nder The Radar is a special series and newsletter offering from Diplomatic Courier bringing you compelling, under–the–radar stories from around the world over the past month. This month across Asia: Indian Parliament explores AI to improve parliamentarian access, Pakistan’s fight to preserve glaciers, and South Korea’s plans to bring its cuisine global. You can sign up to receive the newsletter here.
In March, the Lok Sabha Secretariat signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) to create the Sansad Bhashini initiative. This initiative is intended to streamline the Indian Parliament’s use of AI technology. Its main objectives: facilitate decision–making and improve multilingual capabilities. Parliament will provide information from its databases to train the AI to carry out its necessary tasks.
Of the four objectives detailed in the Sansad Bhashini initiative, three focus on improving Parliament’s accessibility through AI translation services. AI will become responsible for translating various legal documents, including debate and meeting transcriptions, into all of India’s regional languages. Similarly, AI will provide a live transcription and translation service into these languages to better allow Indian citizens to engage with Parliament. At the end of each meeting, Parliament will rely on AI to create a summary of the proceedings, which is intended to help citizens and speed decision–making among the body’s members.
In addition to the meeting and debate summaries, an AI chatbot will also be accessible on Parliament’s website, allowing members to efficiently access and compile various documents.
Pakistan to use ‘glacier grafting’ to combat effects of climate change
The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development forecasts that Himalayan glaciers could lose two–thirds of their volume by the end of this century if the climate crisis continues without a reduction in carbon emissions. This would have devastating long–term global effects, but the melting of glaciers is currently posing a real risk to countries along the Himalayas, as sudden flooding from the glaciers increases in frequency and intensity. However, villages in Pakistan’s Third Pole mountain area are showing one way to combat climate change's effects: glacier grafting.
Glacier grafting is an Indigenous technique used to preserve the glaciers essential to the biodiversity and livelihoods of the people living in the region. Glacier grafting essentially consists of placing ice blocks at high altitudes to fuse to the glaciers, thus creating larger glaciers. Although the technique is centuries–old, with the help of different scientific and international organizations, Pakistani villagers can analyze ideal locations to place the ice blocks. Between 2019 and 2024, local villagers could plant four to five new glaciers, but it will take up to seven years to see the results of their hard work.
The creation of ice towers also serves as a supply of fresh water for villagers in the short–term. Villagers make these towers by using piping to move water from a fresh spring to a high altitude, where the water is expelled and forms ice crystals. These ice towers melt in warmer months and provide needed fresh water.
South Korea plans 2025 global Korean cooking competition
The Korean Food Promotion Institute is planning a 2025 global Korean cooking competition. The competition will be held worldwide in South Korean embassies and cultural centers and aims to create an international dialogue around cooking by bringing “hansik” (Korean cooking) to global markets and, in turn, seeing how other cultures can interpret traditional Korean dishes.
The announcement of the upcoming competition follows the Korean Food Promotion Institute sharing the growing global recognition of Korean cuisine. UNESCO recently added “Korean jang” (fermented soybean sauces and pastes) to its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in December 2024. The Korean Food Promotion Institute also believes Korean cooking is gaining popularity for its healthy options, including the plethora of low–fat and high–protein dishes.
A similar contest was hosted in 2023 in the U.S. to great success. The Korean Cultural Center Los Angeles collaborated with the LA Harbor College’s Culinary Arts program to host a Korean food cooking competition. Like the upcoming 2025 global competition, this contest focused on combining traditional Korean dishes with traditional cooking methods in other cultures—the winning dish combined kimchi and “gochujang” (red chili paste) with empanada dough.
Korea’s cuisine is firmly cementing itself on the global stage, with South Korea also set to host the 2025 Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants event for the second year in a row.
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Indian Parliament to use AI for improved accessibility
The Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi, India. Photo courtesy of Abuh98 viaWikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0
April 9, 2025
Diplomatic Courier’s Stephanie Gull brings you three under–the–radar stories from Asia: improved accessibility at India’s parliament through AI, Pakistan uses glaciers to fight climate change, and South Korea’s global cooking challenge.
