ABSTRACT
This book highlights the significance of non-state actors (NSAs) in security practices in South Asia.1 It makes a contribution to the understanding of security challenges affecting sub-state groups in the region, and the role played by NSAs in identifying and politicizing these issues; shaping public policy responses to them, and in some instances also providing vulnerable and affected communities with the necessary measures to tackle these challenges. It argues that in doing so, these NSAs effectively operate as security actors, fulfilling a role traditionally ascribed to the state. The book also explores the utility of Securitization Theory when investigating security practices in developing socio-political contexts such as in South Asia, and sheds light on how its analysis in such scenarios may be improved. In South Asia, states have generally been poor at dealing with the insecurities of
their people. The processes of nation and state-building in the region have proved long and arduous, and preoccupied state agendas for decades. Historically, the focus has been on efforts to protect the territorial integrity of the state, and the safety and stability of ruling regimes – usually at the cost of adequate socio-economic development and political freedoms for those living inside and across borders. This focus continues to dominate security policy-making in the region even today, and is also to an extent reflected in the bulk of the international relations (IR) and security studies literature on South Asia, which deals overwhelmingly with inter-state hostilities, wars and disputes over territories and international borders; intra-state conflicts including armed insurgencies and ethno-nationalistic movements, and the seemingly ever-present threat of nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan.2 Consequently, there exists relatively little scholarship from IR and security studies perspectives which attempts to grapple with those issues which are perceived as sources of deep insecurities by sub-state groups in South Asia,3 and the range of actors operating in these realms particularly in the absence of effective state-led efforts. As Booth has pointed out, ‘insecurity involves living in fear, with dangers arising
from one or more types of threat’.4 Sub-state groups in South Asia – such as caste or religion-based communities, gendered groups, ethnic minorities or socio-economic groups – battle with a range of insecurities in relation to their physical, social, political
inadequate income as well as ‘poor health and nutrition, low education and skills, inadequate livelihoods, bad housing conditions, social exclusion and lack of participation’ – affects around 40 per cent of South Asians.5 The region is home to around 400 million of the world’s chronically hungry, and more than half its 6
Map 1.1 South Asia and neighbouring countries Source: United Nations
oppression by states and traditionally privileged communities. State institutions in the region are prone to varying levels of corruption, rule of law is fragile in most countries and state agencies are often subjected to little accountability. Political instability is therefore a key characteristic of South Asia, with political processes within states often being criminalized and violent. India, the largest and most populous country in the region, is relatively more stable than its neighbours, yet sub-state groups in different parts of India continue to suffer from the same set of problems which trouble their counterparts across borders, be it corruption, political exclusion and violence, ethnic discrimination, multidimensional poverty and hunger, and internal displacement due to factors such as political violence and conflict, or ill-conceived developmental projects. Not surprisingly, it is those who are the least empowered – socially, politically and economically – who suffer the most devastating consequences of these challenges. States in South Asia have largely been unsuccessful in adequately dealing with,
or at times even acknowledging, the different insecurities faced by their people. Under these circumstances, a range of NSAs in the region have been taking it upon themselves to identify and deal with those issues perceived as being key sources of insecurity for vulnerable and affected sub-state groups. Through activities ranging from research, advocacy and lobbying, to implementing measures on the ground which directly address such issues and their impacts, NSAs such as non-governmental organizations (NGOs), civil society groups, media actors and epistemic communities are increasingly becoming involved in issue areas which security studies and IR scholars usually know as ‘non-traditional’ – i.e. non-military sources of threats to the survival and well-being of groups other than (but not excluding) the state. It is useful here to cite an example related to one of the case studies in the
book, focusing on human trafficking in Nepal as a source of insecurity for women and children in particular. In February 1996, police in the Indian state of Maharashtra raided several brothels in the state capital of Mumbai, resulting in the rescue of around 500 women and girls. The group included around 200 Nepalese nationals.7 The Nepalese government at the time refused to repatriate these individuals, demanding proof of their Nepali citizenship which few, if any, of those rescued were in a position to provide. For five months, the trafficking survivors waited in government-run rehabilitation centres in India – some continuing to face physical and mental abuse at the hands of their keepers – as their own state took no action to help them.8 During this time, a small group of NGOs in Kathmandu joined forces and devised a detailed plan to repatriate and rehabilitate these individuals. They petitioned the Maharashtra High Court for the release of the girls, and subsequently 124 Nepalese women and girls were returned to Kathmandu in July 1996, where these NGOs helped to move them into seven different rehabilitation centres.9 In this way, these NSAs achieved what the state failed to do – they acknowledged and gave expression to the state of insecurity in which the rescued group of Nepalese women and girls were suffering, made an extraordinary and successful effort to lift them out of the conditions which were
essential rehabilitative measures in order to help facilitate their reintegration into society. Thus, it may be argued that these NGOs effectively performed the role of security actors in the absence of political will and action by the Nepalese state.
