepal 27.4, Pakistan 24.0 and Afghanistan 5.1 percent. India sits close to the regional average and more than twenty points below Bhutan.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
South Asia, and each country in the region separately
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate, not a direct count, and participation rates say nothing about the quality, security or pay of the work counted. Much of the unpaid and informal work women do is not captured, so the figure measures recorded participation rather than economic contribution.
Manufacturing and garment value chains, women in paid employment at a scale several neighbours have not reached, extraordinary density, urbanization, cyclone and disaster resilience built over decades, climate exposure, energy transition, skills and productive upgrading. It is not a garment economy or a climate-vulnerability case: female participation at 38.7 percent in 2024 is above India's and Pakistan's, and the upgrading question is now about what comes after assembly.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Labor force participation rate, female (% of female population ages 15+), modeled ILO estimate
In 2024 female labour force participation across South Asia was 33.0 percent, against 77.4 percent for men. The country figures differ far more than a regional average suggests: Bhutan 56.6, Maldives 40.5, Bangladesh 38.7, India 32.4, Sri Lanka 31.0, Nepal 27.4, Pakistan 24.0 and Afghanistan 5.1 percent. India sits close to the regional average and more than twenty points below Bhutan.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
South Asia, and each country in the region separately
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate, not a direct count, and participation rates say nothing about the quality, security or pay of the work counted. Much of the unpaid and informal work women do is not captured, so the figure measures recorded participation rather than economic contribution.
Economic recovery and institutional reform under hard fiscal and debt constraints, with strong human capital, service-sector capability, digital government in early implementation and a labour market in transition. Female participation at 31.0 percent in 2024 sits below what its human capital would predict, which is itself the participation question in its clearest form.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Labor force participation rate, female (% of female population ages 15+), modeled ILO estimate
In 2024 female labour force participation across South Asia was 33.0 percent, against 77.4 percent for men. The country figures differ far more than a regional average suggests: Bhutan 56.6, Maldives 40.5, Bangladesh 38.7, India 32.4, Sri Lanka 31.0, Nepal 27.4, Pakistan 24.0 and Afghanistan 5.1 percent. India sits close to the regional average and more than twenty points below Bhutan.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
South Asia, and each country in the region separately
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate, not a direct count, and participation rates say nothing about the quality, security or pay of the work counted. Much of the unpaid and informal work women do is not captured, so the figure measures recorded participation rather than economic contribution.
Migration treated as a system rather than an event: remittances were 26.0 percent of GDP in 2024, against 3.7 percent in India, and they underwrite household resilience while domestic job creation lags. Hydropower potential, difficult geography, skills, urbanization, regional energy connectivity and household resilience are the working questions, and they all return to whether people must leave the system to move forward within their lives.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Personal remittances, received (% of GDP)
Remittances were 26.0 percent of Nepal's GDP in 2024, and 26.2 percent in 2023. The same year they were 9.4 percent of GDP in Pakistan, 6.7 percent in Sri Lanka, 6.1 percent in Bangladesh and 3.7 percent in India. Nepal's dependence is of a different order from its neighbours', not a regional pattern.
Published
2024 (series values for 2023 and 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2023 to 2024
Geography
Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and India
Limitations
Recorded flows only: informal transfers are missing, and a share of GDP says nothing about who receives the money, what it is spent on, or what the household gave up to earn it. It measures dependence at national scale, not household outcomes.
Hydropower-led growth and small-state portfolio choices, with youth unemployment and outward migration alongside the region's highest recorded female participation at 56.6 percent in 2024. The tension is explicit: assets that generate national income do not automatically create enough pathways for young people, and a small economy must choose which capabilities to build at all.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Labor force participation rate, female (% of female population ages 15+), modeled ILO estimate
In 2024 female labour force participation across South Asia was 33.0 percent, against 77.4 percent for men. The country figures differ far more than a regional average suggests: Bhutan 56.6, Maldives 40.5, Bangladesh 38.7, India 32.4, Sri Lanka 31.0, Nepal 27.4, Pakistan 24.0 and Afghanistan 5.1 percent. India sits close to the regional average and more than twenty points below Bhutan.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
South Asia, and each country in the region separately
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate, not a direct count, and participation rates say nothing about the quality, security or pay of the work counted. Much of the unpaid and informal work women do is not captured, so the figure measures recorded participation rather than economic contribution.
Climate exposure that is existential, export earnings concentrated in tourism at about 85 percent of total exports before 2020, public debt, limited fiscal space, adaptation investment and island infrastructure. Every choice is a portfolio choice: the adaptation, infrastructure, human capital and energy priorities are all defensible, and they cannot all be funded at once.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2020)
International tourism, receipts (% of total exports), Maldives
International tourism receipts were 85.2 percent of the Maldives' total exports in 2018 and 84.7 percent in 2019, falling to 78.9 percent in 2020. Export earnings rest on a single sector, which is the structural condition behind every portfolio choice the country makes about adaptation, infrastructure and debt.
Published
2020 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2018 to 2020
Geography
Maldives
Limitations
The series stops in 2020, and 2020 is a pandemic year, so it shows the structure of the economy rather than its current position. It measures concentration of export earnings, not fiscal space, debt or adaptation cost.
Represented factually and without spectacle. Employment, youth, return migration, human capital, women's economic participation and constrained financial systems are the relevant themes. Recorded female labour force participation was 5.1 percent in 2024, the lowest figure in the region by a wide margin. This is stated as data and as a participation question, not as a crisis exhibit or a political interpretation.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Labor force participation rate, female (% of female population ages 15+), modeled ILO estimate
In 2024 female labour force participation across South Asia was 33.0 percent, against 77.4 percent for men. The country figures differ far more than a regional average suggests: Bhutan 56.6, Maldives 40.5, Bangladesh 38.7, India 32.4, Sri Lanka 31.0, Nepal 27.4, Pakistan 24.0 and Afghanistan 5.1 percent. India sits close to the regional average and more than twenty points below Bhutan.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
South Asia, and each country in the region separately
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate, not a direct count, and participation rates say nothing about the quality, security or pay of the work counted. Much of the unpaid and informal work women do is not captured, so the figure measures recorded participation rather than economic contribution.
Who experiences the region differently Evidence-grounded synthesisLocked for the programme
Who experiences this differently?
No region is a single story. These groups are named from the evidence, not as a complete list.
Women who are outside recorded economic activity
Two thirds of women in the region are outside the recorded labour force, against under a quarter of men, and the rate varies between countries by more than fifty points. The constraint is not ambition or education: it is what happens at the points where participation is decided, including after marriage and childbirth, in safe mobility, in access to finance, and in whether work is available within reach. Capability that cannot enter the economy is not fully available to the system.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Labor force participation rate, female (% of female population ages 15+), modeled ILO estimate
In 2024 female labour force participation across South Asia was 33.0 percent, against 77.4 percent for men. The country figures differ far more than a regional average suggests: Bhutan 56.6, Maldives 40.5, Bangladesh 38.7, India 32.4, Sri Lanka 31.0, Nepal 27.4, Pakistan 24.0 and Afghanistan 5.1 percent. India sits close to the regional average and more than twenty points below Bhutan.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
South Asia, and each country in the region separately
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate, not a direct count, and participation rates say nothing about the quality, security or pay of the work counted. Much of the unpaid and informal work women do is not captured, so the figure measures recorded participation rather than economic contribution.
Source World Bank, End Poverty in South Asia blog (Laveesh Bhandari and Franziska Ohnsorge) (2025)
Raising female employment in South Asia, one step at a time
"More than 400 million working-age women in the region are outside of the labor force, which constitutes a significant output loss."
Published
2025-02-03
Evidence period
Not stated in the source
Geography
South Asia (the post does not define which countries the figure covers)
Limitations
A blog post by World Bank economists, first published on the Brookings Future Development blog, not a statistical release. It states no working-age range, reference year or country coverage for the figure, so it is not measurement-compatible with the World Development Indicators participation rates attached elsewhere in this region and must not be combined with them. "Outside the labour force" means neither employed nor seeking work: it is not unemployment, and it does not mean these women do no work, since unpaid and household work is not counted.
Cohorts arrive faster than quality opportunities expand. The gap is not between educated and uneducated young people but between education and the pathway from learning to earning, which is where capability is most often stranded.
Informal workers and the firms they work in
Informal work is the region's dominant form of employment and a livelihood mechanism, not merely noncompliance. It provides income and absorbs shocks while limiting protection, productivity and the ability of firms to grow. The leadership question is how to improve productivity and protection without destroying the livelihoods being formalised.
