Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book reviews the various challenges to strategic and international security that have faced by India, the largest nation in South Asia, since independence. There is an accumulating literature in the realm of global security studies which emphasises poverty, socio-economic underdevelopment, and the lack of good governance as lying at the root of national security in developing states. The book summaries the progress that has been achieved since independence in multiple intersecting areas of human security development and consider the paradigms that might be brought to bear in future consideration and pursuance of these objectives. Human security is clearly related to international security: disturbances on the frontiers of the nation are used frequently by politicians in order to divert the attention of the electorate from the failure to achieve development targets at home.