Asian / Asian American Studies Institute and Department of Political Science
FREE PUBLIC LECTURE
Tuesday, February 10, 2015
12:30 PM – 1:30 PM
Oak 438 / POLS Seminar Room
SYNOPSIS / Identity, Security and Development in the Maoist Conflict in India
The Maoist insurgency in India is seen mostly as a law and order/security problem. In 2006, the Indian Prime Minister called it the “greatest security threat in India” while in 2011 the Home Minister said, “the most violent movement in the country is not terrorism but left-wing extremism”. The solutions so far have been quick fix military campaigns complemented by an equal measure of development, although increasingly, development policies are crafted as tools of “doing security” rather than alleviating conditions of marginalized people. This presentation examines the problems and convergence within the development-security nexus; the ‘policing through development’; how it keeps ‘enemy’ identity afloat and the conflict thriving.
SPEAKER BIO / Swati Parashar
Author of Women and Militant Wars: The Politics of Injury (Routledge, 2014), Dr. Parashar is a lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the School of Social Sciences, Monash University. Previously holding tenured academic appointments at University of Wollongong (Australia) and University of Limerick (Ireland), she has also worked with public policy think tanks, as Research Analyst with the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research in Singapore and as an Associate Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi. She was a Fulbright Fellow on a national security program at the Institute of Global Conflict and Cooperation, University of California, San Diego in 2006. Her research interests include critical security and war studies, feminist international relations, women militants and combatants, political violence and development in South Asia.
For more information, contact: Ms. Fe Delos-Santos at fe.delos-santos@uconn.edu