Source International Labour Organization (2025)
World Employment and Social Outlook 2025: Asia and the Pacific May Update (ILO Brief)
Informal employment accounts for roughly 66 per cent of total employment in Asia and the Pacific, with "noticeable variation in the incidence of informal employment, ranging from nearly 87 per cent in South Asia to as low as 35 per cent in the Pacific Islands"; more than eight in ten enterprises in the region are informal.
Published
2025-05
Evidence period
ILO modelled series to 2024; the sentence states no reference year
Geography
Asia and the Pacific, by subregion, including South Asia
Limitations
ILO modelled estimates. The denominator is people in employment, so the figure measures the incidence of informal employment among workers: it is not an unemployment rate, and it says nothing about skill levels or legality. The brief does not list which countries its South Asia figure covers, and ILO's Southern Asia grouping elsewhere includes Iran as well as Afghanistan, so it is not the same set as this region's eight national contexts. Later ILO model vintages may give a different figure. It measures prevalence, not the productivity, protection or firm-size distribution of informal work.
Migration is part of the region's economic architecture: household strategy, poverty-reduction mechanism, macroeconomic stabiliser, skills pathway and a signal about domestic opportunity, all at once. In Nepal it carries a quarter of national income; in India it is a small fraction of it. The same word describes different systems.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Personal remittances, received (% of GDP)
Remittances were 26.0 percent of Nepal's GDP in 2024, and 26.2 percent in 2023. The same year they were 9.4 percent of GDP in Pakistan, 6.7 percent in Sri Lanka, 6.1 percent in Bangladesh and 3.7 percent in India. Nepal's dependence is of a different order from its neighbours', not a regional pattern.
Published
2024 (series values for 2023 and 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2023 to 2024
Geography
Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and India
Limitations
Recorded flows only: informal transfers are missing, and a share of GDP says nothing about who receives the money, what it is spent on, or what the household gave up to earn it. It measures dependence at national scale, not household outcomes.
People whose work is exposed to heat, flood and water stress
Outdoor, informal and low-income work carries climate exposure first: hours lost to heat, days lost to flooding, health effects that compound, and schooling and transport interrupted. Adaptation for these workers is labour and economic policy, not environmental policy alone.
Source World Bank and the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (2026)
A Livable Future: Protecting Jobs and Growth from Extreme Heat in South Asia's Cities
The report "examines how urban heat threatens the creation of more and better jobs in Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka", and states that "extreme heat already subtracts the equivalent of 31 million full-time jobs a year across South Asia", where job-equivalent losses "translate the working hours lost to heat exposure into an estimate of the number of full-time jobs this would represent".
Published
2026-07
Evidence period
Current losses, with city projections to 2030, 2050 and 2080 under a moderate-emissions scenario
Geography
Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka only. Pakistan and Afghanistan are not covered.
Limitations
Covers six of this region's eight national contexts: it does not cover Pakistan or Afghanistan, and nothing in it may be extended to them. The 31 million figure converts working hours lost to heat into full-time job equivalents; it is not a count of jobs destroyed. The report draws that figure from a separate World Bank working paper and does not restate its geographic scope, although the accompanying press release defines South Asia for this report as the six countries. Its projection that GDP could be close to 7 per cent smaller by 2050 comes from an earlier World Bank source, and all future figures are scenario projections.
What the evidence complicates Evidence-grounded synthesisLocked for the programme
What might we be getting wrong?
Common assumption
A demographic dividend comes from having a young population.
What the evidence shows
A demographic dividend must be institutionally produced. It depends on education, labour-market absorption, firm growth, infrastructure, institutions, gender participation, urban systems and productivity. Without those, a young population is capability the system does not convert.
View the other 6 assumptions
Common assumption
Digital access equals inclusion.
What the evidence shows
Infrastructure may reduce transaction barriers while gender, literacy, affordability, connectivity, device access, documentation, trust and institutional design continue to decide who can act. Transaction volume measures the rail, not participation in it.
Source National Payments Corporation of India (2026)
In August 2026 UPI carried 24,508.96 million transactions, worth Rs 29,82,355.95 crore, across 752 banks live on the system. Monthly volume has run above 22,000 million in every month since April 2026. The figures exclude transactions debiting and crediting the same account.
Published
2026-08 (monthly series, read on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
April 2026 to August 2026
Geography
India
Limitations
Published by the system's own operator, and it counts transactions and banks, not people. Nothing here shows who holds an account, who has a device or connectivity, who transacts and who does not, so it measures the scale of the rail rather than participation in it.
Informality can persist alongside sophisticated formal sectors for decades, providing livelihoods while limiting protection, productivity and firm growth. It is an institutional-design question, not a waiting room.
Source International Labour Organization (2025)
World Employment and Social Outlook 2025: Asia and the Pacific May Update (ILO Brief)
Informal employment accounts for roughly 66 per cent of total employment in Asia and the Pacific, with "noticeable variation in the incidence of informal employment, ranging from nearly 87 per cent in South Asia to as low as 35 per cent in the Pacific Islands"; more than eight in ten enterprises in the region are informal.
Published
2025-05
Evidence period
ILO modelled series to 2024; the sentence states no reference year
Geography
Asia and the Pacific, by subregion, including South Asia
Limitations
ILO modelled estimates. The denominator is people in employment, so the figure measures the incidence of informal employment among workers: it is not an unemployment rate, and it says nothing about skill levels or legality. The brief does not list which countries its South Asia figure covers, and ILO's Southern Asia grouping elsewhere includes Iran as well as Afghanistan, so it is not the same set as this region's eight national contexts. Later ILO model vintages may give a different figure. It measures prevalence, not the productivity, protection or firm-size distribution of informal work.
Growth alone does not determine participation, job quality or employment absorption. Strong headline growth has coexisted in this region with low employment ratios and low women's participation for long enough that the link cannot be assumed.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Labor force participation rate, female (% of female population ages 15+), modeled ILO estimate
In 2024 female labour force participation across South Asia was 33.0 percent, against 77.4 percent for men. The country figures differ far more than a regional average suggests: Bhutan 56.6, Maldives 40.5, Bangladesh 38.7, India 32.4, Sri Lanka 31.0, Nepal 27.4, Pakistan 24.0 and Afghanistan 5.1 percent. India sits close to the regional average and more than twenty points below Bhutan.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
South Asia, and each country in the region separately
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate, not a direct count, and participation rates say nothing about the quality, security or pay of the work counted. Much of the unpaid and informal work women do is not captured, so the figure measures recorded participation rather than economic contribution.
Migration can be a household strategy, a poverty-reduction mechanism, a macroeconomic stabiliser, a skills pathway and a signal of insufficient domestic opportunity simultaneously. In Nepal it is a quarter of GDP; treating that as failure misreads what it is doing.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Personal remittances, received (% of GDP)
Remittances were 26.0 percent of Nepal's GDP in 2024, and 26.2 percent in 2023. The same year they were 9.4 percent of GDP in Pakistan, 6.7 percent in Sri Lanka, 6.1 percent in Bangladesh and 3.7 percent in India. Nepal's dependence is of a different order from its neighbours', not a regional pattern.
Published
2024 (series values for 2023 and 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2023 to 2024
Geography
Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and India
Limitations
Recorded flows only: informal transfers are missing, and a share of GDP says nothing about who receives the money, what it is spent on, or what the household gave up to earn it. It measures dependence at national scale, not household outcomes.
Climate adaptation is primarily environmental policy.
What the evidence shows
Heat, floods, water stress and climate shocks increasingly affect labour, health, cities, infrastructure, productivity and investment. Adaptation decides who can work and for how long, which makes it economic infrastructure.
Source World Bank and the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (2026)
A Livable Future: Protecting Jobs and Growth from Extreme Heat in South Asia's Cities
The report "examines how urban heat threatens the creation of more and better jobs in Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka", and states that "extreme heat already subtracts the equivalent of 31 million full-time jobs a year across South Asia", where job-equivalent losses "translate the working hours lost to heat exposure into an estimate of the number of full-time jobs this would represent".
Published
2026-07
Evidence period
Current losses, with city projections to 2030, 2050 and 2080 under a moderate-emissions scenario
Geography
Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka only. Pakistan and Afghanistan are not covered.
Limitations
Covers six of this region's eight national contexts: it does not cover Pakistan or Afghanistan, and nothing in it may be extended to them. The 31 million figure converts working hours lost to heat into full-time job equivalents; it is not a count of jobs destroyed. The report draws that figure from a separate World Bank working paper and does not restate its geographic scope, although the accompanying press release defines South Asia for this report as the six countries. Its projection that GDP could be close to 7 per cent smaller by 2050 comes from an earlier World Bank source, and all future figures are scenario projections.
