Reconceptualizing regional security in South Asia: A critical security approach

Emergence of non-traditional approaches

Since the 1990s, notwithstanding the entrenched nature of traditional security perspectives in South Asia, many scholars have emphasized the value of a human security approach to analysing security in the region, and to broaden the security debate in South Asia beyond military threats. Human security is radical in its move to shift the focus on individuals as the main referents of security (see UNDP, 1994). This approach generally views a strong state as essential for the provision of human security at the substate level. In analysing security in South Asia, proponents of such an articulation of human security have focused mainly on specific non-traditional security issues – such as climate change, forced migration and displacement, and misgovernance and socio-economic inequalities – with the hope that state elites will pay greater attention to and direct resources towards dealing with these challenges. Chari and Gupta (2003: 13–14; emphases added), for example, argue that states in the region urgently ‘need to reconstruct their national security policies to recognize the needs of the people, apart from recognizing those of the state’, and that the South Asian state ‘should be vitally concerned with human security to ensure its own security’. Some scholars in the region have brought to light the contradictions between human security (and human development) and prevalent state security practices such as high expenditures on arms (Mahmud, 2000: 143–144), but such reflections within the discourse on human security in the region remain marginal.

Though substantially less influential than the human security approach, a second set of contributions to security studies in South Asia encompasses a more fundamental critique of the dominant theoretical orthodoxies in the region. These correspond to approaches in the ‘broad church’ of critical security studies, as have been developed in Europe and beyond, and draw on critical theory, constructivism, feminism, postcolonial studies, postmodernism and securitization theory (see, for instance, Barthwal-Datta, 2012; Chatterjee, 2011; Das, 2012; Dasgupta, 2004; Islam, 2015). The contributions position themselves in response, either or both, to traditional approaches used in the South Asian security studies and critical approaches – developed in the West – that are not necessarily sensitive to the regional context. For instance, contributors to a special issue of feminist approaches to security in the Indian Journal of Gender Studies grapple with the limitations of a feminist critique of international relations (as developed in the West) in reflecting the specific forms of hegemonic masculinities that dominate the security dynamics of South Asia (Dasgupta, 2004: 3–4; see also Nizamani, 2008). In their search for context-specific post-positivist security studies, these scholars present a range of insights – reflecting South Asian ‘realities’ – into various aspects of security politics, including the value of the postcolonial state, state-societal relations, the role of civil society, the employment of gendered stereotypes, border politics and indeed the concept of human security.

Either approach – human security or post-positivist critical security studies, as outlined above – offers a potential starting point for devising an alternative approach to regional security in South Asia, as prior attempts to do so illustrate (Shani, 2014; Behera, 2008). Drawing on both sets of literature, the remaining part of this section considers debates around the following three areas of concern towards identifying a broadly critical approach to security for this article: state centricism; the politics of defining security; and realizing security in South Asia.

Critical security approach: A synthesis

The first major critique of the mainstream security discourse is that it has focused on the state as the primary (oft-times, the only) referent and agent of security. The human security literature addresses this partly by recognizing human beings as referents of security. However, as noted earlier, proponents generally seek to devise ways in which human insecurities may be addressed within the pre-existing social, economic and political structures; as such, they do not necessarily question the underlying motivations of states and their role in creating and sustaining the conditions of insecurity for individuals and communities. Post-positivists tend to be more suspicious of state motivations, including with regard to policies that use the language of human security (see Christie, 2010: 185). Then again, for the people of regions with colonial experience, such as in South Asia, the existence of an independent sovereign state itself may well be an articulation of the people’s security aspirations, a point raised by postcolonial scholars (see Pasha, 1996: 293). It may offer recourse from existing oppressive societal and market structures that manifest themselves, for instance, as the caste system in India and Nepal and ‘sweatshop labour’ in the globalized manufacturing sector respectively. Conceiving of security in terms of state versus people can thus be limiting.

