Belt & Road - Latest.

Prime Minister Kakar will be visiting China this week to attend the scheduled Belt and Road moot where one wonders what our endeavour would really be? Well, one assumes that his contingent would have its strategy worked out, however, it would be important to take note that the outlook on what the developing countries would like to extract from this connectivity stands significantly changed from its formative years. Gone are the days when mere investments regardless of their long-term impact on the respective external accounts would be acceptable. This is what we not only have to mindful of, but also put on the table how the previous such projects need to revisited to ease the fall-outs from the same. No better time to renegotiate the same in a rather polarised global environment that is making it essential for countries to put their own interests and priorities before mere plain political alignments. Only last month the conference on international science, technology and innovation hosted by the Forum saw countries calling instead for a revised focus on instead moving towards evolving a 'community of innovation'. Meaning, that a shift is the sought by the belt and road partners from infrastructure and taxing power plants towards cooperation and technology transfers in science, technology and innovation. Climate change has today become a climate crisis and to address this challenge of global warming the transition needs to be away from simple physical connectivity to digital, economic, social and cultural connectivity - And science, technology and innovation permeate through all forms of connectivities.

The idea being for the B and R to have a budget for resources of research and development to help financially weaker countries supplement their smaller spends in this area. This also goes on to help the overall objective to ensure that connectivity takes place smoothly by encouraging the movement of goods and services - by trains, road and sea - in good quality, efficiently and transparently with the help of modern day technology. Also, important now would be the free flow of people across borders to become truly...