South Asia contains radically different economic scale, fiscal constraints, demographic patterns, institutional systems, mobility structures and geographic conditions. Remittances are 26.0 percent of GDP in Nepal and 3.7 percent in India; recorded female participation runs from 5.1 percent to 56.6 percent. No national average travels across those distances, and India's does not travel inside India either.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Personal remittances, received (% of GDP)
Remittances were 26.0 percent of Nepal's GDP in 2024, and 26.2 percent in 2023. The same year they were 9.4 percent of GDP in Pakistan, 6.7 percent in Sri Lanka, 6.1 percent in Bangladesh and 3.7 percent in India. Nepal's dependence is of a different order from its neighbours', not a regional pattern.
Published
2024 (series values for 2023 and 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2023 to 2024
Geography
Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and India
Limitations
Recorded flows only: informal transfers are missing, and a share of GDP says nothing about who receives the money, what it is spent on, or what the household gave up to earn it. It measures dependence at national scale, not household outcomes.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Labor force participation rate, female (% of female population ages 15+), modeled ILO estimate
In 2024 female labour force participation across South Asia was 33.0 percent, against 77.4 percent for men. The country figures differ far more than a regional average suggests: Bhutan 56.6, Maldives 40.5, Bangladesh 38.7, India 32.4, Sri Lanka 31.0, Nepal 27.4, Pakistan 24.0 and Afghanistan 5.1 percent. India sits close to the regional average and more than twenty points below Bhutan.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
South Asia, and each country in the region separately
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate, not a direct count, and participation rates say nothing about the quality, security or pay of the work counted. Much of the unpaid and informal work women do is not captured, so the figure measures recorded participation rather than economic contribution.
Leadership challenges Evidence-grounded synthesisLocked for the programme
What must leaders do?
The conversations this region will prioritise. Not a ranking of the region's biggest problems.
Build Pathways into Productive Participation
How do leaders ensure that growth creates pathways into productive participation rather than expanding beside people?
The anchor priority. Everything else in this movement is a particular case of it: growth, technology and capability are present, and the pathway from them into productive work is not.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Labor force participation rate, female (% of female population ages 15+), modeled ILO estimate
In 2024 female labour force participation across South Asia was 33.0 percent, against 77.4 percent for men. The country figures differ far more than a regional average suggests: Bhutan 56.6, Maldives 40.5, Bangladesh 38.7, India 32.4, Sri Lanka 31.0, Nepal 27.4, Pakistan 24.0 and Afghanistan 5.1 percent. India sits close to the regional average and more than twenty points below Bhutan.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
South Asia, and each country in the region separately
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate, not a direct count, and participation rates say nothing about the quality, security or pay of the work counted. Much of the unpaid and informal work women do is not captured, so the figure measures recorded participation rather than economic contribution.
What must change when education, ambition and capability exist but the pathways from learning to earning remain weak?
Youth, skills, women's participation, entrepreneurship, migration, labour markets and informality meet at the same point: capability that exists and does not convert.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Labor force participation rate, female (% of female population ages 15+), modeled ILO estimate
In 2024 female labour force participation across South Asia was 33.0 percent, against 77.4 percent for men. The country figures differ far more than a regional average suggests: Bhutan 56.6, Maldives 40.5, Bangladesh 38.7, India 32.4, Sri Lanka 31.0, Nepal 27.4, Pakistan 24.0 and Afghanistan 5.1 percent. India sits close to the regional average and more than twenty points below Bhutan.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
South Asia, and each country in the region separately
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate, not a direct count, and participation rates say nothing about the quality, security or pay of the work counted. Much of the unpaid and informal work women do is not captured, so the figure measures recorded participation rather than economic contribution.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Personal remittances, received (% of GDP)
Remittances were 26.0 percent of Nepal's GDP in 2024, and 26.2 percent in 2023. The same year they were 9.4 percent of GDP in Pakistan, 6.7 percent in Sri Lanka, 6.1 percent in Bangladesh and 3.7 percent in India. Nepal's dependence is of a different order from its neighbours', not a regional pattern.
Published
2024 (series values for 2023 and 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2023 to 2024
Geography
Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and India
Limitations
Recorded flows only: informal transfers are missing, and a share of GDP says nothing about who receives the money, what it is spent on, or what the household gave up to earn it. It measures dependence at national scale, not household outcomes.
In August 2026 UPI carried 24,508.96 million transactions, worth Rs 29,82,355.95 crore, across 752 banks live on the system. Monthly volume has run above 22,000 million in every month since April 2026. The figures exclude transactions debiting and crediting the same account.
Published
2026-08 (monthly series, read on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
April 2026 to August 2026
Geography
India
Limitations
Published by the system's own operator, and it counts transactions and banks, not people. Nothing here shows who holds an account, who has a device or connectivity, who transacts and who does not, so it measures the scale of the rail rather than participation in it.
Design Work, Cities and Infrastructure for a Hotter Future
What must leaders redesign when climate exposure determines who can work, move, learn and participate?
Heat and flood are already labour, health, urban and infrastructure questions. Designing for them is how participation is protected, not a separate environmental agenda.
Source World Bank and the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (2026)
A Livable Future: Protecting Jobs and Growth from Extreme Heat in South Asia's Cities
The report "examines how urban heat threatens the creation of more and better jobs in Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka", and states that "extreme heat already subtracts the equivalent of 31 million full-time jobs a year across South Asia", where job-equivalent losses "translate the working hours lost to heat exposure into an estimate of the number of full-time jobs this would represent".
Published
2026-07
Evidence period
Current losses, with city projections to 2030, 2050 and 2080 under a moderate-emissions scenario
Geography
Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka only. Pakistan and Afghanistan are not covered.
Limitations
Covers six of this region's eight national contexts: it does not cover Pakistan or Afghanistan, and nothing in it may be extended to them. The 31 million figure converts working hours lost to heat into full-time job equivalents; it is not a count of jobs destroyed. The report draws that figure from a separate World Bank working paper and does not restate its geographic scope, although the accompanying press release defines South Asia for this report as the six countries. Its projection that GDP could be close to 7 per cent smaller by 2050 comes from an earlier World Bank source, and all future figures are scenario projections.
What becomes possible when neighbouring countries treat connection as shared capability rather than strategic vulnerability?
Electricity, trade, logistics, transport, migration, climate, skills, digital connectivity and knowledge exchange are all capabilities that only exist when systems connect.
"Intraregional trade accounts for barely 5 percent of South Asia's total trade, compared to the ASEAN region where intraregional trade makes up 25 percent. Trade among South Asian countries currently totals just $23 billion -- far below an estimated value of at least $67 billion." The page adds that "it is about 20 percent cheaper for a company in India to trade with Brazil instead of a neighboring South Asian country", and attributes the gap to inadequate transport, protective tariffs, real and perceived nontariff barriers, investment restrictions "and a broad trust deficit throughout the region".
Drawn from the Bank's regional trade work, including its 2018 regional trade report
Geography
South Asia
Limitations
A programme page by an institution that funds regional connectivity work, so it presents the case for it. It carries no publication date, the estimate of potential trade is a projection rather than an observation, and recorded trade excludes the informal cross-border trade that partly substitutes for it.
Tensions Evidence-grounded synthesisLocked for the programme
What trade-offs must they navigate?
These are to investigate, not to resolve on a slide. Each side of a tension is a legitimate demand.
Growth and participation
The policies that produce headline growth and the ones that widen participation are not always the same policies, and they compete for attention, capital and political time.
Growth pays for everything else and is a real obligation. So is the claim of people the growth is expanding beside rather than including.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Labor force participation rate, female (% of female population ages 15+), modeled ILO estimate
In 2024 female labour force participation across South Asia was 33.0 percent, against 77.4 percent for men. The country figures differ far more than a regional average suggests: Bhutan 56.6, Maldives 40.5, Bangladesh 38.7, India 32.4, Sri Lanka 31.0, Nepal 27.4, Pakistan 24.0 and Afghanistan 5.1 percent. India sits close to the regional average and more than twenty points below Bhutan.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
South Asia, and each country in the region separately
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate, not a direct count, and participation rates say nothing about the quality, security or pay of the work counted. Much of the unpaid and informal work women do is not captured, so the figure measures recorded participation rather than economic contribution.
Formalization brings protection, productivity and the ability to grow a firm. It can also remove the flexibility and margin that make an informal livelihood survivable.
Protection and productivity are what people are owed. So is the income they already have, which formalization can price out of existence.
Digital scale and last-mile inclusion
Scale is what makes shared digital infrastructure cheap enough to be universal, and the design choices that achieve scale are rarely the ones that reach the last users.
