India as a Net Security Provider: Concept and Impediments

Abstract

In recent times, many analysts and commentators have ascribed a role to India as a “Net Security Provider’ without specifying what this entails. This policy brief attempts to define the term and thereby provides a conceptual analysis of India as a Net Security Provider. There are four activities through which India can fulfil such a role—capacity building, military diplomacy, military assistance and direct deployment of forces. While giving an overview of all these activities undertaken by India the policy brief further argues that there are significant structural and institutional impediments. It concludes with a discussion of future prospects and policy changes—especially since the new incoming Prime Minister Narendra Modi has envisaged a role for India as a “net exporter of weapons.”

About the Author

Anit Mukherjee is an Assistant Professor in the South Asia Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University. He joined RSIS after a post doctorate at the Centre for the Advanced Study of India (CASI), University of Pennsylvania and a PhD from the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University. From 2010-2012, he was a Research Fellow at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), New Delhi. While in the doctoral programme, he also worked at the Brookings Institutions and was a Summer Associate at RAND Corporation. He has published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal (Asia), RUSI Journal, India Review, The Caravan, and Indian Express, among others. Formerly, he was a Major in the Indian Army and is an alumnus of India’s National Defence Academy (NDA), Khadakwasla.