Here, Booth’s (1991) proposal that individuals be considered as ultimate referents of security appears to be a useful counterpoint to the reification of any kind of community – state-centric or otherwise. This is ‘predicated upon the idea of the individual as an irreducible unit of political life’ (Basu and Nunes, 2013: 66; see Booth, 2007), and does not invalidate analyses with the region, state or an identity group as the security referent. However, the analytical value of individuals as ultimate referents is undercut by the impossibility of conceptualizing their security outside the various relations – social, political and economic – that constitute any individual. Shani (2014: 6) draws on Agamben (1998) in his discussion of critical human security, to advocate for the disassociation of human security from ‘a single, universal, ahistoric conception of human nature […that is] destined to replicate a “neo-liberal” understanding of the human which […] strips humans of their bios’. As such, human beings as referents need always be conceived of in plurality. That said, proponents of such thinking are constantly presented with the apparent reality of competing or contesting security interests whereby some people’s security may be prioritized over others’ or can be realized only at the expense of another. The ‘common-sense’ element of this critique derives from the dominance of state-centricism in the meaning and logic of security.

Recognition of human referents of security is but one step towards a critical approach to security. The second challenge lies in re-considering the ways in which security has been traditionally understood in a ‘threat–response’ framework. A critical security approach finds the focus on threats – and threat alleviation understood as security – as concealing the broader political frameworks within which these practices of ‘exception’ are located. Explicating the notion of security as a social construction, and therefore deeply political, McDonald (2012: 12) writes that

this means that security means different things for different groups in different contexts; is produced through a process of inter-subjective contestation and negotiation within political communities; and its meaning – as well as the content of threats – is constructed in this inter-subjective realm.

Samaddar and Banerjee (2010: xxvii–xxviii), in their discussion on migration and security in South Asia, propose ‘dialogic arrangements’ based on rights, justice and reconciliation of claims as ‘the way out, given the generalised conditions of insecurity’. Furthermore, security here does not equate to existential survival; it is ‘survival plus’ (Booth, 2007: 39) and the meaning of the ‘plus’ becomes clearer when we look for insecurities that determine life in ways that shut down choices for individuals and groups.

While post-positivist approaches, including critical human security studies, tend to see security as a social construction (see McDonald, 2012: chapter 1), not all are necessarily geared towards identifying and realizing concrete visions of security for the identified referent. The interest in seeking alternatives to dominant security practices that make the referent insecure in a given context is the third aspect of the critical security approach developed here. On this count, the ‘broad church’ of critical security studies appears divided along two main lines, with one set of scholars advocating ‘desecuritization’ while the other is oriented towards redefining security. Drawing on the ‘Copenhagen School’ (Buzan et al, 1997), advocates of desecuritization point to the oppressive practices associated with an issue that is framed in terms of security, and call for the return of such issues to the everyday realm of politics. The second approach, redefining security, takes many forms. Ann Tickner (1997: 624), for instance, defines security ‘broadly in multidimensional and multilevel terms – as the diminution of all forms of violence, including physical, structural and ecological’. Many such contributions are broadly emancipatory in nature, even as the ‘Aberystwyth School’ is most closely associated with the notion of security as emancipation – a broader conception of security that is directed towards human well-being, or ‘survival plus’ (Booth, 1991, 2007; Wyn Jones, 1999: 166; Dunford, 2015: 241). The two normative aspirations are also reflected in the critical human security literature with, for instance, Shani (2014) being in favour of desecuritization while Newman (2010) focuses on emancipation. Needless to say, both pathways have strengths and weaknesses.

