Prospects for Effective Internal Security Reforms in India

Abstract

This article examines the important strides in internal security reform that India has undertaken since the November 2008 attack by Pakistani terrorists on India’s financial hub and port city of Mumbai. However, it argues that despite decades of foreign and domestic terrorism and insurgency, India had never previously responded with such alacrity. This essay next seeks to understand why this attack galvanized such reform whereas previous-and more deadly-attacks had not. To do so, this essay describes the important achievements by contextualizing them in the background of India’s past insouciance and general approaches towards internal security. It concludes with a discussion of important factors (e.g. center-state relations, patronage politics, composition and preferences of India’s electorate, and corruption) that will likely render more extensive change exceedingly unlikely if not impossible for the policy-relevant future.