Nepal, May 22 -- All indications do comprehensively indicate that Asia is once again emerging as the global nerve centre. Despite being home to a population of 5 billion, containing one-fourth of the landlocked countries in the world, having a huge concentration of people within the poverty trap, and being the venue to a series of conflicts and instabilities, Asia takes pride in being the cradle of three major religions-Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam-and a centripetal epicentre of diverse social, cultural and ecological forces. There are inspiring statistics. Accounting for 30 percent of the global gross domestic product and 60 percent of world trade and being a crucial centre of modern manufacturing, Asia's pivotal role in projects like th...