Table Of ContentInternal Security in India
MODERN SOUTH ASIA
Ashutosh Varshney, Series Editor
Pradeep Chhibber, Associate Series Editor
Editorial Board
Kaushik Basu (Cornell)
Sarah Besky (Cornell)
Jennifer Bussell (Berkeley)
Veena Das (Johns Hopkins)
Patrick Heller (Brown)
Niraja Gopal Jayal (Jawaharlal Nehru University)
Devesh Kapur (Johns Hopkins)
Atul Kohli (Princeton)
Pratap Bhanu Mehta (Ashoka University)
Shandana Khan Mohmand (University of Sussex)
Ashley Tellis (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace)
Steven Wilkinson (Yale)
The Other One Percent
Sanjoy Chakravorty, Devesh Kapur, and Nirvikar Singh
Social Justice through Inclusion
Francesca R. Jensenius
Dispossession without Development
Michael Levien
The Man Who Remade India
Vinay Sitapati
Business and Politics in India
Edited by Christophe Jaffrelot, Atul Kohli, and Kanta Murali
Clients and Constituents
Jennifer Bussell
Gambling with Violence
Yelena Biberman
Mobilizing the Marginalized
Amit Ahuja
The Absent Dialogue
Anit Mukherjee
When Nehru Looked East
Francine Frankel
Capable Women, Incapable States
Poulami Roychowdhury
Farewell to Arms
Rumela Sen
Negotiating Democracy and Religious Pluralism
Karen Barkey, Sudipta Kaviraj, and Vatsal Naresh
Cultivating Democracy
Mukulika Banerjee
Patching Development
Rajesh Veeraraghavan
The Difficult Politics of Peace
Christopher Clary
The Migration-Development Regime
Rina Agarwala
Making Meritocracy
Edited by Tarun Khanna and Michael Szonyi
Access to Power
Ijlal Naqvi
Capacity beyond Coercion
Susan L. Ostermann
Internal Security in India
Edited by Amit Ahuja and Devesh Kapur
Internal Security in India
Violence, Order, and the State
EDITED BY AMIT AHUJA
and
DEVESH KAPUR
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.
© Oxford University Press 2023
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Ahuja, Amit and Kapur, Devesh, editor.
Title: Internal security in India : violence, order, and the state /
edited by Amit Ahuja and Devesh Kapur.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2023] | Series: Modern South Asia series |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022029942 (print) | LCCN 2022029943 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780197660348 (paperback) | ISBN 9780197660331 (hardback) |
ISBN 9780197660362 (epub) | ISBN 9780197660355 | ISBN 9780197660379
Subjects: LCSH: Internal security—India.
Classification: LCC HV 6295.I4 I55 2023 (print) | LCC HV 6295.I4 (ebook) |
DDC 363.320954—dc23/eng/20220909
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022029942
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022029943
DOI: 10.1093/ oso/ 9780197660331.001.0001
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Paperback printed by Marquis, Canada
Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America
CONTENTS
List of Figures vii
List of Tables ix
Acknowledgments xi
Abbreviations and Acronyms xiii
Contributors xix
1. The State and Internal Security in India 1
Amit Ahuja and Devesh Kapur
PART I: INTERNAL SECURITY: THE LEGAL, INSTITUTIONAL,
AND FINANCIAL FRAMEWORK
2. Internal Security and India’s Constitution 61
Raeesa Vakil
3. The Persistence of the AFSPA 89
Anubha Bhonsle
4. Role of the MHA in Internal Security 110
Shakti Sinha
5. Public Finances of Internal Security in India 135
Nirvikar Singh
vi Contents
PART II: INTERNAL SECURITY: DOCTRINE AND STRATEGY
6. India’s Internal Security in Comparative Perspective 161
Paul Staniland
7. India’s Internal Security Doctrine in Practice 176
Sushant Singh
PART III: INTERNAL SECURITY: THE STATE’S COERCIVE CAPACITY
8. The Military in Internal Security 195
Amit Ahuja and Srinath Raghavan
9. Role of Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) in India 219
Yashovardhan Azad
10. The Indian Police: Managing Dilemmas of Internal Security 240
Akshay Mangla
11. Riots and Rapid Action: The Special Wing of the Central
Reserve Police 260
Nirvikar Jassal and Hanif Qureshi
12. Protective Labor and Its Correlates: A Statistical Portrait 282
Paaritosh Nath and Arjun Jayadev
13. India’s Intelligence in Internal Security 305
Saikat Datta
PART IV: INTERNAL SECURITY: INTRA- ORGANIZATIONAL
CHANGES WITHIN THE SECURITY PROVIDERS
