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The purpose of this paper is to investigate, firstly, to what extent has Nepal’s bureaucracy become representative in terms of reflecting the country’s demographic composition, and secondly, has the bureaucracy become more responsive to citizens since the implementation of a quota policy in 2007.

This paper relies on factual and perceptual data in analysis. In order to analyze and interpret representative bureaucracy, this paper adopts factual data derived from the secondary sources, especially data generated by the Government of Nepal. Second, the perceptual set of data was collected through two rounds (2008, 2014) of a country-representative survey in Nepal.

The findings suggest that in terms of representativeness, the bureaucracy is still dominated by high-caste Hindus, while other ethnic communities, except the Newars, are utterly under-represented. Surprisingly, Dalits are represented in higher posts as per their percentage in the population, but they are still underrepresented in the civil service in general. Women’s representation has also increased through participation in the civil service, but they still mostly hold junior or non-gazetted posts. Citizens’ evaluations regarding responsiveness and processes of service provision are also mixed.

This paper is a unique attempt to understand the aspects of representativeness and responsiveness in relation to Nepalese Civil Service.

The study compares the socioeconomic development of the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC) to that of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). SAARC was established on December 8, 1985, as a result of former President Ziaur Rahman's efforts to promote the welfare of the people and mutual trust. ASEAN was founded in August 1967 with the goal of accelerating the region's economic growth, social progress, and cultural development while also promoting regional peace and stability. The SAARC countries share problems such as poverty and unemployment. SAARC countries have a GDP per capita four times that of ASEAN. A qualitative analysis based on secondary data pertaining to SAARC and ASEAN reveals that SAARC has not been more successful than ASEAN. National and international conflicts are common within SAARC. SAARC has 22% of the world's population and 3% of the world's economy, and there are enormous opportunities for economic growth and human development.

This study aims to examine the influence of socioeconomic development on inflation in South Asia using the foreign exchange rate and money supply as control variables.

The study uses annual panel data for five South Asian economies, namely, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka over the period 1990–2018, applies cointegrating regression techniques, namely, the panel dynamic ordinary least square (OLS) and fully modified OLS estimators to examine the long-run relations and conducts the Toda-Yamamoto Granger causality test to detect the direction of causality among variables.

The cointegrating regression estimations have documented that the socioeconomic development proxied by the human development index (HDI) has no significant impact on inflation. Although economic development represented by gross domestic product (GDP) growth causes inflation, socioeconomic development represented by HDI has no impact on inflation and has demonstrated as a better macroeconomic indicator, and thus creates no inflationary pressure in the economy. The foreign exchange rate has a positive impact on inflation. The broad money supply has the usual positive effect on domestic inflation that endorses the monetarist view about prices. The Toda-Yamamoto Granger causality test has confirmed several unidirectional causalities: inflation causes HDI, money supply causes both inflation and HDI and the foreign exchange rate causes HDI.

The study has practical implications for policymakers in South Asia, to improve HDI, particularly GDP per capita, education and health-care facilities to realize continuous socioeconomic development, which will take care of inflation. Moreover, these counties may follow a conservative monetary policy to control inflationary pressure in their economies.

The study is original and claims to be the first to examine the impact of socioeconomic development on inflation. The findings have socioeconomic values regarding controlling inflation in South Asia.

With climate change and environmental degradation being major issues in the world today, it is imperative for governments within a regional setting to collaborate on initiatives, harmonize their policies and develop strategies to counter threats. In South Asia, several attempts have been made to create a common framework for action in implementing synchronized policies. However, both political and technical deterrents have thwarted moves to accommodate priorities and interests of collaborating states. The purpose of this paper is to assess these issues and existing policies/strategies in selected South Asian countries and evaluate integrated plans of action based on collaborative partnerships.

Using a broad exploratory and interpretive approach, this paper evaluates how harmonization of environmental principles and synergies among countries can help reduce the effect of climate change and environmental hazards. Based on a review of ideas and concepts as well as both primary and secondary sources, including official records, legislation, inter-state and regional agreements, evaluation reports, impact studies (social, economic and ecological), and commentaries, it highlights several initiatives and processes geared to creating environmental protection standards and practices for the South Asian region.

Climate change has resulted in devastating impacts on people. It contributed to the proliferation of climate refugees and high incidence of poverty in South Asia. The region faces both political and technical obstacles in developing a sustainable approach to combat climate change. This is exacerbated by non-availability of information as well as reluctance to acknowledge the problem by key actors. The best strategy will be to integrate policies and regulations in the various countries of the region to develop strategic plans. The approach of prevention and protection should replace the existing emphasis on relief and rehabilitation.

The paper provides a critical overview of the climatic and environmental problems encountered in the South Asian region and provides pointers to resolving shared problems through the use of policy instruments for regulating the problems within the gamut of regional environmental governance. It attempts to identify solutions to offset regulatory and institutional barriers in achieving preferred results by emphasizing the need for redesigning regulatory structures and policy approaches for ecological well-being.

The objectives of this study are threefold: firstly, to measure the impact of educational inequality on income inequality, and per capita income; secondly, to measure the impact of gender inequality in education on income inequality, per capita income and educational inequality; and lastly, to test the Kuznets inverted U-shape hypothesis between inequality in education and average year of schooling.

The study has adopted the Marin and Psacharopoulos (1976) model of human capital in which income earned by an individual can be estimated as a function of number of year spent in schooling or education. Gini coefficient is used as a measure of income inequality, while inequality in education is measured by Gini index of educational inequality. Gender inequality in education is measured by the difference between male and female enrolment ratios as a proportion of male enrolment. The study utilizes the data of six South Asian countries, i.e. Bangladesh, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka from 1980 to 2010 at five-year average and employs fixed effect model (FEM) and random effect model (REM) for estimation.

Result suggests that educational inequality and average year of schooling have positive and significant impact on income inequality. Primary (basic) education and tertiary (higher) education reduce income inequality, while secondary education widens income inequality. Negative relationship exists between educational inequality and per capita income. Unequal distribution of education among boys and girls at primary level increases income inequality, while reduces income inequality at tertiary level. Gender inequality in secondary and tertiary level of education reduces per capita income, while unequal distribution of education among boys and girls further increases the educational inequality. Kuznets inverted U-shape hypothesis does not hold between education expansion and educational inequality, while weak U-shape relationship exists in South Asian countries.

Government has to provide free education in poor regions and makes employment programs to reduce the income and educational inequality respectively, while to remove gender inequality in education it is necessary to build more schools especially for girls. Government has to launch different online education programs for expansion in education at all levels.

This study adds to the literature by analyzing whether the inequality in income increases (decreases) due to increase (decrease) in educational and gender inequality in South Asian countries. This study contributes in the existing literature by developing a measure of educational and gender inequality in education in South Asian countries.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-04-2020-0226.

COVID-19 has been a major challenge to global governance, highlighting the necessity for stepping up innovative governance. Beginning in 2020, governments have been trying to adjust in dealing with the massive challenges of COVID-19, implying that attention has been diverted from attaining the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to handling the pandemic. COVID-19 poses a genuine threat to economic progress, food safety, health, and educational parity in developing countries. The article examines the pandemic's impact on achieving the Sustainable Development Goals through a comparative lens of Bangladesh and the Philippines.