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Over the past 20 years, regional and bilateral trading agreements have become popular due to the slow progress of multilateral negotiations and competitive pressures amongst countries to enter into such arrangements for fear of being left out. However, the economies of South Asia have been relatively slow to recognize the importance of regional integration in furthering their investment, trade, and larger development goals. This chapter provides a chronology of regional integration efforts in South Asia and outcomes, discusses progress in services negotiation, and compares the South Asian Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA) relative to other regional alliances, particularly within Asia. The discussion provides a brief history of regional integration efforts in South Asia in terms of the progression from the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) to SAFTA and the contentious issues that have characterized this process.

Foreign investment is contributing to regional cooperation in the South Asian energy sector. This chapter assesses the scope for regional energy cooperation in South Asia and the associated opportunities and challenges. It describes the energy status of the region in comparison with other regions, focusing on each member country in order to highlight the importance of energy services for the region and to identify where the region's needs lie in this sector. The chapter then discusses the regulatory reforms and liberalization undertaken in the energy sector and the related outcomes. It also considers the existing and proposed intraregional cooperation initiatives and regional projects at the private sector, multilateral, and governmental levels, as well as in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) context and the progress that has been made.

This Chapter examines the geopolitical context of the China–India relationship. As regional powers, neither China nor India will ever give up their efforts to maximise their respective influence in the region. New Delhi keeps a wary eye on China’s ties with its South Asian neighbours, especially its arms transfers to Pakistan and military cooperation with Myanmar. While Beijing has quarrels with some of its marine neighbours over the South China Sea, New Delhi has embarked on a ‘Look East’ policy to engage the ASEAN states. While there is rivalry between India and China for influence in the region, there is also a cooperative dimension of Sino–Indian relations, built on the cause against terror, expanding sub-regional economic cooperation, and joining the other dominated regional groupings, such as SCO and SAARC. Therefore, from a regional perspective, Sino-Indian relations are a mixture of competition and cooperation, although the latter might be somewhat less noticeable.

India, the world’s most populous democracy, has failed to develop significant data privacy laws, limiting the human rights protection of its citizens, and impeding its trade with Europe. After surveying the promising but as yet limited constitutional protection of privacy in India this chapter examines in detail the data privacy Rules made under section 43A of the Information Technology Act (IT Act) of 2000. It concludes that these Rules superficially resemble a data protection law, but they have crippling deficiencies and ambiguities. In addition, the enforcement system for the Rules is currently not functioning. However, there is more to the IT Act than section 43A: its Rules, and its other aspects relevant to privacy protection, are discussed. There are at least three current proposals for development of a comprehensive data privacy law for India, and these are outlined, although none have yet obtained clear government approval.

In this chapter the limited privacy developments in each of the seven South Asian countries (other than India) are detailed, including constitutional, general law and statutory protection. None of the South Asian countries of Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, the Maldives, Bhutan, and Afghanistan have data privacy laws for their private sectors, nor does it seem likely that any will be put in place in the near future. However, there are lesser but still significant data privacy developments in most of these countries. They include a near-comprehensive data privacy regime in Nepal’s public sector; a Right to Information (RTI) Act with some data privacy extensions in Bangladesh; computer crime and compensation provisions in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Pakistan; and constitutional protections (at least in theory) in most. RTI initiatives, which can be stepping stones to full data privacy legislation, have been commenced, but remain incomplete, in most of these countries.

This chapter offers a comparative study of social rights in the European and Indian Union. After making an attempt to outline the concept of social rights in Europe that could be compared with the Indian case, the chapter looks at the state of social rights within the European Union, specially the European Social Model and the ways of Europeanization of social policies and their interaction with changing European welfare state systems. It then compares the European Social Charter with the SAARC Social Charter and explores the further opportunities of social rights protection. The chapter suggests that both the regions have something to learn from each other with regard to protection of social rights.