Building at national scale serves hundreds of millions. Designing for the last mile serves the people the scale is most likely to miss.
Source National Payments Corporation of India (2026)
In August 2026 UPI carried 24,508.96 million transactions, worth Rs 29,82,355.95 crore, across 752 banks live on the system. Monthly volume has run above 22,000 million in every month since April 2026. The figures exclude transactions debiting and crediting the same account.
Published
2026-08 (monthly series, read on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
April 2026 to August 2026
Geography
India
Limitations
Published by the system's own operator, and it counts transactions and banks, not people. Nothing here shows who holds an account, who has a device or connectivity, who transacts and who does not, so it measures the scale of the rail rather than participation in it.
Migration raises household incomes now; it also relieves the pressure that might otherwise force domestic opportunity to expand, and takes capability with it.
A household's right to improve its position by moving is legitimate. So is a country's need to build pathways at home rather than exporting them.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Personal remittances, received (% of GDP)
Remittances were 26.0 percent of Nepal's GDP in 2024, and 26.2 percent in 2023. The same year they were 9.4 percent of GDP in Pakistan, 6.7 percent in Sri Lanka, 6.1 percent in Bangladesh and 3.7 percent in India. Nepal's dependence is of a different order from its neighbours', not a regional pattern.
Published
2024 (series values for 2023 and 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2023 to 2024
Geography
Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and India
Limitations
Recorded flows only: informal transfers are missing, and a share of GDP says nothing about who receives the money, what it is spent on, or what the household gave up to earn it. It measures dependence at national scale, not household outcomes.
Connected electricity, transport, trade and digital systems create capability no country holds alone, and each connection is a dependence on a neighbour.
Sovereign control over critical systems is legitimate, particularly where trust is thin. So is the capability that only exists when neighbouring systems connect.
Source World Bank (2026)
Trade, South Asia Regional Integration
"Intraregional trade accounts for barely 5 percent of South Asia's total trade, compared to the ASEAN region where intraregional trade makes up 25 percent. Trade among South Asian countries currently totals just $23 billion -- far below an estimated value of at least $67 billion." The page adds that "it is about 20 percent cheaper for a company in India to trade with Brazil instead of a neighboring South Asian country", and attributes the gap to inadequate transport, protective tariffs, real and perceived nontariff barriers, investment restrictions "and a broad trust deficit throughout the region".
Drawn from the Bank's regional trade work, including its 2018 regional trade report
Geography
South Asia
Limitations
A programme page by an institution that funds regional connectivity work, so it presents the case for it. It carries no publication date, the estimate of potential trade is a projection rather than an observation, and recorded trade excludes the informal cross-border trade that partly substitutes for it.
Every response is classified as established, promising, early, contested, failed, and documented with the Response Case Protocol: Attempt → Conditions → Mechanism → Evidence → Outcome → For whom → Cost / trade-off → Unintended effects → Transferability.
India's digital public infrastructure ecosystemEstablished / evolving
Attempt
Build shared public rails for identity, payments and data so that services, markets and finance can reach people at national scale.
Conditions
Hundreds of millions of people outside formal financial systems, high transaction costs, and service delivery that could not reach them at acceptable cost.
Mechanism
Interoperable public infrastructure that private and public providers build on, rather than a single state-run service.
Evidence
UPI carried 24,508.96 million transactions in August 2026 across 752 banks live on the system, with monthly volume above 22,000 million since April 2026. In the same period, recorded female labour force participation in India was 32.4 percent.
Outcome
Established and evolving, and the question this movement puts to it is what happens after infrastructure scales. Transaction volume is evidence about the rail, not about who is on it: gender, literacy, connectivity, affordability, device access, documentation and local support still decide who can act. This is not the automatic template for the region, because the state capacity and scale economics that produced it are not available everywhere.
For whom
People and firms already able to hold an account, a document and a device. Those without one of the three are where the exclusion question sits.
Cost / trade-off
Designing for national scale is what made it cheap enough to be universal, and scale design is rarely last-mile design.
Unintended effects
Not established from these sources, which count transactions and banks rather than users, exclusions or failure to resolve problems.
Transferability
The architecture travels further than the implementation: public rails others build on, rather than one state service.
Source National Payments Corporation of India (2026)
In August 2026 UPI carried 24,508.96 million transactions, worth Rs 29,82,355.95 crore, across 752 banks live on the system. Monthly volume has run above 22,000 million in every month since April 2026. The figures exclude transactions debiting and crediting the same account.
Published
2026-08 (monthly series, read on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
April 2026 to August 2026
Geography
India
Limitations
Published by the system's own operator, and it counts transactions and banks, not people. Nothing here shows who holds an account, who has a device or connectivity, who transacts and who does not, so it measures the scale of the rail rather than participation in it.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Labor force participation rate, female (% of female population ages 15+), modeled ILO estimate
In 2024 female labour force participation across South Asia was 33.0 percent, against 77.4 percent for men. The country figures differ far more than a regional average suggests: Bhutan 56.6, Maldives 40.5, Bangladesh 38.7, India 32.4, Sri Lanka 31.0, Nepal 27.4, Pakistan 24.0 and Afghanistan 5.1 percent. India sits close to the regional average and more than twenty points below Bhutan.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
South Asia, and each country in the region separately
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate, not a direct count, and participation rates say nothing about the quality, security or pay of the work counted. Much of the unpaid and informal work women do is not captured, so the figure measures recorded participation rather than economic contribution.
Extend digital infrastructure, broadband, public services and digital payments across a province, reaching women and underserved communities.
Conditions
National digital capability that had not converted into provincial service delivery, with connectivity and access thinnest where need was highest.
Mechanism
Provincial programme work on connectivity, service digitisation and payments, delivered through provincial rather than federal institutions.
Outcome
Early implementation and promising. Its interest for this movement is the lesson rather than the scale: national infrastructure acquires value locally, and the provincial layer is where availability becomes usability.
For whom
Provincial residents, with the programme's stated attention to women and underserved communities.
Cost / trade-off
Provincial delivery builds capability close to people and is harder to standardise across a federation.
Unintended effects
Not established in this cycle.
Transferability
The layer matters more than the technology: a national rail without a local delivery layer reaches fewer people than its coverage suggests.
Protect coastal populations from cyclones with built shelter capacity, and use the same buildings for schools and public functions between events.
Conditions
Recurring cyclones on a densely populated coast, where protection had to be built before the event and could not stand idle between them.
Mechanism
Shelters designed for everyday use as schools and community facilities, so the asset earns its keep outside emergencies.
Outcome
Established, and the mechanism is the transferable part: resilience infrastructure that creates everyday value rather than sitting idle is easier to fund, maintain and reach when it is needed.
For whom
Coastal communities, and the children who use the buildings as schools between cyclones.
Cost / trade-off
Dual-purpose design costs more per building and is what makes the network maintainable at all.
Unintended effects
Not established from the material reviewed.
Transferability
High: the design principle, not the building, is what moves.
Reduce deaths and lost work from extreme heat through early warning, health-system readiness, work scheduling and urban measures.
Conditions
A city where heat had become a predictable annual event with measurable mortality, affecting outdoor and informal workers first.
Mechanism
A coordinated city plan linking forecasting, public communication, hospital preparation and changes to when and how outdoor work happens.
Outcome
Established and evolving. Its lesson for the region is categorical: heat policy is labour, health, infrastructure and urban policy at the same time, which is why it works when it is owned by a city rather than by an environment ministry.
For whom
Outdoor and informal workers, and older and unwell residents, who carry heat exposure first.
Cost / trade-off
Changing work scheduling protects health and costs hours to workers paid by the hour, which is the unresolved part.
Unintended effects
Not established in this cycle.
Transferability
High across the region's cities, with the caveat that it depends on a city administration able to coordinate several systems at once.
Nepal's migration and remittance modelMixed / structurally contested
Attempt
Households seek economic mobility through work abroad, and the state builds around the remittance flows this produces.
Conditions
Limited domestic job creation, difficult geography, and labour demand abroad reachable through established migration networks.
Mechanism
Large-scale labour migration, with remittances underwriting household consumption, education, health and resilience at home.
Evidence
Remittances were 26.0 percent of Nepal's GDP in 2024 and 26.2 percent in 2023, against 9.4 percent in Pakistan, 6.7 percent in Sri Lanka, 6.1 percent in Bangladesh and 3.7 percent in India.
Outcome
Mixed and structurally contested, and both halves are the point. It works for households: it raises incomes, reduces poverty and stabilises the macroeconomy. It also reveals a domestic system that is not producing pathways, and the flow relieves the pressure that might otherwise force it to. Something can work for households while exposing a weakness in the larger system.
