India's Human Security: Lost Debates, Forgotten People, Intractable Challenges

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.

Jason Miklian is a researcher with the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), Norway, with a background in development studies and international relations. His current research studies the relationships between natural resources, informal economies, governance and violent conflict in South Asia.

Åshild Kolås is a social anthropologist and Research Professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), Norway. She has worked extensively on Tibetan identity, nationhood and ethno-politics in western China. Her current research is on ethnic movements and sovereignty contestations, particularly in Northeast India.