New technologies for South Asia to focus

[Nihil]

Hi all,
What are the new technologies that you think South Asian countries should start focusing on? New technologies are essential not only for research supremacy but also for economic development and military benefits down the line.
I personally would nominate two areas that South Asian countries should start urgently start focussing their research on:
Graphene and related 2D materials (Only IISc Bangalore from India is doing some respectable work there)
Robotics
As somebody who reads several of the top journals in these fields, sadly both China and South Korea are far, far ahead in the game. When it comes to 2D materials research I will put China, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Israel and then India (much, much below in quantity below the other 4, and definitely not in the global top 10). Pakistan and Bangladesh have negligible contributions. This ranking is not based on jingoism, but rather on the cold, hard reality of the vanishingly small number of Nature or Science publications from South Asia.
Even though South Asian institutions are progressing, especially in Pakistan (HEC has done an amazing job), but when it comes to cutting edge research it seems that we are content to work in fields that went out of fashion in the eighties.
Comments from others about new emerging technologies that should be focussed on, and universities/labs doing good work in such areas will be highly appreciated.

 

[Nihil]

Another technology that I forgot to mention was photonics. There are some Indian and Pakistani institutions doing good to okay work in this field, notably IISc Bangalore, JNCASR, IIT Madras, Kanpur and Bombay from India, and LUMS and PIEAS.
But again where it comes to bleeding edge research like silicon photonics, nanophotonics or on-chip optics South Asia is lagging as usual, while China is competing with the best in the world.

 

[Sine Nomine]

All is money game South Asia has a lot of talent but in India and Pakistan there is no culture of providing R&D funds to universities and private sector.

 

[AugenBlick]

Water and environment management ..

 

[faisal6309]

No Funds!! No Research!!

 

[AugenBlick]

No Funds!! No Research!!

Don't need funds ... they will come by themselves .... first need is Guts
e.g. ISRO's first satellite being dust/Electromagnetic proofed in this pic:

 

[rockstar08]

Don't need funds ... they will come by themselves .... first need is Guts
e.g. ISRO's first satellite being dust/Electromagnetic proofed in this pic:

when there is a will , there is a way ...

where there is a Cow, there is a cart

 

[faisal6309]

Don't need funds ... they will come by themselves .... first need is Guts
e.g. ISRO's first satellite being dust/Electromagnetic proofed in this pic:

We were the one who started space race in South Asia. But due to no funds, we had to stop. Read about SUPARCO's Wikipedia page.

 

[Nihil]

We were the one who started space race in South Asia. But due to no funds, we had to stop. Read about SUPARCO's Wikipedia page.

Pakistan should really invest in solar power. It will solve a lot of the electricity problems, there is the whole Baluchistan region with abundant sunshine available for generation. And power generation will filter down to other sections of the economy too.