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Justice, Security, and Vulnerable Populations of South Asia
Concept Note 2. As a result of the securitisation of the nation and the polity, countries of the region are undergoing seismic political and cultural changes. A securitised ideology of nationalism grips the countries. It is fuelled by the rise of neoliberal economic ideas, and radically restructures the countries changing in the process their cultural ethos of tolerance, multiculturalism, and the social traditions of care and protection of the vulnerable. The ideology of a “highly secure” nation buttressed by theocratic ideas dominates public life, neoliberal themes of market, trade deregulation, and privatisation. The goal is to reduce public welfare and the role of the state in economy, and make the entire society market-oriented. The result is an increased vulnerability of the unorganised population groups, migrants and refugees, minorities, women, population segments living on the borders and other kinds of “the edge” – the so-called peripheries of legal existence. While the changes mentioned above benefit new elites and a growing middle class, they hit the working poor. Securitisation of society, marketization of economy, religious intolerance, and insecuritisation of population groups below are the features of the time. These are interconnected features. Hence the issue of justice is an intersectional issue. 3. Securitisation and new developmentalism combine to form a new social ideology that buttresses collaboration between the state and the corporate sector, encourages “permanent” tax holidays to induce investment and the acquisition of private land to be allotted to industry at a massive subsidy to increase profit, and on the other hand maintain conditions of low wages of workers in various sectors, most markedly in extraction-related industries. This new ideology aims to exclude or at least severely minimise policies of social spending and encourage a magic formula for the establishment of a muscular nation-state that will promote rapid development. Securitisation of the polity and the society is coupled with this “new developmentalism” and is based on three inextricably linked transformations: an illiberal turn in democracy, rapid movement towards a neoliberal economic system, and production of new internal boundaries leading to greater insecurities below. These insecurities make life of the lower classes insecure. 4. In the emerging platform economy, popularly known as “gig economy”, the scope for self-organisation is bleak, as most of the employees are casual or contractual workers. On the other hand, liberalisation of economy has expanded the middle class in metropolitan cities where quality education and better-paid jobs in service sectors are more available. This class, riding on the wave of neoliberalisation of the economy, has found in militant nationalism fuelled by various religious and cultural ideas a new self-esteem. 5. Digital modes and new technologies of management and surveillance are accelerating the process of centralisation of data. While becoming essential for the administration of social welfare and public health monitoring, they create new insecurities. Data privacy acts become issues of public concern. In this context the issue of digital democracy acquires significance. 6. In this overall situation, law and the justice system are often found inadequate to cope with the new demands of justice. The ideology of a “new model of development” spurred by a projected rapid economic growth overwhelms the imperatives of justice. Securitisation and social justice stand opposite to one another. These developments are accompanied by a growing judicialisation of administration, which means a strong preference for governance by decree, executive fiat or by judicial decisions instead of democratic, participatory, deliberative and legislative decision-making. Governments seem to prefer tweaking the legislative process, almost keeping the polity in dark on critical issues of policy-making. Examples include overhauling the Indian Police Act or the Code of Criminal Procedure of the colonial era by placing the bills without duly itemising the agenda of the national legislature, or taking vital policy decisions when the Parliament is not in session. The state and the new middle class look up more and more to the judiciary for remedy of any ‘‘aberration’’ in the administration, while access to judiciary for the urban and rural poor remains extremely expensive, and, thus only nominally egalitarian. As the farmers’ movement in 2020-21 showed, businesses have acquired a strong role in formulating legislation and all these while new forms of digital surveillance and policing of citizens multiply. The cost is in terms of an erosion of basic rights for minorities, country’s multiple histories and multiple geographies, and basic security of the lives of the lower classes, which become even more vulnerable. 7. A closure of some kind appears to be an unavoidable and complex feature of this scenario. Polities of the region are marked by a division of insiders and outsiders and thus by definition between citizens and aliens. Decolonisation happened through demarcation of borders of respective postcolonial states. These borders were demarcated by departing colonial powers to distinguish their own zones of control and influence. In certain cases, when colonial rulers could not control frontier areas, they granted some autonomy to deter “outside” powers and buy peace in the region. In a historically defined sense, borders and boundaries of the newly decolonized countries of South Asia were demarcated though the acts of partition. As a result, polities and geographies were permanently fractured, population groups in borderland areas were rendered homeless, stranded minorities were created, and migration was criminalised. Ethnic, racial, communal, and caste hatred exacerbated. And, as mentioned in the beginning, neoliberal restructuring of economies has occurred in a resultant milieu of a securitised polity and everyday production of insecurities all around. This is thus a paradoxical milieu of macro security and micro-insecurities. 