For whom
Migrant households, immediately and materially. The cost falls on the same households in separation, risk and skills that do not return.
Cost / trade-off
Mobility abroad is the fastest route to mobility at home, and it substitutes for the domestic opportunity that would make it unnecessary.
Unintended effects
Dependence at national scale on flows the country does not control, and a labour market shaped around departure.
Transferability
The question travels even where the scale does not: must people leave the system in order to move forward within their lives?
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Personal remittances, received (% of GDP)
Remittances were 26.0 percent of Nepal's GDP in 2024, and 26.2 percent in 2023. The same year they were 9.4 percent of GDP in Pakistan, 6.7 percent in Sri Lanka, 6.1 percent in Bangladesh and 3.7 percent in India. Nepal's dependence is of a different order from its neighbours', not a regional pattern.
Published
2024 (series values for 2023 and 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2023 to 2024
Geography
Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and India
Limitations
Recorded flows only: informal transfers are missing, and a share of GDP says nothing about who receives the money, what it is spent on, or what the household gave up to earn it. It measures dependence at national scale, not household outcomes.
Bhutan's hydropower-led growthEstablished growth model / mobility challenge
Attempt
Convert hydropower potential into national income through generation and export to a neighbouring market.
Conditions
A small economy with a large natural asset, a small domestic market, and limited room to build many capabilities at once.
Mechanism
Large capital projects generating export revenue, with the proceeds funding public services and development.
Outcome
An established growth model with a mobility challenge attached. Recorded female participation is the region's highest at 56.6 percent, and youth unemployment and outward migration persist alongside the revenue: assets that generate national income do not automatically create enough pathways for young people.
For whom
The national budget, and through it public services. Young people seeking work are where the gap shows.
Cost / trade-off
Concentrating a small state's capacity in one large asset is efficient and leaves the pathway question to be solved separately.
Unintended effects
Outward migration of young people from an economy that is, on the national accounts, doing well.
Transferability
Directly relevant to any small economy whose income comes from an asset rather than from broad employment.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Labor force participation rate, female (% of female population ages 15+), modeled ILO estimate
In 2024 female labour force participation across South Asia was 33.0 percent, against 77.4 percent for men. The country figures differ far more than a regional average suggests: Bhutan 56.6, Maldives 40.5, Bangladesh 38.7, India 32.4, Sri Lanka 31.0, Nepal 27.4, Pakistan 24.0 and Afghanistan 5.1 percent. India sits close to the regional average and more than twenty points below Bhutan.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
South Asia, and each country in the region separately
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate, not a direct count, and participation rates say nothing about the quality, security or pay of the work counted. Much of the unpaid and informal work women do is not captured, so the figure measures recorded participation rather than economic contribution.
The Maldives' climate and fiscal portfolioContested / high-constraint transition
Attempt
Fund climate adaptation, island infrastructure, human capital and energy transition from a narrow revenue base under debt constraints.
Conditions
Existential climate exposure, export earnings concentrated in tourism at about 85 percent of total exports before 2020, public debt and limited fiscal space.
Mechanism
Portfolio prioritisation: choosing which defensible priorities get funded, in what order, and which wait.
Evidence
International tourism receipts were 85.2 percent of total exports in 2018 and 84.7 percent in 2019, falling to 78.9 percent in 2020.
Outcome
Contested, and a high-constraint transition. This is where portfolio leadership becomes visible: adaptation, infrastructure, education, health and energy are each defensible, they cannot all be funded at once, and every sequencing choice decides whose mobility gets built and whose waits.
For whom
Island communities whose habitability depends on adaptation, and a workforce concentrated in one sector.
Cost / trade-off
Adaptation spending competes directly with the human capital and diversification that would reduce the concentration behind the constraint.
Unintended effects
Not established from this source, which shows export concentration rather than fiscal or adaptation outcomes.
Transferability
The portfolio discipline travels to any government that cannot fund everything it can justify, which is most of them.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2020)
International tourism, receipts (% of total exports), Maldives
International tourism receipts were 85.2 percent of the Maldives' total exports in 2018 and 84.7 percent in 2019, falling to 78.9 percent in 2020. Export earnings rest on a single sector, which is the structural condition behind every portfolio choice the country makes about adaptation, infrastructure and debt.
Published
2020 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2018 to 2020
Geography
Maldives
Limitations
The series stops in 2020, and 2020 is a pandemic year, so it shows the structure of the economy rather than its current position. It measures concentration of export earnings, not fiscal space, debt or adaptation cost.
Raise the administrative capability of intermediate cities so that municipal services, planning and land management actually function.
Conditions
Fast-growing secondary cities with weak municipal data, planning capacity and service delivery.
Mechanism
Municipal management systems, geographic information systems, urban service delivery and local planning capability built inside city administrations.
Outcome
Established with demonstrated delivery. The lesson is the one the region most often skips: local administrative capability is infrastructure, and without it national programmes arrive somewhere that cannot receive them.
For whom
Residents of intermediate cities, where most of the region's urban growth is happening.
Cost / trade-off
Building administrative capability is slow and unglamorous next to visible capital projects, and it is what makes them work.
Unintended effects
Not established in this cycle.
Transferability
High, and rarely treated as infrastructure investment when budgets are set.
Sri Lanka's digital government transformationEarly implementation
Attempt
Rebuild public service delivery around integrated citizen services, government data exchange, digital documents and shared government infrastructure.
Conditions
Fiscal constraint, institutional reform underway, and strong human capital available to run redesigned services.
Mechanism
Data exchange between agencies, digital documents, government cloud, institutional redesign and staff training, rather than new public-facing websites.
Outcome
Early implementation. What makes it worth holding is the framing: digital government is institutional redesign, not website construction, and the hard part is the agency-to-agency plumbing and the training, not the interface.
For whom
Citizens using public services, and the agencies that have to work differently to deliver them.
Cost / trade-off
Institutional redesign takes political capital and time that a fiscally constrained government has least of.
Unintended effects
Not established in this cycle.
Transferability
The framing transfers; the specific architecture depends on the state's own institutions.
South Asian regional integrationStalled / partial / high untapped potential
Attempt
Connect neighbouring economies through trade, energy, transport and logistics so that proximity produces shared capability.
Conditions
Neighbouring economies with complementary resources, low mutual trade, and political relationships that make institutional cooperation difficult.
Mechanism
Regional agreements and selective bilateral arrangements, particularly in electricity and transport corridors, alongside a formal regional framework that has largely not delivered.
Evidence
Intraregional trade is barely 5 percent of South Asia's total trade, against 25 percent within ASEAN. Trade among these countries totals about US$23 billion against an estimated potential of at least US$67 billion, and it is about 20 percent cheaper for a company in India to trade with Brazil than with a neighbour. The barriers named include tariffs, real and perceived nontariff barriers, investment restrictions, weak transport and a broad trust deficit.
Outcome
Stalled and partial, with high untapped potential, and it is not sanitised here. Decades of regional frameworks have not moved the trade share, while selective bilateral arrangements have moved electricity and some corridors. The point for leadership is that interdependence exists whether institutions organize it or not: the region shares rivers, air, disease, weather and labour markets regardless of what its trade figures say.
For whom
The smaller and landlocked economies carry the cost of disconnection first; every economy carries the shared risks.
Cost / trade-off
Connection creates capability and creates dependence on neighbours where trust is thin, which is the actual constraint rather than a technical one.
Unintended effects
Informal and third-country trade substitutes for the recorded trade that does not happen, which hides part of the cost.
Transferability
The lesson is about sequencing: where political trust is scarce, capability has been built in specific connections rather than in comprehensive frameworks.
Source World Bank (2026)
Trade, South Asia Regional Integration
"Intraregional trade accounts for barely 5 percent of South Asia's total trade, compared to the ASEAN region where intraregional trade makes up 25 percent. Trade among South Asian countries currently totals just $23 billion -- far below an estimated value of at least $67 billion." The page adds that "it is about 20 percent cheaper for a company in India to trade with Brazil instead of a neighboring South Asian country", and attributes the gap to inadequate transport, protective tariffs, real and perceived nontariff barriers, investment restrictions "and a broad trust deficit throughout the region".
Drawn from the Bank's regional trade work, including its 2018 regional trade report
Geography
South Asia
Limitations
A programme page by an institution that funds regional connectivity work, so it presents the case for it. It carries no publication date, the estimate of potential trade is a projection rather than an observation, and recorded trade excludes the informal cross-border trade that partly substitutes for it.
The region remains the subject. The 4Ps help interpret what the evidence means for leadership.
