South Asia's blog

On April 3, 2012, the World Bank announced the “Imagining Our Future Together” art exhibition competition for young artists (those born after 1975) to submit samples of their work to be included in an upcoming traveling exhibition, “South Asia Artists: Imagining Our Future Together.” The deadline for submissions was April 30, 2012.

We received applications from 231 artists in all eight South Asian countries:

Afghanistan: 41
Bangladesh: 25
Bhutan: 7
India: 83
Maldives: 2
Nepal: 15
Pakistan: 50
Sri Lanka: 8

Leveraging Technology and Partnerships to Promote Equity in South Asia

Wednesday, April 18 at 9:00AM

The Next South Asia Regional Flagship on equity and development (March 2013) will feature an eBook which will combine interactive multimedia as a part of the World Bank Open Data and Open Knowledge initiatives. This signals a new era in development analysis is produced and shared.

Please RSVP to Alison at areeves@worldbank.org by Tuesday, April 17th to attend.

Twitter hashtag: #wbequity

Breaking Down Barriers: A New Dawn on Trade and Regional Cooperation in South Asia

Thursday, April 19 at 3:00PM

Are you a South Asian artist from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, or Sri Lanka and born in or after 1975?

You are invited to share examples of your work for the exhibition South Asia Artists: Imagining Our Future Together.

Imagining our Future Together is a juried group exhibition that will be on display in throughout South Asia and beyond.

Concept

The concept of the exhibition comes from the realization that cooperation among the countries of South Asia is the key to the region’s success in the 21st century. And what better example of transcending borders and breaking stereotypes can be seen than in art created by emerging artists, some of our society’s most perceptive, creative and genuine minds?

Imagining our Future Together is an opportunity to communicate your experience, feelings and thoughts as visual artist to the rest of the world.

For the first time ever, more than one million households ravaged by the devastating floods of 2010 are being uplifted through a unique cash transfer approach in Pakistan, employing innovative use of payment technology, control and accountability mechanisms, making it possible to give back to the flood-affected families their right to life!

The World Bank organized an art competition among school children of grades 6 to 8. The theme for the competition was ''Pakistan of My Dreams" and it was held among the public schools falling in Peshawar, Rawalpindi and Islamabad area. The objective of the art competition was to tap into the artistic imagination and talent among school children. Twelve schools and more than 500 children participated in this competition. Here we are sharing the best thirteen drawings to encourage the youth to further nurture their artistic expression and achieve their dream of a peaceful and prosperous Pakistan.

India's largest city, Mumbai, holds the record for some the world's most crowded trains and congested roads. With the help of the World Bank, Mumbai is revamping its transportation systems, embarking on one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects in the world. Resettling 100,000 residents and building new roads and train tracks.

Zafar is among millions of Pakistanis who do not give up hope in the face of adversity, and the harder the challenge, the more resolute they become in overcoming it. Zafar belongs to Utror, a back-of-beyond place in Pakistan’s north-west. Situated in one of the more inaccessible valleys of Swat in the Kyber Pakhtunkhwa province, the inhabitants of Utror could only dream of having electricity till Zafar, one of their own, returned home with skills of an electrician honed in Punjab where he had gone in search of education.

Bangladesh can be described as “ground zero” at the intersection of climate change and food security.

The country is widely recognized as one of the places most vulnerable to the effects of a changing climate, which strains food systems alongside rapidly growing and urbanizing populations. Yet, despite these dual challenges, the World Bank expects Bangladesh will meet its Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving the number of people living in extreme poverty by 2015.

Given the impact of the global food crisis and numerous natural disasters, how is Bangladesh managing this feat? And can we map the country’s progress?

The Padma Bridge is expected to unlock the potential and transform the lives of nearly 30 million Bangladeshis living in the country's Southwest region. By reducing distances to major urban centers like Dhaka by almost 100km, the bridge will facilitate regional trade, reduce poverty while accelerating growth and development in the country as a whole.

“The construction of the bridge would fulfill the long-standing dream of the people of the Southwest region to have a permanent crossing over the Padma River,” said World Bank South Asia Vice President Isabel Guerrero.

For more information, read the Feature Story and Press Release.

The Karnataka Watershed Development project - also known as Sujala - has increased the availability of water in seven drought-prone districts of northern Karnataka. Treatments on the upper and lower reaches of watersheds have helped raise water tables, brought degraded lands under cultivation, enabled farmers to diversify into higher value crops and horticulture, and raised agricultural productivity. State of the art remote sensing has been used to monitor impacts. Incomes for both the landed and landless poor have increased.