Sayandeep Chattopadhyay is a Senior Research Associate at the Asian Confluence, India East Asia Center, headquartered at Shillong, Meghalaya. He has research interests in the area of trade and development, connectivity, regional integration, transboundary water governance and political economy. He is one of the authors of a recent book titled, “A Glass Half Full – The Promise of Regional Trade in South Asia”, published by the World Bank Group. His recent work focuses on physical, institutional and people-to-people connectivity with major emphasis on political economy and cross-border trade and value chains in the Bay of Bengal region. He was earlier engaged with CUTS International and Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bengaluru. He did his master’s in Economics from Symbiosis International University after graduating from Narendrapur Ramakrishna Mission Residential College (affiliated to University of Calcutta).