South Asia
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    • About Centre

    South Asia is one of the main areas of research focus at IDSA. The region has been going through a period of turmoil over the last few years. Definitive steps have been taken in the recent past towards the establishment of democratic governments in the region. Given the importance of developments in the region for Indian security, experts at IDSA keenly watch and analyse unfolding developments in each South Asian country.

    Two projects that are currently under progress are ‘Developments in Pakistan’ and ‘Pakistan Occupied Kashmir’. In addition, individual scholars are engaged in researching various security related aspects pertaining to South Asian countries. The Centre has established bilateral institutional relations with leading think tanks in the region and proposes to undertake joint studies.

    Minutes of South Asia Centre Meetings

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    Pakistan Occupied Kashmir: Politics, Parties and Personalities

    • Publisher: Pentagon Press
      2019
    This book is a rersult of research undertaken on the subject by the scholars associated with the IDSA project on Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK) - also known as Pakistan Occupied Jammu & Kashmir (PoJK) - Which includes both the so-called "Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK)" and Gilgit-Baltistan (GB), was legally a part of the erstwhile princely state of Jammu and Kahmir, which acceded to India in October 1947. The authors of this book seek to provide a critical analysis of the politics of the above mentioned two regions within PoK; throw light on the genesis and evolution of various political parties and interest groups, and acquaint the readers with different pesonalities playing important role in politics therein. The main aim of the publication is to help the scholars, analysts, and policy-makers to understand the dynamics of the political systems in PoK, the complex interaction of these systems with the government in Islamabad and the responses of the local leadership to Pakistan's strateghy of keeping them under strict control in the name of representative governance over the last 70 years.
    • ISBN: 978-93-86618-67-2,
    • Price: ₹.1495/-
    • E-copy available
    Surinder Kumar Sharma, Yaqoob-ul-Hassan and Ashok K. Behuria
    2019

    Re-Positioning Pakistan Occupied Kashmir on India’s Policy Map: Geopolitical Drivers, Strategic Impact

    The monograph urges a policy re-positioning by aggregating key geopolitical parameters concerning PoK which potentially impinge on India’s vital territorial and security interests.

    Priyanka Singh
    2017

    The Role of Media in Promoting Regional Understanding in South Asia

    The Role of Media in Promoting Regional Understanding in South Asia
    • Publisher: Pentagon Press
      2016

    This book collates a wide spectrum of views across South Asia, including Myanmar, and debates the role of media in forging regional understanding and goodwill. The media's role in South Asia is essentially conceived as state-centric, adhering to the standard templates of nationalism. This inherent tendency has, at times, cost neutral and balanced coverage of events and issues. The contributors to this volume acknowledge the potential of the media as an institution which could/should, in addition to its routine reportage, focus on regional issues of common interest and promote regional understanding.

    • ISBN 978-81-8274-868-2,
    • Price: ₹. 995.00
    • E-copy available
    Priyanka Singh
    2016

    Multi-party Democracy in the Maldives and the Emerging Security Environment in the Indian Ocean Region

    Multi-party Democracy in the Maldives and the Emerging Security Environment in the Indian Ocean Region
    • Publisher: Pentagon Press

    Maldives is the smallest country of South Asia. But its significance is no less because of its crucial geo-strategic location in the Indian Ocean. It sits astride on major sea lanes of communications (SLOCs). However, the crucial geo-strategic location of the Maldives has also caused problems for the country as it has aroused interests of major world powers.

    • ISBN 978-81-8274-895-8,
    • Price: ₹. 795
    • E-copy available
    Anand Kumar
    2016

    State versus Nations in Pakistan: Sindhi, Baloch and Pakhtun Responses to Nation Building

    State versus Nations in Pakistan: Sindhi, Baloch and Pakhtun Responses to Nation Building

    The present monograph traces the origins of the Pakistani state and the processes that encouraged the state-sponsored efforts to build a Pakistani nation, and seeks to isolate various problems associated with such nation-building efforts.