What the evidence asks us to examine
People hold capability. Process opens pathways. Planet changes the conditions. Portfolio decides whose mobility gets built. Evidence-grounded synthesisLocked for the programme
How each P reads in this region
People
Who carries the consequences?
Evidence-grounded synthesisLocked for the programme
The evidence asks Who holds capability here, and what stops them acting on it?
People hold capability. Youth, women, informal workers, entrepreneurs, migrants, the diaspora, skilled workers and communities already carry the knowledge, ambition and adaptive practice this region runs on. The question is not whether capability exists but who can act on it: two thirds of the region's women are outside the recorded labour force, and capability that cannot enter the economy is not fully available to the system.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Labor force participation rate, female (% of female population ages 15+), modeled ILO estimate
In 2024 female labour force participation across South Asia was 33.0 percent, against 77.4 percent for men. The country figures differ far more than a regional average suggests: Bhutan 56.6, Maldives 40.5, Bangladesh 38.7, India 32.4, Sri Lanka 31.0, Nepal 27.4, Pakistan 24.0 and Afghanistan 5.1 percent. India sits close to the regional average and more than twenty points below Bhutan.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
South Asia, and each country in the region separately
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate, not a direct count, and participation rates say nothing about the quality, security or pay of the work counted. Much of the unpaid and informal work women do is not captured, so the figure measures recorded participation rather than economic contribution.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Personal remittances, received (% of GDP)
Remittances were 26.0 percent of Nepal's GDP in 2024, and 26.2 percent in 2023. The same year they were 9.4 percent of GDP in Pakistan, 6.7 percent in Sri Lanka, 6.1 percent in Bangladesh and 3.7 percent in India. Nepal's dependence is of a different order from its neighbours', not a regional pattern.
Published
2024 (series values for 2023 and 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2023 to 2024
Geography
Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and India
Limitations
Recorded flows only: informal transfers are missing, and a share of GDP says nothing about who receives the money, what it is spent on, or what the household gave up to earn it. It measures dependence at national scale, not household outcomes.
Evidence-grounded synthesisLocked for the programme
The evidence asks What decides whether capability becomes a pathway?
Process opens pathways. It determines whether skills become jobs, identity becomes access, finance becomes enterprise, education becomes mobility, infrastructure becomes service, digital systems become usable and firms can grow. This is where participation is won or lost: the same rails that carry billions of transactions can still be unreachable for a woman without a device, a document or a nearby place to resolve a problem.
In August 2026 UPI carried 24,508.96 million transactions, worth Rs 29,82,355.95 crore, across 752 banks live on the system. Monthly volume has run above 22,000 million in every month since April 2026. The figures exclude transactions debiting and crediting the same account.
Published
2026-08 (monthly series, read on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
April 2026 to August 2026
Geography
India
Limitations
Published by the system's own operator, and it counts transactions and banks, not people. Nothing here shows who holds an account, who has a device or connectivity, who transacts and who does not, so it measures the scale of the rail rather than participation in it.
"Intraregional trade accounts for barely 5 percent of South Asia's total trade, compared to the ASEAN region where intraregional trade makes up 25 percent. Trade among South Asian countries currently totals just $23 billion -- far below an estimated value of at least $67 billion." The page adds that "it is about 20 percent cheaper for a company in India to trade with Brazil instead of a neighboring South Asian country", and attributes the gap to inadequate transport, protective tariffs, real and perceived nontariff barriers, investment restrictions "and a broad trust deficit throughout the region".
Drawn from the Bank's regional trade work, including its 2018 regional trade report
Geography
South Asia
Limitations
A programme page by an institution that funds regional connectivity work, so it presents the case for it. It carries no publication date, the estimate of potential trade is a projection rather than an observation, and recorded trade excludes the informal cross-border trade that partly substitutes for it.
Evidence-grounded synthesisLocked for the programme
The evidence asks What physical conditions decide who can work, move and learn?
Planet changes the conditions. Heat, water, floods, mountains, islands, energy, disasters, geography and ecosystems set who can work outdoors and for how long, whose commute and schooling survive the monsoon, which island can fund its own adaptation, and where hydropower or solar capability sits. This is not the climate section: it is the physical boundary inside which every participation question is answered.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2020)
International tourism, receipts (% of total exports), Maldives
International tourism receipts were 85.2 percent of the Maldives' total exports in 2018 and 84.7 percent in 2019, falling to 78.9 percent in 2020. Export earnings rest on a single sector, which is the structural condition behind every portfolio choice the country makes about adaptation, infrastructure and debt.
Published
2020 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2018 to 2020
Geography
Maldives
Limitations
The series stops in 2020, and 2020 is a pandemic year, so it shows the structure of the economy rather than its current position. It measures concentration of export earnings, not fiscal space, debt or adaptation cost.
Evidence-grounded synthesisLocked for the programme
The evidence asks Whose mobility gets built?
Portfolio decides whose mobility gets built. Jobs, infrastructure, digital systems, adaptation, cities, energy, education, skills, social infrastructure, local government and regional connectivity are all defensible, and no government here can fund them all at once. The choice between them is a choice about which people's lives change, which is why portfolio decisions in this region are visible in who moves and who stays where they are.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2020)
International tourism, receipts (% of total exports), Maldives
International tourism receipts were 85.2 percent of the Maldives' total exports in 2018 and 84.7 percent in 2019, falling to 78.9 percent in 2020. Export earnings rest on a single sector, which is the structural condition behind every portfolio choice the country makes about adaptation, infrastructure and debt.
Published
2020 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2018 to 2020
Geography
Maldives
Limitations
The series stops in 2020, and 2020 is a pandemic year, so it shows the structure of the economy rather than its current position. It measures concentration of export earnings, not fiscal space, debt or adaptation cost.
"Intraregional trade accounts for barely 5 percent of South Asia's total trade, compared to the ASEAN region where intraregional trade makes up 25 percent. Trade among South Asian countries currently totals just $23 billion -- far below an estimated value of at least $67 billion." The page adds that "it is about 20 percent cheaper for a company in India to trade with Brazil instead of a neighboring South Asian country", and attributes the gap to inadequate transport, protective tariffs, real and perceived nontariff barriers, investment restrictions "and a broad trust deficit throughout the region".
Drawn from the Bank's regional trade work, including its 2018 regional trade report
Geography
South Asia
Limitations
A programme page by an institution that funds regional connectivity work, so it presents the case for it. It carries no publication date, the estimate of potential trade is a projection rather than an observation, and recorded trade excludes the informal cross-border trade that partly substitutes for it.
SDG connections Evidence-grounded synthesisLocked for the programme
Which Goals does this touch?
A Goal appears here only when a cited source supports the link.
SDG 5
Gender equalityPrimary
5.5: Ensure women's full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership
Women's economic participation is structural to this movement's central question, not a theme beside it. Evidence-backed
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Labor force participation rate, female (% of female population ages 15+), modeled ILO estimate
In 2024 female labour force participation across South Asia was 33.0 percent, against 77.4 percent for men. The country figures differ far more than a regional average suggests: Bhutan 56.6, Maldives 40.5, Bangladesh 38.7, India 32.4, Sri Lanka 31.0, Nepal 27.4, Pakistan 24.0 and Afghanistan 5.1 percent. India sits close to the regional average and more than twenty points below Bhutan.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
South Asia, and each country in the region separately
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate, not a direct count, and participation rates say nothing about the quality, security or pay of the work counted. Much of the unpaid and informal work women do is not captured, so the figure measures recorded participation rather than economic contribution.
8.5: Achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all
The gap between growth and productive participation is the region's defining economic problem. Evidence-backed
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Labor force participation rate, female (% of female population ages 15+), modeled ILO estimate
In 2024 female labour force participation across South Asia was 33.0 percent, against 77.4 percent for men. The country figures differ far more than a regional average suggests: Bhutan 56.6, Maldives 40.5, Bangladesh 38.7, India 32.4, Sri Lanka 31.0, Nepal 27.4, Pakistan 24.0 and Afghanistan 5.1 percent. India sits close to the regional average and more than twenty points below Bhutan.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
South Asia, and each country in the region separately
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate, not a direct count, and participation rates say nothing about the quality, security or pay of the work counted. Much of the unpaid and informal work women do is not captured, so the figure measures recorded participation rather than economic contribution.
In August 2026 UPI carried 24,508.96 million transactions, worth Rs 29,82,355.95 crore, across 752 banks live on the system. Monthly volume has run above 22,000 million in every month since April 2026. The figures exclude transactions debiting and crediting the same account.
