Institutional Roots of India's Security Policy

Abstract

Abstract In recent years, India has asserted its desire not simply to be a ‘balancing power’, but to become a ‘leading power’ on the world stage. As India’s economic development has steadily progressed, so too have its foreign policy and security ambitions. However, India’s ability to sustain high rates of economic growth at home and project power abroad rest on unsteady and uneven state capacities. The goal of this book is to unpack and interrogate the governance of India’s security institutions. Myriad inadequacies related to both procedure and personnel continue to hamper the Indian state’s ability to perform one of its most essential functions: protecting Indians from security threats at home and abroad. Despite widespread concern over the severe capability constraints India’s institutions face on a daily basis, there is little scholarly work studying the present administrative and organizational effectiveness of India’s security institutions. This volume aims to remedy that by offering high-quality analytic narratives of nearly a dozen key national security institutions spread across four domains: the armed services, intelligence, border and internal security, and police and investigation.