National Security

The “New Washington Consensus” is not really new as the greatly magnified role and influence of the huge transnational corporations, especially the military–industrial complex that drives both the economics and foreign policy of the United States, remains untouched. Further, there is no consensus on its anti-China thrust either as the majority of countries searching for strategic autonomy, including many of the US’s own allies, would not risk breaking economic relations with China.

Studies on militarisation and borders in South Asia have often remained focused on zones of spectacular conflict such as Kashmir, or Punjab during the partition. This article tracks the production of a discourse on borders by those charged with border security such as the police and other senior bureaucracy in the decades following the partition. It suggests that the “border question” evolved gradually out of a series of everyday concerns over local criminality that finally coalesced into the more abstract category of “national security.” It examines bureaucratic debates on police reorganisation in Kutch between 1948 and 1952 to suggest that contemporary discourses on nation and borders were arrived at through intra-bureaucratic negotiations with the far less abstract categories of village, locality and region.

This paper highlights the high cost of military security in Pakistan over the past 20 years. With the single agenda of its policy-makers being to neutralise India's military might, defence spending has always got a higher priority than development expenditure. More importantly, the military has had a major role in the division of national resources. The military's role as the key player in power politics and decision-making has allowed it to take a major chunk of the financial pie.

Economic performance and capability certainly constitute the foundation of national security and power for a developing nation like India. India has the military capability to defend her territorial integrity and security; however, it will have to sustain higher rates of economic growth to be able to alter the strategic balance in Asia, and globally, to her developmental advantage. Having said this, the author argues that it is not economic growth by itself that holds the key to India's global profile and power, but the nature of that growth process and the manner in which the economic challenges it faces today are addressed. The threat to what more recently has come to be defined as 'homeland security' is posed by social and economic backwardness, the inequalities and the political uncertainty this generates, and the quality of economic development.