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nder The Radar is a special series and newsletter offering from Diplomatic Courier bringing you compelling, under–the–radar stories from around the world over the past month. This month across Asia: Indian Parliament explores AI to improve parliamentarian access, Pakistan’s fight to preserve glaciers, and South Korea’s plans to bring its cuisine global. You can sign up to receive the newsletter here.
In March, the Lok Sabha Secretariat signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) to create the Sansad Bhashini initiative. This initiative is intended to streamline the Indian Parliament’s use of AI technology. Its main objectives: facilitate decision–making and improve multilingual capabilities. Parliament will provide information from its databases to train the AI to carry out its necessary tasks.
Of the four objectives detailed in the Sansad Bhashini initiative, three focus on improving Parliament’s accessibility through AI translation services. AI will become responsible for translating various legal documents, including debate and meeting transcriptions, into all of India’s regional languages. Similarly, AI will provide a live transcription and translation service into these languages to better allow Indian citizens to engage with Parliament. At the end of each meeting, Parliament will rely on AI to create a summary of the proceedings, which is intended to help citizens and speed decision–making among the body’s members.
In addition to the meeting and debate summaries, an AI chatbot will also be accessible on Parliament’s website, allowing members to efficiently access and compile various documents.
Pakistan to use ‘glacier grafting’ to combat effects of climate change
The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development forecasts that Himalayan glaciers could lose two–thirds of their volume by the end of this century if the climate crisis continues without a reduction in carbon emissions. This would have devastating long–term global effects, but the melting of glaciers is currently posing a real risk to countries along the Himalayas, as sudden flooding from the glaciers increases in frequency and intensity. However, villages in Pakistan’s Third Pole mountain area are showing one way to combat climate change's effects: glacier grafting.
Glacier grafting is an Indigenous technique used to preserve the glaciers essential to the biodiversity and livelihoods of the people living in the region. Glacier grafting essentially consists of placing ice blocks at high altitudes to fuse to the glaciers, thus creating larger glaciers. Although the technique is centuries–old, with the help of different scientific and international organizations, Pakistani villagers can analyze ideal locations to place the ice blocks. Between 2019 and 2024, local villagers could plant four to five new glaciers, but it will take up to seven years to see the results of their hard work.
The creation of ice towers also serves as a supply of fresh water for villagers in the short–term. Villagers make these towers by using piping to move water from a fresh spring to a high altitude, where the water is expelled and forms ice crystals. These ice towers melt in warmer months and provide needed fresh water.
South Korea plans 2025 global Korean cooking competition
The Korean Food Promotion Institute is planning a 2025 global Korean cooking competition. The competition will be held worldwide in South Korean embassies and cultural centers and aims to create an international dialogue around cooking by bringing “hansik” (Korean cooking) to global markets and, in turn, seeing how other cultures can interpret traditional Korean dishes.
The announcement of the upcoming competition follows the Korean Food Promotion Institute sharing the growing global recognition of Korean cuisine. UNESCO recently added “Korean jang” (fermented soybean sauces and pastes) to its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in December 2024. The Korean Food Promotion Institute also believes Korean cooking is gaining popularity for its healthy options, including the plethora of low–fat and high–protein dishes.
A similar contest was hosted in 2023 in the U.S. to great success. The Korean Cultural Center Los Angeles collaborated with the LA Harbor College’s Culinary Arts program to host a Korean food cooking competition. Like the upcoming 2025 global competition, this contest focused on combining traditional Korean dishes with traditional cooking methods in other cultures—the winning dish combined kimchi and “gochujang” (red chili paste) with empanada dough.
Korea’s cuisine is firmly cementing itself on the global stage, with South Korea also set to host the 2025 Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants event for the second year in a row.
