INDIA’S NATIONAL SECURITY

INDIA IN 2012: STRATEGIC AND SECURITY CHALLENGES BECKON

The greatest challenge to India is that its political class seems oblivious to the challenges of the big picture and national security does not receive the attention it warrants in Parliament

C Uday Bhaskar

Rediff, January 03, 2012

For India, the year that has dawned will have to address a complex set of security and related strategic challenges. Appropriate lessons will have to be astutely gleaned from the tainted year that has ended which has been one of great contrast for India.

A series of scandals involving high-profile public figures had rocked the country over the last six months and December witnessed the Indian political establishment in great tumult, even as Parliament remained locked in a bitter, arid, struggle over the issue of corruption and the most appropriate way of dealing with it, as symbolised by the ruckus over the Lokpal Bill.

The last sitting in the Rajya Sabha reveled in cynical legislative obfuscation and at year-end, Indian democracy was diminished.
Yet 2011 began with India being hailed as an island of political and economic stability even while other nations and regions were in ferment -- from the Arab Spring to fiscal convulsions in Europe, turbulence in the Af-Pak region and Iran and the growing social unrest in China.

However, notwithstanding the current domestic political contestation between the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party, it may be reasonable to suggest that India's political stability is not in dire danger -- this government is unlikely to be toppled in a hurry -- though the ignominy of poor and corruption-tainted governance will be a cross that the United Progressive Alliance II will have to bear till the next general election in 2014.

(...) [artículo aquí]