Review by Avilash Roul (August 28, 2010): The threat of Climate Change can not be resolved adequately with the existing classical security policy tools.
After the 17th Chinese Communist Party Congress National Meeting in 2007, China started focusing on South Asia, specifically India. Both have been favourably disposed towards multilateralism, with India joining the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as an observer and China joining the SAARC summit in April 2008, also as an observer. Besides, people-to-people diplomacy expanded with mutual tourist visits.
Of late, the menace of computer ‘hacking’ has become a punishable offence if it compromises national security and is no longer an act of fun or profit. Of course, not all acts of hacking will amount to terrorism. This could be regarded as terrorist action only if the hacking is designed to disrupt the government’s activities, advance anti-national causes, or intimidate its citizens. A threat or real use of it is a potential act of terrorism, or rather, it can be regarded as cyber-crime or cyber-terrorism in a broader context.
Cross-border threats, which involve an influx of counterfeit currencies, illegal arms, smuggling of narcotics, illicit wildlife trade and its derivatives and cross-border terrorism, are gaining momentum along the 726-kilometre-long porous India-Nepal border. It is a grave concern for India, considering the present political instability in Nepal.
Northeast India has earned the dubious distinction of being home to Asia's longest-running insurgency. The region's geostrategic locations — surrounded by Bhutan and China (Tibet) in the north, Myanmar in the east and south, Bangladesh in the south and west, and approximately 4000 square kilometres of porous international borders—further accentuate the security threat. For the last two months, the intensification of insurgency incidents has put a question mark on the various security efforts in the Northeast region.