Desecuritization seems appealing when considered in the light of scholarly contributions questioning the notion of security as undoubtedly ‘good’ and highlighting the ways in which the discourse itself becomes a tool for violence (see Neocleous, 2008). Yet, considering that it is usually the state and its institutions that securitize in the name of ‘national security’, desecuritisation ‘still leaves the previously securitized issue or actor at the mercy of the undemocratic and exceptional power of this Sovereign’ (Aradau in Behnke, 2006: 63). In a region such as South Asia where hundreds of millions of lives are determined by insecurities perpetuated by the politics of those most powerful – particularly state elites – using such frames, desecuritization may not be entirely appropriate or justified (see Booth, 2007). This is also a counterpoint to Chandhoke’s argument that ‘human wellbeing may be better secured through the vocabulary of rights rather than through the concept of security’ in South Asia (2008: 252). Her case for the necessity of human rights – focusing on the ‘right to physical integrity, basic needs and cultural communities’ in the specific regional context – for securing people is well taken (Chandhoke, 2008: 268). Yet, it is important to note that the language of security is much too attractive for those in power to set aside; it consequently remains a threat for many and needs to be redefined.

Emancipation is also a difficult fit as it invokes colonial narratives in a region that was subjugated for centuries by imperial powers. Shani (Shani, 2014: 73) warns of a focus on emancipation as being doubly dangerous because it not only risks greater ‘securitisation of security’ and therefore ‘may […] help to reproduce the hegemony of conventional security’; it is also steeped in ‘Eurocentrism and secular historicism of Frankfurt School-derived “Critical Theory”’ (see also Barkawi and Laffey, 2006). Despite these and other concerns with emancipatory discourse (see McDonald, 2012; Peoples, 2011), some notion of progressive change, realized through transformative politics, still appears necessary to direct efforts to redefine security. Critical scholars wary of emancipation have, for instance, sought to explore normative benchmarks using the language of ethics, highlighting the need to move ‘beyond first principles or universalized assumptions about security [and emancipation] to engage in nuanced, reflexive and context-specific analyses of the politics and ethics of security’ (Browning and McDonald, 2011: 248). The value of this perspective may be demonstrated by carrying forward the discussion on agency of states, including as ‘securitizing’ actors, as discussed above.

An interest in a redefinition of security and its realization involves the consideration of a range of actors as agents of security as opposed to traditional approaches that focus solely on the state. While recognizing the significance of government machinery in most parts of the world, critical security scholars also look into the potential of other entities including civil society actors, whether in terms of their ability to influence and shape security agendas by identifying threats (and insecurities, more broadly) and raise them publically; work in collaboration with state actors to mitigate threats to the security of different referent groups; or independently undertake preventative measures against threats to referent groups and protect them from the same (Barthwal-Datta, 2012; Blakeley, 2013). Yet, employing a postcolonial perspective, Barkawi and Laffey (2006: 350) caution against the tendency to rely primarily on western ideas and institutions (governmental and non-governmental) in efforts to address security concerns. In this regard, it is pertinent to note that, with individuals and communities placed at the centre of security analyses in the critical security approach adopted here, local contexts and people’s agency in identifying and addressing their own condition of insecurity is highlighted (Dunford, 2015; see also Aditya, 2008: 287–290), as in the subsequent discussions on regional security.

Food insecurity and SAARC: A brief case study

Food insecurity, in the form of hunger and malnourishment, is a lived reality for around 281 million people in South Asia – the largest group of food insecure people worldwide (FAO, IFAD and WFP, 2015). Poverty is a leading cause of food insecurity: ‘the hungry are the poorest of the poor; they have limited or no access to physical and financial assets, little or no education, and often suffer from ill health’ (FAO, IFAD and WFP, 2015: 27). India has the majority of the region’s food insecure, but there are also relatively high levels of food insecurity in other countries like Afghanistan (26.8%), Sri Lanka (22%), Bangladesh (16.4%) and Pakistan (22%) (2015: 48).

