Biological weapon, Infectious Disease and India’s Security Imperatives

By Animesh Roul
SSPC Paper No. 7, September 2006

Read full text

Brief

The increasing threats of bio-terrorism and horizontal spread of infectious diseases have paved the way for discourse on public health concerns in the face of both natural and deliberate spread of disease in India. Irrespective of their cause of occurrence, the threats of infectious diseases have increasingly become high priority security imperative. The paper discusses issues related to the infectious diseases in India, both natural and deliberate while examines the nature of threat perceptions for India. Also the paper delves into existing scenario regarding different aspects of deliberate disease spread such as through bio-warfare, bio-terrorism and biological agent use against agriculture in the region.

About the Author

Animesh Roul is the Executive Director of Research at the Society for the Study of Peace and Conflict, New Delhi. He served as a Research Fellow (Coordinator) at SSPC since September 2004. He is involved with independent think tanks, media houses, and policy organizations in India and abroad and contributes regularly to web portals, newspapers, and scholarly journals. In his earlier stint, he worked as a Research Associate at New Delhi based Institute for Conflict Management (ICM). Mr Roul, recently joined Counter Terrorism Blog, New Jersey as a contributing expert. He has contributed to Terrorism Focus/Monitor (Jamestown Foundation), ISN Security Watch (as Senior Correspondent, India) and Peace and Conflict Monitor.