Human security in India, a mixed bag.
| Autor | Narain Roy, Ash |
| Cargo | II. Reflexiones sobre seguridad |
| Páginas | 77(25) |
Resumen
Con la visión de la seguridad como la garantía de protección contra daños físicos y mentales, de estar liberados de necesidades y temores, la seguridad humana ha pasado a ser la estrella central del programa del desarrollo global. En este trabajo se argumenta que, incluso con ingresos bajos, uno puede lograr un mayor desarrollo humano, como una esperanza de vida más larga, una menor fertilidad y una mejor educación. Amartya Sen, Premio Nobel de India, lo ha caracterizado como "el desarrollo como libertad". La falta de libertad fundamental está vinculada inexorablemente a la pobreza económica y el retraso. Casi todos los Estados de la India han reducido la pobreza con éxito, pero aquellos que tienen un mejor desarrollo humano han salido mejor. Tan solo esta reducción paulatina no va a difundir los beneficios de la reforma. La intervención medida del Estado y su adecuado suministro de redes de seguridad para los sectores vulnerables de la población son necesarios para hacer más sostenible el desarrollo. La democracia y el desarrollo van de la mano. El gobierno democrático, responsable y transparente es el mejor seguro contra la pobreza y la marginalización. La prueba del buen gobierno debe tener como premisa la forma en que el Estado y la sociedad civil negocien las diferencias a través de garantías constitucionales e instituciones políticas. El buen gobierno es la clave para el crecimiento justo.
Palabras clave: seguridad humana, desarrollo humano, libertad, gobierno democrático, intervención estatal.
Abstract
With security being viewed as ensuring protection from physical and mental harm, freedom from want and fear, human security has moved to the centre stage of the global development agenda. This paper argues that even with low income, one can achieve higher human development like higher life expectancy, lower fertility and high literacy. Amartya Sen, Nobel Laureate of India, has characterised it as "development as freedom". Lack of substantive freedom is inexorably linked to economic poverty, and backwardness. Nearly all States in India have succeeded in reducing poverty, but those States with better human development have fared better. The trickle-down alone will not spread the benefits of reform. Measured State intervention and adequate provision of safety nets for the vulnerable sections of people are needed to make development more sustainable. Democracy and development go hand in hand. The democratic, accountable and transparent governance is the best insurance against poverty and marginalisation. The test of goad governance must be premised on how the State and civil society, negotiate differences via constitutional guarantees and political institutions. Good governance is the key to equitable growth.
Keywords: Human Security, Human Development, Freedom, Democratic Governance, State Intervention.
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Dehumanising poverty and the growing rich-poor divide are an ugly reality of the present world order. The ever-widening gap between the rich nations of the North and the poor of the South has created a new duality in the world. We have two worlds on the same planet: one world is toiling to stave off hunger, while the other is chomping at the byte to cross over into cyberspace. The proponents of globalisation promised to lift all boats. The neo-liberal gurus are never tired of chanting the market mantra saying everything must operate according to the criteria of "master market". Going by this new theology, one would assume only the strongest shall survive! Life is a fight, a jungle. It is economic and social Darwinism. The market dictates the Truth, the Beautiful, the God! While the market is flourishing, at least shopping malls give that impression, there is another reality staring us in our eyes.
The huge army of uneducated, unemployed, unskilled, unfed and unsatisfied people --the so-called un-people-- is also rising. The rich-poor gap is widening, not closing. And it is happening all over, not just at the interface between the rich and the poor nations. The same dynamic is at work within countries, even developed and industrialised societies. While the proponents of globalisation have sought to perpetuate myths like the poor catching up with the rich and growing convergence of rich and poor, in reality the gap in per capita income between the industrial and developing world has tripled over the past three decades. The irony is too stark to be missed. While the number of dollar billionaires is rising by the day, the share of the poorest fifth of the world's population is steadily declining. The world is becoming polarised economically both between countries and within them. The governance institutions the world over are awakening to these fault-lines as potential threats to the fledgling post-Cold War global order.
Over the past few years, development has moved to the centre stage of the global political agenda. So has human security, particularly after two dramatic developments --the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the twin towers of the New York World Trade Centre--. Security is now being increasingly defined not so much as the defence of national territory as ensuring the safety and well being of the citizens of a state via the provision of development opportunities. Human security encompasses protection from physical and mental harm, freedom from want and fear, and respect for personal and cultural identities. In this framework, the effective means of dealing with the multifarious threats is not force; rather the preferred instruments of security are human development and humane governance.
Undp's Agenda-Setting Role
It was Mahbub Ul Haq who first drew global attention to the concept of human security in the UNDP's Human Development Reports. As Special Adviser to the Administrator of UNDP, Haq did pioneering work giving meaning and content to the concept of human development besides taking initiative to build the now famous Human Development Index to measure it. The 1994 Human Development Report focussed primarily on human security. This Report is considered a landmark in the field of human security.
Haq outlined seven features of human development. (1) First, it moved people to the centre-stage. Second, human development has two sides. One is the formation of human capabilities such as improved health, knowledge and skills and the other is the use people make of their acquired capabilities. Third, people are regarded as the end, but means are not forgotten. Fourth, human development embraces all of society, not just the economy. Fifth, people are both the means and the ends of development. Sixth, progress of nations is measured not merely by an increase in their GNP. Seventh, productivity, equity, sustainability and empowerment are the four components of human development.
Mahbub Ul Haq in his Reflections on Human Development explained human security not as "a concern with weapons" but with "human dignity". As he said, "In the last analysis, (what matters is that) it is a child who did not die, a disease that did not spread, an ethnic tension that did not explode, a dissident who was not silenced, a human spirit that was not crushed." Human security, Haq further emphasised, "is to be interpreted as security of people, not just territory. It has to do with the security of individuals, not just nations. It is concerned with the security of all people everywhere, in their homes, in their jobs, in their streets, in their communities, in their environment. Needed urgently is security through development, not through arms."
The Human Development Report of the UNDP for the year 1994 provided further conceptual clarity to the concept of human security. Freedom from want and the freedom from fear, said the report, are the two pillars of human security. In the immediate aftermath of this report, these two pillars became the clarion calls for all those who demanded an overhaul of the existing world order. The UNDP visualised threats to human security in seven areas: economic security, food security, health security, environmental security, personal security, communal security and political security. These are self-explanatory and hence I don't intend to elaborate them here.
In a rapidly integrating and globalising world and an increasingly interdependent and multi-polar international system, the predominantly military-strategic orientation of the security discourse came to be viewed as overly narrow and inadequate. Hence individual became the primary referent of security. Freedom from want and freedom from fear became the most effective shields against insecurity. Nelson Mandela later summed up the aspirations of the common man who want "the simple opportunity to live a decent life, to have a proper shelter and food to eat, to be able to care for their children and to live with dignity ..."
Whither Human Security in India?
It was Mahatma Gandhi who placed the individual at the centre of human progress. He talked of the "village republics". Every village, Gandhi said, "will be a republic with full powers. Life will not be a pyramid with the apex sustained by the bottom. But it will be an oceanic circle whose centre will be the individual always ready to perish for the circle of villages ..." Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore had this to say: "We have for over a century been dragged by the prosperous West-behind its chariot, choked by the dust, deafened by the noise, humbled by our own helplessness and overwhelmed by the speed. We agreed to acknowledge that this chariot-drive was progress, and the progress was civilisation. If we ever ventured to ask, 'progress towards what and progress for whom', it was considered to be peculiarly and ridiculously oriental to entertain such ideas about the absoluteness of progress." (2)
In recent years, Indian economy has made impressive strides. Today India and China are the two fastest...
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