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India faces an array of national security challenges ranging from territorial disputes with China and Pakistan, state-sponsored cross-border terrorism to internal security issues related, ethnic and class-based insurgencies. Its national security agenda encompasses issues related to economics, environment, development, and transnational criminal activities. More than two decades of rapid economic growth in India has also added energy security to the national security matrix. Associated with its economic rise, the country’s national security agenda now includes a wider vision for the Indo-Pacific, with implications for power projection, and for India’s contributions to global peacekeeping missions through the United Nations.

This Handbook is the first comprehensive analysis of all the national security challenges facing India. With contributions from leading and rising scholars from across the world, the essays cover a wide range of topics including the colonial legacy; India’s wars; strategic culture; nuclear security; and the role of space, cybersecurity, terrorism, insurgencies, intelligence, and civil–military relations; among others. It focuses on India’s external as well as internal security challenges, and traditional as well as nontraditional challenges to India’s national security, as also on the major theoretical approaches to India’s national security and on the relationship between national security and state-making.

Contents: Introduction/Sumit Ganguly, Nicolas Blarel and Manjeet S. Pardesi. Part I: Theoretical Approaches To India’s Security: 1. India’s National Security: A Neo-classical Realist Account/Sumit Ganguly. 2. India’s National Security: A Liberal Account/Ian Hall. 3. India’s National Security: A Constructivist Account/Siddharth Mallavarapu. Part II: Traditional Security Problems and Responses: 4. The Colonial Legacy and National Security/Kaushik Roy. 5. India’s Wars/S. Paul Kapur. 6. India’s Conventional Military Strategy/Manjeet S. Pardesi. 7. India’s Defence Industrial Base: Decay and Reform/Richard A. Bitzinger. 8. India’s Nuclear Trajectory: New Directions Amid Enduring Myths/Gaurav Kampani. 9. Civil–Military Relations/Steven I. Wilkinson. Part III: Traditional Domestic Security Problems and Responses: 10. Indian National Security and Indian State Capacity/William R. Thompson. 11. Insurgencies in India: Origins and Causes/Shivaji Mukherjee. 12. Counterinsurgency in India/Paul Staniland. 13. India’s Experience with Terrorism/Rashmi Singh. 14. The Role of Intelligence in Indian Security Policy/Prem Mahadevan. Part IV: Nontraditional Security Challenges: 15. India’s Pursuit of Economic Security/Rani D. Mullen. 16. Environmental Security in India/Sumona Das Gupta. 17. Regional Migration and Indian Security/Kavita R. Khory. 18. Building Resilience: India’s Cyber Security, 2000–16/Hannes Ebert. 19. Transnational Organized Crime/Rahul Mediratta. Part V: The Implications of India’s Rise for its National Security: 20. Indian Military Modernization/Shashank Joshi. 21. India’s Strategic Culture(s)/Nicolas Blarel. 22. India and United Nations Peacekeeping/Geetanjali Chopra and David M. Malone. 23. India’s Space Ambitions and Capabilities/Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan. 24. India’s Energy Security: An Assessment of India’s International Quest for Energy Sources/Isabelle Saint-Mezard. 25. The Expansion of India’s Security Sphere/David Brewster. Index.