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

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.