Securing India

The book under review with eleven essays and a well-articulated Introduction is well-timed, for time and again in recent years the question of security of the country has been emerging in political discourse. While the Indian police, the basic foundation of the day-to-day security of the Indian citizens, has been one of the most controversial institutions before and since Independence, institutions such as the Central Bureau of Investigation have been under attack for being misused by the regime of the time. However, beyond political controversies, the Indian Armed Forces—each of the three wings; Intelligence Agencies—the Research and Analysis Wing and the Intelligence Bureau; the paramilitary forces—the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, the Sashastra Seema Bal, the Border Security Force, the Assam Rifles and the Rashtriya Rifles; and indeed, the police and the CBI are the bunch of institutions that secure every Indian from external and internal threats—physical and many others. This is the first study of its kind presenting a critique of such an array of security institutions.