States in South Asia continue to understand food security as the availability of sufficient national-level food grain stocks (mainly rice and wheat) to meet demand. This is, in the first instance, viewed as critical for political stability and regime security. At the regional level in South Asia, this supply-and-demand approach is reflected in the 2007 agreement to establish a SAARC Food Bank (SFB) ‘to act as a regional food security reserve for the SAARC Member Countries during normal time food shortages and emergencies’ such as ‘a severe and unexpected natural or man-made calamity’ (SAARC, 2007). The agreement highlights ‘the principle of collective self-reliance’, that is, the ability of SAARC member states to be able to deal with rice and wheat shortages without having to rely on actors external to the organization, particularly at times of sudden global-level spikes in food prices and subsequent shortages in the international markets (e.g. as happened in 2007–2008 and again in early 2011). In this regard, the functions of the SFB Board, its governing body, remain tied to matters of demand, supply and storage (SAARC, 2007). So far, the SFB remains unoperationalized due to unresolved issues in this area, and has failed to play a role in assisting countries in need, such as in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake that struck Nepal on 25 April 2015, destroying food stocks and severely undermining access to food for millions in Nepal (Lama, 2015; WFP, 2015). The SFB has two release triggers: (1) a member country requests access in the case of a ‘food emergency’ (i.e. there are insufficient national-level food stocks to meet demand due to sudden or severe natural or man-made disasters); (2) food production falls below 8% of the average production over the previous three years. Over the last two decades, no member country has witnessed this level of drop in food production; if this were to happen, ‘the Food Bank’s total reserve would not be even close to making up for the shortfall, thus rendering the Food Bank reserve ineffective in providing relief to the concerned member country’ (Pant, 2014: 15–16).

The regional-level response to food insecurity is rooted in a top-down, state-centric and market-oriented approach primarily aimed at alleviating national-level food shortages. More broadly, it fails to acknowledge that adequate national-level food supplies are insufficient for ensuring local food security. It also overlooks the chronic nature of food insecurity in the region that persists even in times of adequate national-level food stocks, and is underpinned by issues of inadequate access. Understanding these challenges requires a consideration of the power relations shaping food and agricultural systems across South Asia, and the complex and multidimensional ways in which these impact access to food and food-growing resources (see Patel, 2009; McMichael, 2009). For example, across South Asia, small family farmers are intrinsic to food production, yet comprise the majority of those who are poor and hungry due to a number of complex and interconnected factors (Barthwal-Datta, 2014). In India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh in particular, landlessness, poor access to land and other agricultural resources, and tenure insecurity remain widespread amongst the rural poor (Thapa, 2004: 2). Agricultural land forcibly acquired by local governments for private corporations, without adequate compensation, rehabilitation or resettlement for affected farming communities remains widespread. Poor or lack of access to land and tenure insecurity have negative implications for agricultural productivity, growth and incomes as well as for the sustainable use and management of agricultural resources (IFAD, 2008), which in turn fuel the generational poverty cycle. The inadequacy of the supply-and-demand approach in addressing food insecurity comes into sharp relief when considered against the lived experiences of South Asia’s small farming households who comprise a bulk of the region’s rural poor.

This critique of the mainstream approach to food security is shared by proponents of food sovereignty. The latter concept emphasizes ‘the rights of peoples to define their own food and agricultural systems’ (La Via Campesina, 2007) and is ‘anchored in a democratic rebuilding of domestic agricultures’ in ways that are ‘informed by a peasant perspective underlining the importance of revaluing farming for domestic food provisioning and for addressing social inequalities’ (McMichael, 2014: 935). Food sovereignty questions the broader structural causes of poverty and hunger, and challenges trade and agricultural policies that treat agriculture as predominantly an economic activity. Such policies serve to undermine the rights of local food producers and their livelihood strategies, while overlooking local food-growing conditions (especially in the face of climate change) and their compatibility with the crops, policies and technologies being promoted.

