India S Human Security

India's explosive economic growth and emerging power status make it a key country of interest for policymakers, researchers and scholars within South Asia and around the world. But while many of India's threats and conflicts are strategized and discussed extensively within the confines of security studies, strategic studies and conventional international relations perspectives, many less visible challenges are set to impact significantly on India's potential for economic growth as well as the human security and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of Indian citizens. Drawing on extensive research within India, this book looks at some of the ‘hidden risks’ that India faces, exploring how a broadened scope of what constitutes ‘risk’ itself holds value for Indian security studies practitioners and policymakers. It highlights several human security risks facing India, including the inability of the world’s largest democracy to deal effectively with widespread poverty and health issues, resource depletion and environmental mismanagement, pervasive corruption and institutionalized crime, communal violence, a protracted Maoist insurgency, and deadlocked peace processes in the Northeast among others. The book extracts common themes from these seemingly disparate problems, discussing what underlying failures allow them to persist and why policymakers heavily securitize some political issues while ignoring others. Providing an understanding of how several lesser-studied risks can pose potential or actual threats to Indian society and its ‘emerging power’ growth narrative, this book is a useful contribution to South Asian Studies, International Security Studies and Global Politics.

Human security is a new paradigm for security, development and justice. Since it was first proposed in the 1990s, there has been an endless debate between its proponents and critics, and even among its advocates, over the meaning and utility of the concept. What is important now is to move the concept beyond the realm of theory and explore its practical applications, considering possible policy perspectives and implications. This book suggests new practical applications of the human security concept, such as human security mapping, the human security governance index and human security impact assessment. Using Northeast India and Orissa as case studies, the methodology introduced in this path-breaking book can be applied to conflict zones worldwide. By designating the individual rather than the state as the referent object of security, human security is emerging as a framework that can serve as a means to evaluate threats, foresee crises, analyze causes of discord and propose solutions entailing a redistribution of responsibilities.

With its common colonial experience, an overarching cultural unity despite apparent diversities, and issues of nation-building cutting across national frontiers, South Asia offers a critical site on which to develop a discourse on regional security that centres on the notion of human security. This book analyses the progress that has been achieved since independence in multiple intersecting areas of human security development in India, the largest nation in South Asia, as well as considering the paradigms that might be brought to bear in future consideration and pursuance of these objectives. Providing original insights, the book analyses the idea of security based on specific human concerns cutting across state frontiers, such as socio-economic development, human rights, gender equity, environmental degradation, terrorism, democracy, and governance. It also discusses the realisation that human security and international security are inextricably inter-linked. The book gives an overview of Indian foreign policy, with particular focus on its relationship with China. It also looks at public health care in India, and issues of microfinance and gender. Democracy and violence in the country is discussed in-depth, as well as Muslim identity and community. Human and International Security in India will be of particular interest to researchers of contemporary South Asian History, South Asian Politics, Sociology and Development Studies.

Human Security and Mutual Vulnerability: The global political economy of development and underdevelopment (Second Edition)

As the world is changing, many scholars, analysts, and policy makers agree that even as governments need to confront external threats, creating sustainable domestic environments is imperative as a policy priority. As events surrounding September 11, 2001 continue to remind us, marginalized sections of the population can become breeding grounds for dissatisfaction, disenchantment, and eventually, targets for terrorist groups. Throughout the cold war period, South Asia served as a strategic region in the bilateral rivalry between the United States and the former Soviet Union, coupled with China's careful scrutiny. In the post cold war period, several bilateral conflicts, the nuclear tests of 1998, the post 9/11 world in which South Asia has become a breeding ground for terrorists, entwined with an embattled, albeit a shared history, continue to make India and Pakistan a pivotal region to study. A timely analysis which starts with traditional approaches and combines them with new thinking within a human security policy framework, this book will contribute to a deeper and more holistic understanding of policy priorities of major players in a pivotal region of the world. It begins by analyzing security policies of India and Pakistan that have emerged in the context of geo-political concerns based on realist calculations. It also looks at the policies of the two governments in key areas such as the economy, education, public health, and safeguarding against gender-based violence. Concern with human security prompts analyses such as the one adopted in this book to argue that governments should empower and protect their citizens from serious threats to their survival. Home to a fifth of the world's population, large numbers of whom are reeling in poverty, where terrorism continues to be a concern, along with ongoing border disputes, India and Pakistan will find it imperative to make careful evaluations of this multipronged challenge to security. While it has relevance for regional policy priorities, this analysis also has broader implications for world powers such as the United States and China, for whom South Asia remains a key strategic area.

This book delves into the theory and praxis of human security in South Asia. Home to almost a quarter of the world’s population and fast emerging markets, South Asia holds social, geopolitical and economic significance in the current global context. The chapters in the volume: examine the challenges to human security through an exploration of environmental issues including water availability, electric waste, environmental governance and climate change; explore key themes such as development, displacement and migration, the role of civil society, sustainable development and poverty; and discuss developmental issues in South Asia and provide a holistic picture of non-military security issues. Bringing together scholars from varied disciplines, this comprehensive volume will be useful for researchers, teachers and students of international relations, human rights, political science, development studies, human geography and demography, defense and strategic studies, migration and diaspora studies, and South Asian studies.