Author: Rajesh M Basrur
Editor: Rajesh M Basrur
Publisher: India Research Press
Year: 2001
Language: English
Pages: 248
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8187943157
Description
This volume presents the views of eminent scholars regarding the diverse facets of security in South Asia's explores vital security issues relating to economic well-being, ethnic identity. Religion, gender and political legitimacy.
In the new millennium, there is a growing realization that the concept of security can no longer be confined to the narrow landscape of the military-strategic concerns of the state. The focus is increasingly shifting to 'human security', which centers on ordinary people and their security needs. This conception encompasses a broad and comprehensive realm that includes military as well as economic, political, environmental and cultural security.
In the age of globalization, political boundaries count for little: the pursuit of security is affected by linkages between the local, the national and the global. The state is still central, but is both part of the problem and part of the solution. It is at once the biggest violator of human security and the primary instrument for the attainment of a secure existence for its citizens. The extent to which the state attends to people's security needs ultimately depends on its accountability to the public, which in turn depends on the effective functioning of democracy.
In South Asia, the expanded people-centric conception of security is gradually finding a voice. Yet the older elitist notion of security remains well entrenched within the power structures of state and society.
In this volume eminent scholars from the region break out of the mould and draw attention to the diverse facets of security from the standpoint of the average South Asian man, woman and child. They explore vital security issues relating to economic well-being, ethnic identity religion, gender and political legitimacy. In doing so, they seek a more comprehensive and democratic basis for the understanding of security in the region.
Contents
Forward
DIPANKAR BANERJI
Introduction: South Asian Security Revisited
RAJESH M BASRUR
Towards a Citizen-State: A View from Bangladesh
AMENA MOHASIN
Ensuring Whose Security? The New Millennium and Nuclear Weapons of India & Pakistan
HAIDER K NIZAMANI
Security's Insecurity; South Asia's States, Societies and Citizens in the Age of Globalization
JAYADEVA UYANGODA
Human Security, the State and Democracy in a Globalizing World
RAJESH M BASRUR
South Asian security in the New Millennium
MOONIS AHMAR
List of Contributors