14. Included but Not Equal? Debating Gender and Labor Reforms within
the Border Security Force 331
Sahana Ghosh
15. Security Labor and State Suppression of Police Worker Politics 351
Beatrice Jauregui
Index 373
LIST OF FIGURES
1.1 Trends in homicide rates: India vs. World 11
1.2 Insurgencies: North East, 1999– 2019 12
1.3 Insurgencies: Jammu and Kashmir, 1988– 2019 13
1.4 Insurgencies: Left Wing Extremism, 1999– 2019 14
1.5 Hindu- Muslim communal violence, 1950– 1995 15
1.6 Communal violence, 1996– 2019 15
1.7 Riots, 1953– 2019 16
1.8 Protests in India, 2004– 2016 17
1.9 Labor disputes (strikes + lockouts) 18
1.10 Person- days lost in labor disputes (thousands) 19
1.11 Security force fatalities over time 22
1.12 Security force fatalities, normalized by population 24
1.13 Law and order, public order, and security of the state 25
1.14 Personnel strength of CAPF as a percentage of army and civil police, 1998
and 2015 29
1.15 Cases in connection with custodial deaths, 1999– 2019 43
5.1 Per capita NSDP and police expenditure (Rs.), 2017– 2018 143
5.2 Annual police expenditure in Punjab (Rs. crore), 1990– 1991 to
2017– 2018 145
5.3 Annual police expenditure in Punjab as a percentage of development
expenditure, 1990– 1991 to 2017– 2018 145
5.4 Modernization as a percentage of police expenditure, 2017– 2018 146
5.5 Training as a percentage of police expenditure, 2017– 2018 146
5.6 Per capita police expenditure and violent crime, 2017– 2018 149
8.1 Share of army’s internal security fatalities among total conflict fatalities,
1947– 1990 and 1991– 2018 196
10.1 Police- to- population ratio across Indian states (per 1,000 persons) 251
10.2 Rank- wise distribution of state police forces 253
vii
viii LIST OF FIGURES
10.3 Proportion of women in the Indian police force 255
11.1 Organizational structure of Rapid Action Force (under CRPF) 263
11.2 The locations and count of riots, 2016– 2019 267
11.3 Casualties, by state, from riot- like events in the ACLED database 268
11.4 Deployment of RAF for riot control, 1992– 2018 269
11.5 Security force deployments to quell the 2016 Jat Uprising in
Haryana 273
12.1 Private security as a percentage of the population, lower- middle- income
countries, 2015 283
12.2a CAGR of public and private security workers in India 286
12.2b Absolute size of those engaged as security workers in India, 1993– 1994 to
2017– 2018 (in millions) 287
12.3 Distribution of security workers across major industrial groups (NIC
2008 2- digit), 2017– 2018 (in %) 289
12.4 Share of security workers employed in the public sector by NCO
subgroups, 2017– 2018 (in %) 289
12.5 Share of workers employed in the public sector by occupation groups,
2017– 2018 (in %) 290
12.6 Share of security workers employed in the private sector in major
metropolitan areas, 2017– 2018 (in %) 291
12.7 Distribution of security workers by sex and sector, 1993– 1994 and 2017–
2018 (in %) 291
12.8 Number of health and educational professionals to every security worker,
various years 295
12.9 Distribution of security workers by social group, 2017– 2018 (in %) 297
12.10 Correlating share of security workers in a state’s workforce with the state-
wise urbanization rate (in %) 300
12.A1 Age- wise distribution of workers employed as security workers, 1993–
1994 and 2017– 2018 (in %) 302
12.A2 Distribution of security workers by NCO subgroups and general
education status, 2017– 2018 (in %) 302
13.1 IB organizational structure 306
LIST OF TABLES
1.1 Deaths in insurgencies (1999– 2019) 14
5.1 Central government spending on police by category (in %) 138
5.2 Police expenditure as a percentage of different expenditure categories 142
11.1 RAF vs. CRPF: Ranks and command structure 264
12.1 Absolute number of persons (in thousands) employed as security workers
by sex and their share in the overall workforce, various years 287
12.2 Composition of those employed as security workers, NCO- 68 and
NCO- 04 (in %) 288
12.3 State- wise landscape of security work in India, 2017– 2018 292
12.4 Characteristics of the average security worker, 2017– 2018 296
12.5 Average monthly earnings of security workers by sex and occupation
subgroup, 2017– 2018 298
12.6 Shift in share between 2004– 2005 and 2017– 2018 298
ix