A critical security perspective places these issues at the heart of addressing food insecurity in South Asia. It also calls for recognizing and engaging with grass-roots voices that help understand the lived experiences of those who are food insecure, and offer potential solutions that emerge from such understandings. Dunford (2015: 240) argues that from a critical security perspective, food sovereignty movements exemplify ‘a contextually grounded emancipatory alternative’ where collectives ‘demand and secure rights for themselves’. In South Asia, there are a large number of CSOs including human rights groups and peasants’ organizations, amongst others, lobbying SAARC to shift its approach to dealing with food insecurity. For example, the South Asia Alliance for Poverty Eradication (SAAPE) has a distinct regional-level food sovereignty campaign. It includes CSOs from all SAARC states and is focused on the ‘eradication of poverty, injustice and all forms of violation of human rights in South Asia’ (SAAPE, 2016). SAAPE is part of the People’s SAARC (PSAARC), a process running parallel to the official SAARC, comprising CSOs from across South Asia, and a prominent advocate of food sovereignty and the rights of small farmers regionally. In 2011, PSAARC submitted a memorandum to the 17th official SAARC process being held in the Maldives, that included demands central to food sovereignty. Its 2014 Declaration at the 18th SAARC Summit in Kathmandu challenged ‘the systematic and structural marginalisation and exclusion of people through the dominant neo-liberal economic model […] at play’ and demanded that SAARC governments inter alia ‘[e]nsure food sovereignty, right to food and food security of south Asian people’ (PSAARC, 2014).

The work of actors such as SAAPE and PSAARC provides the potential foundations for people-centred understandings of food insecurity in South Asia by calling for a focus on the rights of small family farming households. It highlights avenues forward that are grounded in the lived experiences of South Asians, rather than traditional security concerns around political stability and regime security, where food insecurity – as a potential trigger for civil unrest – is seen as a threat to states. In doing so, it exposes the vested interests that shape prevailing institutions and policies around food and agriculture in the region, and seeks a more just, equitable and sustainable outcome for South Asians. These efforts, however, go largely unrecognized in non-traditional security narratives that are open to discussions on food security, but are bound by the state-centric logic of security.

An alternative regional security framework

In his ‘double reading’ of the South Asian security order, Chatterjee (2011) contrasts the mainstream approaches that are ‘silent over borders, peoples, rights, ethnic identity, communities, and flows’ with a representative duo of ‘subversive’ scholars (Das, 2003; Samaddar, 1998) whose exploration of ‘otherness’ is marked by features such as ‘the utopia of a sojourn to original anarchy’ and ‘the tendency to collapse critique into freedom’ (Chatterjee, 2011: 340). Further, he writes that ‘the readings on the South Asian security will remain confined to the double-bind unless there is a fundamental epistemological breakthrough that successfully bridges the mainstream and its other’ (2011: 340). The framework presented here may well be such a possibility as it draws inspiration from post-structuralism to question the status quo, but – with its focus on an emancipatory ‘redefinition’ of security – seeks to engage with the ‘reality’, and indeed value, of actors such as the state in the South Asian context towards transformative politics. Drawing from the case study on food insecurity, here we develop further the components of the critical security studies approach to regional security outlined earlier.

First, recognition of the state as an important actor in the postcolonial context of South Asia does not necessarily make it the referent of security here. Having said that, state-centric discourses on regional cooperation and regional integration have overlooked the fact that the people of the South Asian region have shared security concerns across issue areas, including but not limited to the prevalence of armed conflicts, environmental degradation and lack of fulfilment of basic human security needs (such as food, water, shelter, health and livelihood) that affect large swathes of the population. Further, while elites benefit from increasing globalization, a majority of communities have come within easier reach of neo-imperialist policies (conditional aid would be an example) and the vagaries of globalized market interests (Ramakrishnan, 2008: 301). Regional security analyses that place states at the centre of their study may well miss this picture. As discussed above, when food security in South Asia is understood through the lived experiences of those who are most food insecure, it highlights the inadequacies of the current state-centric regional-level approach. It also helps identify ways in which states may usefully engage with grass-roots regional networks to mutually develop more effective policy frameworks and mechanisms to tackle food insecurity. Thus, focusing attention on peoples offers deeper insights into the regional security problematic, including those that relate to the interests of South Asian states.