8. Hence the question: Whose security? How are we to frame the security question? How do we transcend the traditional perspective of security and narrow frontline narratives, so that we can take into account other conceptions of security, i.e. those of vulnerable populations, excluded from the dominant accounts of security? Thus, how do we integrate in our notion of security these other nations (of security), such as, food security, economic security, social security, environmental security, secure migration practices, gender security, epidemiological security, and security of life and existence? In this connection we can notice that as the notion of nation’s security expands, the definition of criminalisation expands correspondingly. Thus, trafficking is criminalised, the neighbouring community is criminalised as in Manipur, migrants are treated as criminals, aliens are judged criminals as they find place in detention camps, and minor ethnic groups are criminal, as Rohingyas in Myanmar. In this situation, justice can be realised only on an intersectional platform that accommodates multiple notions of security, and materialises in a dialoguing form. “Circles of insecurity”, a phrase coined by two researchers, can be negotiated only by a dialogic notion of justice. 9. Peace and security audit: There is a need to identify new mechanisms for peaceful existence of nations in the region and the relevance of regional mechanisms for security and justice. In the context of inter-Asian population, commodity, and knowledge flows, there is an ever greater need to emphasise the connections and flows that contribute to our experiences of governance and justice. Making overall security of life of the vulnerable sections of society caught in the vortex of insecurity, precarious living, and conflict-torn condition is the central question in the entire program of adopting peace and justice as the fulcrum of a new approach to the security conundrum. However, to do so, it will be important to develop the method of auditing the peace-making capacity of a society, in particular a democratic society. Such a peace audit method is based on taking stock of the stakeholders of peace, assessing their peace-making capacities, instituting plural levels of peace dialogue, bringing forward the role of women in the campaign for peace and stability and assessing the impact and legacy of global efforts such as UN Resolution 1325, reviewing past instances and efforts of ceasefires for conflict mitigation, and constitutional processes towards granting autonomy as a form of reconciliation. Peace audit method, in short, is a critical mode of placing justice at the heart of peace and security question. CRG had instituted peace dialogues in the past. It is necessary to revive and develop the peace audit method, learn from other such exercises conducted elsewhere, and make audit a participatory exercise towards peace building. This is essential to transform the question of security into one of peace and security, its inherent centralist nature to a federal nature, and its particular political orientation into a social question. Questions for Research and Inquiry 10. We can inquire into the conundrum of security and justice by way of addressing a few of the questions, as follows:
i. The paradox of macro-security of the country and micro-insecurities of vulnerable population groups: how can we understand the intersections between civilian and military spheres, and in what ways does it produce inequalities and impact rights, entitlements, welfare benefits, and citizenship pathways?
Some Suggested Activities 11. The activities will be of two-year duration. The year-wise activities are proposed below:
(i) Four (4) research papers addressing the specific themes mentioned above - with 2 papers each year.
12. There will be an advisory committee to meet once a year and help the work plan, weigh in on risks and the need for innovation in the work, and evaluate the continuing work. 13. There will be annual reports at the end of the first and second years 14. These activities will be able to show (a) how the discourse of security can be interrogated in the lens of justice; (b) how the theme of human security intertwined with the theme of justice can put the issue of vulnerable communities in the foreground in any discourse of security; and (c) that no theme of security can be negotiated without considering the insecurity the former produces. These three aspects taken together will enrich the agenda of peace and conflict resolution and conflict management. Such an agenda of peace will be able to take CRG’s work on human security, rights, and justice to a higher level. It will be also able to foreground the issue of women’s rights and dignity, and the fight against masculinity and hate culture that denudes the society of the ethos of care. The programme will draw on the work CRG did earlier and will in turn strengthen CRG’s work in law and critical jurisprudence. It will also strengthen its network of partners engaged in the work of justice and security of the vulnerable populations in the country and the region. |
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