Published
2026-08 (monthly series, read on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
April 2026 to August 2026
Geography
India
Limitations
Published by the system's own operator, and it counts transactions and banks, not people. Nothing here shows who holds an account, who has a device or connectivity, who transacts and who does not, so it measures the scale of the rail rather than participation in it.
"Intraregional trade accounts for barely 5 percent of South Asia's total trade, compared to the ASEAN region where intraregional trade makes up 25 percent. Trade among South Asian countries currently totals just $23 billion -- far below an estimated value of at least $67 billion." The page adds that "it is about 20 percent cheaper for a company in India to trade with Brazil instead of a neighboring South Asian country", and attributes the gap to inadequate transport, protective tariffs, real and perceived nontariff barriers, investment restrictions "and a broad trust deficit throughout the region".
Drawn from the Bank's regional trade work, including its 2018 regional trade report
Geography
South Asia
Limitations
A programme page by an institution that funds regional connectivity work, so it presents the case for it. It carries no publication date, the estimate of potential trade is a projection rather than an observation, and recorded trade excludes the informal cross-border trade that partly substitutes for it.
10.2: Empower and promote the social, economic and political inclusion of all
Mobility is the outcome layer of this movement: whether participation changes what becomes possible. Evidence-backed
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Personal remittances, received (% of GDP)
Remittances were 26.0 percent of Nepal's GDP in 2024, and 26.2 percent in 2023. The same year they were 9.4 percent of GDP in Pakistan, 6.7 percent in Sri Lanka, 6.1 percent in Bangladesh and 3.7 percent in India. Nepal's dependence is of a different order from its neighbours', not a regional pattern.
Published
2024 (series values for 2023 and 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2023 to 2024
Geography
Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and India
Limitations
Recorded flows only: informal transfers are missing, and a share of GDP says nothing about who receives the money, what it is spent on, or what the household gave up to earn it. It measures dependence at national scale, not household outcomes.
11.2: Provide access to safe, affordable, accessible and sustainable transport systems for all
Cities decide whether people can reach work safely, and whether heat and flood interrupt that. Evidence-backed
SDG 13
Climate actionPrimary
13.1: Strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards and natural disasters
Climate resilience is becoming infrastructure for economic participation. Evidence-backed
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2020)
International tourism, receipts (% of total exports), Maldives
International tourism receipts were 85.2 percent of the Maldives' total exports in 2018 and 84.7 percent in 2019, falling to 78.9 percent in 2020. Export earnings rest on a single sector, which is the structural condition behind every portfolio choice the country makes about adaptation, infrastructure and debt.
Published
2020 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2018 to 2020
Geography
Maldives
Limitations
The series stops in 2020, and 2020 is a pandemic year, so it shows the structure of the economy rather than its current position. It measures concentration of export earnings, not fiscal space, debt or adaptation cost.
4.4: Substantially increase the number of youth and adults who have relevant skills for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship
The learning-to-earning pathway is where capability is most often stranded. Evidence-backed
SDG 6
Clean water and sanitationSupporting
6.4: Substantially increase water-use efficiency and address water scarcity
Water stress is one of the physical conditions that decides who can work and where. Evidence-backed
SDG 7
Affordable and clean energySupporting
7.1: Ensure universal access to affordable, reliable and modern energy services
Energy, including cross-border electricity, is where regional connection has actually produced capability. Evidence-backed
Source World Bank (2026)
Trade, South Asia Regional Integration
"Intraregional trade accounts for barely 5 percent of South Asia's total trade, compared to the ASEAN region where intraregional trade makes up 25 percent. Trade among South Asian countries currently totals just $23 billion -- far below an estimated value of at least $67 billion." The page adds that "it is about 20 percent cheaper for a company in India to trade with Brazil instead of a neighboring South Asian country", and attributes the gap to inadequate transport, protective tariffs, real and perceived nontariff barriers, investment restrictions "and a broad trust deficit throughout the region".
Drawn from the Bank's regional trade work, including its 2018 regional trade report
Geography
South Asia
Limitations
A programme page by an institution that funds regional connectivity work, so it presents the case for it. It carries no publication date, the estimate of potential trade is a projection rather than an observation, and recorded trade excludes the informal cross-border trade that partly substitutes for it.
In August 2026 UPI carried 24,508.96 million transactions, worth Rs 29,82,355.95 crore, across 752 banks live on the system. Monthly volume has run above 22,000 million in every month since April 2026. The figures exclude transactions debiting and crediting the same account.
Published
2026-08 (monthly series, read on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
April 2026 to August 2026
Geography
India
Limitations
Published by the system's own operator, and it counts transactions and banks, not people. Nothing here shows who holds an account, who has a device or connectivity, who transacts and who does not, so it measures the scale of the rail rather than participation in it.
17.14: Enhance policy coherence for sustainable development
Turning proximity into capability is a coherence problem between sovereign neighbours. Evidence-backed
Source World Bank (2026)
Trade, South Asia Regional Integration
"Intraregional trade accounts for barely 5 percent of South Asia's total trade, compared to the ASEAN region where intraregional trade makes up 25 percent. Trade among South Asian countries currently totals just $23 billion -- far below an estimated value of at least $67 billion." The page adds that "it is about 20 percent cheaper for a company in India to trade with Brazil instead of a neighboring South Asian country", and attributes the gap to inadequate transport, protective tariffs, real and perceived nontariff barriers, investment restrictions "and a broad trust deficit throughout the region".
Drawn from the Bank's regional trade work, including its 2018 regional trade report
Geography
South Asia
Limitations
A programme page by an institution that funds regional connectivity work, so it presents the case for it. It carries no publication date, the estimate of potential trade is a projection rather than an observation, and recorded trade excludes the informal cross-border trade that partly substitutes for it.
LEAD48 curates the conversations inside this movement from the research on this page and the perspectives below. You do not need to choose a session: bring what you know to the inquiry, and the matching is LEAD48's work.
Contributor expressions of interest are not open.
The shape of a movement
How a movement moves
The same beats in every region, in the same order. What fills them, and how long they take, is this region's own.
View the beats every movement runs through
Baton Handover In
The incoming and outgoing regions are both live. Intellectual content, not an emcee transition.
Opening Regional Provocation
One strong regional voice frames the movement: what is happening in this region right now, and why should the rest of the world care?
Regional Reality
The evidence: what is actually true in this region.
Responses, Experiments and Tensions
The practical core: what is being tried, and where it is contested.
Regional Synthesis
What we learned, what challenged our assumptions and where we disagreed.
Baton Question + Handover Out
The signature moment. The baton never simply moves: it evolves.
Perspectives sought Evidence-grounded synthesisLocked for the programme
What perspectives strengthen this inquiry?
The kinds of knowledge and experience this inquiry needs. They describe perspectives, not places: one person may bring several, and a strong case or a well-evidenced challenge counts as much as a title.
View the knowledge this movement needs
Jobs and labour-market systems
Knowledge required Works on employment absorption, job quality and labour-market institutions in the region.
Why this is needed The gap between growth and participation is measured and acted on here first.
Women's economic participation
Knowledge required Works on the barriers women meet at the points where participation is decided, including after marriage and childbirth.
Why this is needed Two thirds of the region's women are outside the recorded labour force, which makes this structural rather than thematic.
Youth and the skills transition
Knowledge required Runs or studies the pathway from education into work for young people entering the labour market now.
Why this is needed Learning-to-earning is where the region's largest capability is most often stranded.
Informal economy and productivity
Knowledge required Works with informal firms and workers on productivity and protection, not only on compliance.
Why this is needed Informality is the dominant form of employment here, and improving it without destroying livelihoods is the live question.
Digital public infrastructure
Knowledge required Has built or governed shared digital identity, payments or data infrastructure.
Why this is needed The capability side of the region's digital question needs people who know what the rails can and cannot do.
Digital exclusion and the last mile
Knowledge required Works with the people a digital system does not reach, on the ground.
Why this is needed Availability is not usability, and only this knowledge keeps the digital conversation honest.
Manufacturing and global value chains
Knowledge required Works inside manufacturing or value chains in the region, at firm or policy level.
Why this is needed Whether manufacturing employment converts into productive upgrading is decided in these firms.
Migration and remittances
Knowledge required Works with migrant workers, recruitment systems, remittance flows or returning migrants.
Why this is needed Migration is part of the region's economic architecture, and it is understood from inside the system rather than from the aggregate.
Climate and heat resilience
Knowledge required Delivers heat, flood or water resilience where it affects working conditions.
Why this is needed Climate resilience is infrastructure for participation, and practitioners know what that costs in hours and income.
Urban systems
Knowledge required Plans or runs the systems of a fast-growing city, including intermediate cities.