Second, the question of what counts as security in a region as diverse as South Asia is a complex one. The SAARC agenda now includes issues such as cross-border trafficking in humans and drugs, yet these issues are dealt with primarily from a state security perspective. Food shortages in the region now constitute a serious concern for SAARC member states, but while food is being discussed with the adage of ‘security’, the understanding of food security adopted is one that is state-centric and revolves around supply and demand. A critical approach to security requires more than the expansion of the regional threat agenda. It requires, for instance, a central focus on those who are rendered most insecure by these threats and a simultaneous expansion in perspectives on how such issues might be dealt with most effectively. Importantly, a critical security approach also requires the analytical wherewithal to move beyond the threat–response dynamic of security politics to scrutinize the context that gives rise to insecurities (Basu, 2011). Considering the specificity of each case, this is best explored through evidence-based research.

Third, it is crucial to recognize actors who can realize the redefined understanding of security. The growing role of non-state actors such as CSOs, media actors, epistemic communities and NGOs, and their growing presence in the security context, demands greater attention. As seen in the case study earlier, such actors often include groups comprising those who are insecure but ‘not entirely silenced and powerless […] to demand and secure rights for themselves’ (Dunford, 2015: 239). Peasant organizations in South Asia are part of larger regional, substate networks or movements challenging and unsettling traditional, state-centric notions of food security through an emphasis on food sovereignty, giving rise to a ‘contextually grounded emancipatory alternative’ to both the traditional security response and those ‘interventionist security agendas that […] risk reinforcing the dependence of purportedly powerless victims’ (2015: 239).

It is also worthwhile to reflect further on the role of SAARC here. Many scholars have critiqued SAARC’s ability to promote regionalism in South Asia since its inception (e.g. Pattanaik, 2010; Rao, 2012; Ghosh, 2013), calling this ‘dismal’ (Panda, 2005: 66) and ‘nominal’ (Ghosh, 2013: 100). SAARC’s potential is widely seen to have been constrained by a number of factors, including India’s dominant presence; the enduring India–Pakistan rivalry as well as interstate postcolonial disputes that continue to foster mistrust; the exclusion of bilateral and contentious issues from its agenda; weak governments and political instability within SAARC countries, amongst others. Yet, there is also widespread recognition in this literature of the important role SAARC has played over the years as ‘an informal forum for the mediation of important regional cooperation challenges’ (Saez, 2011: 48). As Rao notes (2012: 44), SAARC summits have provided critical opportunities for member countries to engage on a diverse range of issues, ‘including those expressly barred by its charter’. Despite its criticisms, it is clear that SAARC holds significant potential as a vehicle through which the shared insecurities of people in the region may be addressed in meaningful and effective ways. This scope is also written into the character of the organization, through the 2014 SAARC Social Charter. The latter focuses on issues such as poverty eradication, health, the empowerment of women and the rights and well-being of children, and calls for ‘a people-centered framework for social development to guide their work and in the future […] to respond to the immediate needs of those […] most affected by human distress’ (SAARC, 2004). Importantly, this may also provide the grounds for a reimagining of security in the region in ways that speak to the lived realities of South Asians, as opposed to the state-centric concerns of its elites.

Finally, the observations above reflect a gap between the theoretical premises guiding security discourses and practices in South Asia, and the everyday experiences of most people in the region. Those shaping and influencing security policies in South Asia – including academics, think-tank analysts and policy experts – continue to be influenced overwhelmingly by traditional, (neo)realist notions of what security means and how it may be achieved. As seen earlier, in the case of food security the focus is on ensuring adequate supply to meet demand at the national level, rather than on those communities most exposed to hunger and poverty, and issues and practices that give rise to food insecurity in the first place. Consequently, the bulk of security analysis and policy advice coming from such quarters serves to reinforce and perpetuate the dominant discourse on security in the region. It overlooks the fact that the security of states or regimes – their purported control over resources – does not automatically guarantee the security and well-being of those they govern, but also that in South Asia, states and regimes have been key sources of insecurity for the latter. Rather than questioning the power dynamics creating and perpetuating these conditions, such analyses accept the status quo as an unchangeable ‘reality’ and therefore serve to help reproduce people’s insecurities. The alternative critical conceptualization of regional security in South Asia offered here is able to take account of the agency of a wider range of actors, and is consequently better placed to recognize and build on the links between security theory and practice.