    Ashok K. Behuria
    2015

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    The Bangladesh Question and World Politics

    The gruesome events in East Bengal since March 25, 1971 and their repercussions on India easily constitute the most appalling experience of the society of nations since the end of the Second World War; and the refugee problem is the largest and the worst during the present century. It has few parallels in history. This is all the more shocking because of the context and background in which it happened.

    M. S. Rajan
    March 2020

    Pakistan: The Balochistan Conundrum

    It is not often that Pakistan is talked of in terms of the diversities it embodies. It is, perhaps, its descent into extremism and violence that has overshadowed every other characteristic of the country. Tilak Devasher peeks into this rather less traversed dimension and provides an analysis on the festering insurgency in Balochistan. The book provides a lucid account of Balochistan’s history, geography, and demography.

    Priyanka Singh
    March 2020

    Gambling with Violence: State Outsourcing of War in Pakistan and India

    Yelena Biberman offers a new framework for understanding why and how states ‘outsource’ war to local non-state actors despite the risks of forfeiting the state’s monopoly over violence. Specifically, she explores state and non-state alliances in counter-insurgencies in India and Pakistan. Taking a qualitative approach, Biberman argues that ‘state-nonstate alliances are balance-of-interests bargains’ wherein the ‘state seeking to shift the local balance of power in its favor may enlist activists if it can cultivate social or ideological ties with them’

    Ryan Shaffer
    March 2020

    Political Indifference and State Complicity: The Travails of Hazaras in Balochistan

    Pakistan is a forbidding place for minorities—confessional, sectarian and ideological. Violence, direct and structural and exacted with eerie regularity has ghettoised minority communities and forced them to flee. Among them, no other community is being subjected to such annihilatory violence as the Hazaras in the Balochistan province. Hazaras are an ethnic group predominantly based in Afghanistan, but also with a sizeable population in Pakistan, with estimates ranging between 650,000 and 900,000.

    Shakoor Ahmad Wani
    July 2019

    Considered Chaos: Revisiting Pakistan’s ‘Strategic Depth’ in Afghanistan

    Pakistan’s historical insecurity towards India and the Islamisation of its military raises a curious question of strategy and identity rooted in Pakistan’s political genesis. This article examines the social and geostrategic factors underpinning Pakistan’s Afghanistan approach between its inheritance of security principles from colonial administration after Partition, and the Taliban’s capture of Kabul in 1996 and beyond. This article also critically analyses the existing link between the Taliban and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI).

    Aidan Parkes
    July 2019

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    China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC): The Project and its Prospects

    The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has been earmarked as a flagship project of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which is described as Chinese President Xi Jinping's signature foreign policy initiative and a grand strategy aimed at restoring China's “rightful'' great-power status in the world. It is a major plank in China's geo-strategic and economic architecture for the region, using Pakistan to secure an exploitative strategic perch in South Asia and the Arabian Sea, overlooking the crucial Persian Gulf, the west coast of India, and the east coast of Africa.

    Sujan R. Chinoy

    Imran Khan and Pakistan’s Enduring Political Crisis

    While Imran Khan’s efforts to build legitimacy around his ‘personality’ as a religious person and a crusader against corruption do not seem to have convinced many people, his government’s inability to bring the much-promised tabdeeli (‘change’) to Pakistan is beginning to hurt him politically.

    Nazir Ahmad Mir
    January 04, 2021

    Remembering Bangladesh’s Liberation War

    India and Bangladesh fought together “in the defence of human liberty”, in the words of Sheikh Mujib ur Rahman, to liberate Bangladesh, fifty momentous years ago.

    Smruti S. Pattanaik
    December 16, 2020

    Hefajat-e-Islami and the Politics of Islamism in Bangladesh

    The street power of the ulema groups in Bangladesh is pushing the government to further Islamise the social sphere, which will pave the way for the ultimate political success of the Islamists.

    Smruti S. Pattanaik
    December 11, 2020

    Can India be the Next Global Manufacturing Hub?

    The COVID-19 pandemic, which has revealed the inherent weaknesses in the existing global supply chain and risks of over-reliance on China’s manufacturing industry, presents new opportunities for India to rethink its industrial strategy, especially policies concerning the growth of its manufacturing sector.

    Kogila Balakrishnan and Saurabh Kukreja
    November 13, 2020

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