Why this is needed Most of the region's participation questions are answered in cities that are still being built.
Energy transition
Knowledge required Works on generation, grids or energy access in the region.
Why this is needed Energy decides both industrial capability and whether households can participate in a hotter climate.
Local-government delivery
Knowledge required Runs delivery inside a municipal or district administration.
Why this is needed National infrastructure acquires value locally, and local administrative capability is infrastructure.
Regional trade and connectivity
Knowledge required Works on trade facilitation, logistics or transport corridors between these countries.
Why this is needed Turning proximity into capability is negotiated by people who know where the barriers actually are.
Cross-border electricity
Knowledge required Works on power trade or grid interconnection between neighbouring countries.
Why this is needed Electricity is where regional connection has already produced capability, which makes it evidence rather than aspiration.
SME growth and finance
Knowledge required Works with small and medium firms on growth, finance and formalisation.
Why this is needed Firm growth is the mechanism that turns participation into mobility for large numbers of people.
Human capital
Knowledge required Works on education, health or skills systems at scale in the region.
Why this is needed Capability is produced here before it is converted anywhere else.
Bangladesh disaster resilience
Knowledge required Has built or run disaster resilience systems in Bangladesh.
Why this is needed Decades of practice in protection that doubles as everyday infrastructure sit in this knowledge.
Himalayan economies
Knowledge required Works on development, energy or mobility in Nepal, Bhutan or the mountain regions.
Why this is needed Geography changes what is possible, and mountain economies face portfolio choices that plains economies do not.
Island-state fiscal and climate management
Knowledge required Manages fiscal or adaptation decisions in a small island state.
Why this is needed Portfolio leadership is most visible where every defensible priority cannot be funded at once.
Afghanistan labour and human-capital context
Knowledge required Works on employment, human capital or return migration in Afghanistan, factually and without spectacle.
Why this is needed The region's participation question includes its hardest case, represented as evidence rather than as an exhibit.
The baton
The question moves
It arrives. East & Southeast Asia hands this movement the question.
This region changes it. Everything above is what it is changed by.
It leaves changed. Middle East & North Africa receives whatever this movement earns in the room.
No question is written in advance. Each movement's question is earned live, in the room, and published here once it has been.
Global report contribution
What this movement will contribute
How this movement feeds the report
What this movement will contribute to the LEAD48 Global Leadership Report 2027. Every field is filled from the live movement, and disagreement is preserved rather than resolved. When a locked synthesis is changed by what the movement shows, the pre-event version is kept alongside it, so verified evidence, pre-event synthesis and live-earned findings stay distinguishable.
What this movement finds is written in the room during the relay and becomes its part of the LEAD48 Global Leadership Report 2027. How the five outputs work
Research gaps and limitations Evidence-grounded synthesisLocked for the programme
What this evidence cannot show
These are limitations, not blockers. They are published so a reader can judge the evidence for themselves.
View what this evidence cannot show
Six response cases carry no verified figures
Connected Punjab, the cyclone shelters, the Ahmedabad heat approach, Bhutan's hydropower model, the Punjab intermediate cities programme and Sri Lanka's digital transformation are described from the locked research without a primary-source figure attached. They say so rather than asserting numbers.
Affects: Responses and experiments
Subnational variation is named but not evidenced
National averages conceal state and provincial differences that are often wider than the differences between countries. This brief states that and does not yet carry the subnational evidence to show it, which matters most for India and Pakistan.
Affects: Inside the region
Participation is measured by a participation rate
Labour force participation is a modeled estimate and counts recorded activity. It says nothing about the quality, security or pay of work, and it misses much of the unpaid and informal work women do, so it understates contribution while still showing the gap.
Affects: Prevailing conditions, People
Exclusion from digital systems is stated, not measured
The capability side of digital public infrastructure carries verified transaction figures. The exclusion side, who cannot reach the system and why, is a synthesis without its own measurement attached here.
Affects: Prevailing conditions, Responses and experiments
Afghanistan is represented by one indicator
The only verified figure attached to the Afghanistan context is its recorded female labour force participation. The employment, human capital and return migration themes are named without evidence of their own, which is a limit on this brief and not a judgement about the country.
Affects: Inside the region
The regional trade potential is a projection
The figure for what regional trade could be worth is an estimate by an institution that funds regional connectivity work. The 5 percent share is an observation; the US$67 billion is a projection, and the two are not the same kind of evidence.
Affects: Responses and experiments
Research and evidence
See the evidence
Every claim on this page links here. Participants' contributions do not statistically represent the whole region.
World Bank, World Development Indicators · 2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20) · Evidence period: 2024 · Geography: South Asia, and each country in the region separately
Population: Women aged 15 and over
Limitations: A modeled ILO estimate, not a direct count, and participation rates say nothing about the quality, security or pay of the work counted. Much of the unpaid and informal work women do is not captured, so the figure measures recorded participation rather than economic contribution.
National Payments Corporation of India · 2026-08 (monthly series, read on 2026-09-20) · Evidence period: April 2026 to August 2026 · Geography: India
Population: UPI transactions, and the banks live on the system
Limitations: Published by the system's own operator, and it counts transactions and banks, not people. Nothing here shows who holds an account, who has a device or connectivity, who transacts and who does not, so it measures the scale of the rail rather than participation in it.
World Bank and the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery · 2026-07 · Evidence period: Current losses, with city projections to 2030, 2050 and 2080 under a moderate-emissions scenario · Geography: Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka only. Pakistan and Afghanistan are not covered.
Population: Working hours lost to heat exposure, expressed as full-time job equivalents
Limitations: Covers six of this region's eight national contexts: it does not cover Pakistan or Afghanistan, and nothing in it may be extended to them. The 31 million figure converts working hours lost to heat into full-time job equivalents; it is not a count of jobs destroyed. The report draws that figure from a separate World Bank working paper and does not restate its geographic scope, although the accompanying press release defines South Asia for this report as the six countries. Its projection that GDP could be close to 7 per cent smaller by 2050 comes from an earlier World Bank source, and all future figures are scenario projections.
World Bank · 2026 (undated programme page, accessed 2026-09-20) · Evidence period: Drawn from the Bank's regional trade work, including its 2018 regional trade report · Geography: South Asia
Population: Trade between the countries of the region
Limitations: A programme page by an institution that funds regional connectivity work, so it presents the case for it. It carries no publication date, the estimate of potential trade is a projection rather than an observation, and recorded trade excludes the informal cross-border trade that partly substitutes for it.
World Bank, End Poverty in South Asia blog (Laveesh Bhandari and Franziska Ohnsorge) · 2025-02-03 · Evidence period: Not stated in the source · Geography: South Asia (the post does not define which countries the figure covers)
Population: Working-age women outside the labour force
Limitations: A blog post by World Bank economists, first published on the Brookings Future Development blog, not a statistical release. It states no working-age range, reference year or country coverage for the figure, so it is not measurement-compatible with the World Development Indicators participation rates attached elsewhere in this region and must not be combined with them. "Outside the labour force" means neither employed nor seeking work: it is not unemployment, and it does not mean these women do no work, since unpaid and household work is not counted.
International Labour Organization · 2025-05 · Evidence period: ILO modelled series to 2024; the sentence states no reference year · Geography: Asia and the Pacific, by subregion, including South Asia
Population: Informal employment as a share of total employment
Limitations: ILO modelled estimates. The denominator is people in employment, so the figure measures the incidence of informal employment among workers: it is not an unemployment rate, and it says nothing about skill levels or legality. The brief does not list which countries its South Asia figure covers, and ILO's Southern Asia grouping elsewhere includes Iran as well as Afghanistan, so it is not the same set as this region's eight national contexts. Later ILO model vintages may give a different figure. It measures prevalence, not the productivity, protection or firm-size distribution of informal work.
World Bank, World Development Indicators · 2024 (series values for 2023 and 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20) · Evidence period: 2023 to 2024 · Geography: Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and India
Population: Recorded personal transfers from workers abroad, as a share of national income
Limitations: Recorded flows only: informal transfers are missing, and a share of GDP says nothing about who receives the money, what it is spent on, or what the household gave up to earn it. It measures dependence at national scale, not household outcomes.
World Bank, World Development Indicators · 2020 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20) · Evidence period: 2018 to 2020 · Geography: Maldives
Population: National export earnings
Limitations: The series stops in 2020, and 2020 is a pandemic year, so it shows the structure of the economy rather than its current position. It measures concentration of export earnings, not fiscal space, debt or adaptation cost.
This region's five documented outputs become its part of the LEAD48 Global Leadership Report 2027. How the five outputs work
