We are all assembled here as south Asians. We may be keralites, gujaratis, srilankans, indians but we are all south Asians. We should never forget that South asia a very important region of the world. 2/3rd of world population lives here. We are a region marked by a huge Diversity of religions, languages, culture and yet we have a Shared heritag. We haved shared Histories, family ties, cultural ties cutting across political borders.. even our Ecosystem – our mountains, rivers flow across the region. We must also remember that we are a very important ‘Market’ in the era of globalization.

South Asia is also a Conflict ridden region. We have conflicts based on religion, nationalities, right to self-determintation as seen in Kashmir, NE, tribal regions of Pakistan and Bangladesh. We have the question of Tamils being excluded on account of their background. And we have the age old conflict based on caste. There are conflicts within respecive countrie and Conflict between nations. It is utterly shameful that our respective governemnts continue with mind boggling Defence spending even as our people don't have drinking water, our children don't have schools to go to and a large percentage of our popultaiton is hungry. It is ironical that the two biggest countries in south Asia pride themsleves for being Nuclear powers. Increasingly our govts are getting posessed with the mindsets of National security. A lot of human rights violations are happening under this paranoiac paradigm. The govt are appropriating sweeping powers to themselves under this paradigm and ordinary citizens are incarcerated without trial without justice. There is so much suspicion of neighbours and our people are denied visas by our different govts. It is interesting how there is Free movement of capital in the region but not of the people under the strict visa regime.