ABSTRACT
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.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|58 pages
Resource management
part II|78 pages
Governance
chapter 5|15 pages
Beyond security and development
chapter 9|14 pages
Preventing, predicting or producing risk?
part III|75 pages
Development
chapter 12|20 pages
Competing for investment proposals in Special Economic Zones (SEZs)
part IV|11 pages
Conclusion