
Some two dozen countries are already classified as water-scarce, and this-as areas as diverse as Israel, southern California and even the Netherlands know - is not a problem confined to the South. Already, as this book shows, fresh-water shortages are becoming a major cause of conflict both domestically and between states. In the future, the growing world population, further spread of irrigated agriculture and industrialization will all make increasing demands on scarce water resources. Conflict resolution capabilities in many parts of the world will be sorely stretched.
The mapping of the changing historical relationships between people, lands and identities in the central tribal belt of India and in north-eastern parts of the South-Asian subcontinent, sets the context for this study's investigation of one of the world's least known minority situations. The currently muted drama of human rights violations and escalating livelihood crisis among the Adivasis in north-western Bangladesh unfolds within a sub-region of bewilderingly many and interconnected ethnic and ethno-nationalistic struggles for political recognition.
The ethnic conflict in Bosnia shocked the world. Most people were taken aback that a part of Europe could return to such a degree of hatred and calculated violence indicating that the lessons of the Second World War, in particular, the ethnic cleansing of minorities and Holocaust horrors, have been ignored and that these evils are very much in the cards even today. This book is about the way the Bosnian conflict generated, the role of Britain and France in it, and above all, its lessons for Muslims the world over.
Burma remains the odd man out in Southeast Asia. While other countries have democratized and prospered, Burma is governed by a repressive military dictatorship, its economy has collapsed, and it is the second largest producer of heroin in the world. In this exceptionally readable yet scholarly account of Burma today, Christina Fink gives a moving and insightful picture of what life under military rule is like.
‘The Chittagong Hill Tracts: Living in a Borderland’ examines the borderland between Burma, India and Bangladesh, inhabited by twelve distinct ethnic groups with strong cultural and linguistic links with South East Asia. The three specialist authors of this unique book assembled more than 400 mostly unpublished photographs, many in colour, from over 50 private collections. The book introduces the reader to the remarkable cultural variety and modern transformations of this virtually unknown region bridging South East Asia and South Asia.
The book identifies the sources and nature of threats to people belonging to ethnic groups and conceptualizes human security in a manner that addresses the inadequacy of the traditional approach. It conducts an analysis on ethnicity- and non-ethnicity-induced human security problems in the CHT of Bangladesh and the Sindh Province of Pakistan, as important areas of human security. This work deals with threats stemming from ethnicity and the resultant conflict thereof in the CHT and in Sindh.
South Asia is undoubtedly a human security deficit region. India too is no exception. This volume is an in-depth study on the human security situation in India. Despite some remarkable achievements in the socio-economic, political and scientific fields, India’s 1.5 billion people suffer from a deep sense of insecurity, marginalization, exclusion, shelterlessness and violence. The thrust of the book is on understanding the human security situation and then exploring the journey ahead towards enhancement of human security in India.
The present volume examines the case for broadening the scope of security by breaking the rigidity brought about by traditional forms of dominant state-centric and military based security concepts and their determining matrices. The main thrust of this study is on three very critical areas, viz., (i) environmental security, (ii) food security and (iii) energy security. It deals with how gains from effective management of human security parameters get translated into enhanced security both at the macro and micro levels.
This book is an endeavour to bring to surface some of the seething problematics which are intricately related to the underlying understandings of human security issues in Pakistan. The book takes the position that human security in this country is high strung on the perilous governance structures, and internal and external policies, which have continued to determine the future of the nation and its people since its inception.
The Politics of Nationalism examines the process of nationality construction within the Hill people of Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh. The book places the issue in an historical context and begins with the first encounter of the Hill people with the British in 1760; it traces their loss of independence and consequent marginalisation within the colonial state. The book then argues that nation-state is tuned to the needs and aspirations of the dominant community; and the Hill people being the subordinate group continued to be marginalised within the State of Pakistan and then Bangladesh.