New Delhi, April 16 -- The resurgence of the viral pandemic presents a clear and present danger to the economic recovery underway in South Asia. Overall regional growth has been pegged by the World Bank at 7.2 percent in 2021 after contracting by 5.4 percent in 2020. But this can be revised downwards as the rapidly mutating virus and inadequate pace of vaccination threaten growth. This clouds the prospects of graduation of Bangladesh and Nepal from United Nation's Least Developed Country status to a developing country one in 2026.

Bhutan will do so three years earlier in 2023. Maldives was the first South Asian country to exit LDC status in 2011.

Covid-19 blues notwithstanding, the graduation of Bhutan, Bangladesh and Nepal is their mom...