Description
Book SynopsisAs the world is changing, many scholars, analysts, and policy makers agree that even as governments need to confront external threats, creating sustainable domestic environments is imperative as a policy priority. As events surrounding September 11, 2001 continue to remind us, marginalized sections of the population can become breeding grounds for dissatisfaction, disenchantment, and eventually, targets for terrorist groups. Throughout the cold war period, South Asia served as a strategic region in the bilateral rivalry between the United States and the former Soviet Union, coupled with China''s careful scrutiny. In the post cold war period, several bilateral conflicts, the nuclear tests of 1998, the post 9/11 world in which South Asia has become a breeding ground for terrorists, entwined with an embattled, albeit a shared history, continue to make India and Pakistan a pivotal region to study. A timely analysis which starts with traditional approaches and combines them with new think
Trade ReviewRekha Datta's book is an important, theoretically grounded and empirically rich attempt to deal with the nascent concept of human security in India and Pakistan. Even those who work outside this emergent area of international relations will find this book to be thoughtful and provocative. -- Sumit Ganguly, Indiana University
The book will be of interest primarily to the general reader. * CHOICE, December 2008 *
Human security is a powerful analytical lens through which to frame the security needs of citizens independently of the military threats to one country from another. India and Pakistan represent a mere one-hundredth of the number of countries in the system of states today. Yet their people comprise one-sixth of the world’s total population, a truer indication of their weight in world affairs. Human security, in addition to enabling us to frame threats differently and more realistically in terms of the daily lives of human beings, also provides a different and more people-friendly policy template for the authoritative allocation of scarce resources. It is a strength of Dr. Datta’s book that, even while delinking security from the state and attaching it to people instead, she highlights the importance of the state in ensuring human security through public policy choices. -- Ramesh Thakur, distinguished fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, professor of political science at University of Wate
Table of ContentsChapter 1 Table of Contents Chapter 2 Acknowledgments Chapter 3 Foreword Chapter 4 1 Through the Looking Glass: Security Imperatives in India and Pakistan Chapter 5 2 From State Security to Human Security: Bringing the State Back In Chapter 6 3 The Kashmir Quagmire Chapter 7 4 The Nuclear Nexus Chapter 8 5 Beyond War to Making Money Chapter 9 6 Human Security, Millennium Development Goals, and Education Chapter 10 7 Public Health and Human Security Chapter 11 8 Security Through Dignity: Addressing Violence Against Women Chapter 12 9 Conclusion: Toward a New Paradigm—Will Human Security Guarantee Safety? Chapter 13 Bibliography Chapter 14 About the Author
