During the recent Saarc summit, the Nepal Prime Minister's niece hosted the South Asian first ladies. A few days before that, Maggie Abbot, the Australia PM's wife took the wives of G20 leaders to see a wildlife sanctuary in Australia. And as a result, Indian babus in foreign relations are now missing the feminine touch to India's diplomatic endeavours and are hoping he will have someone fill in the post of First Lady for the country.

Before the Summit, Nepal was considered a country in transition, being involved in the peace process for so long and having recently emerged from conflict. But the success of the Saarc Summit has sent a message to the world that Nepal is capable of organising such a large summit effectively, efficiently and without any problems. 

Twiplomacy or ‘twitter diplomacy’ was at its peak with South Asian leaders taking to the social media platform as the 18th Saarc Summit kicked off in the Capital on Wednesday.

The European Union (EU) is hopeful that progress can be made on many issues affecting the South Asia Region at the 18th SAARC Summit in Kathmandu.

"Education and cultural diplomacy is the only way forward to strengthen relationship between the SAARC countries. We should, therefore, like to have focused university to university linkages between our countries for mutual capacity building in education, research technology and innovation," Irani said.