Pakistan, Aug. 4 -- Washington, DC recently witnessed the hosting of a soft launch of the NextGen Leaders Forum (NGLF), a new network of South Asian young professionals. Some 40 participants joined in a hybrid session at the Atlantic Council. The opening remarks laid out the Forum's vision as follows.

Whenever one looks around a room where South Asian regional policy is being discussed, one notices something telling: the grey hair. Former ambassadors, retired technocrats, senior academics - people well past sixty debating questions that will be answered long after they have left the stage. I know because I am one of them.

That realisation hit me with particular force this past June, when colleagues and I gathered a group of next-generat...