Managing Conflicts in India.

• Author: Dorschner, Jon P.
• Position: Book review

Title: Managing Conflicts in India

Author: Jon P. Dorschner

Managing Conflicts in India: Policies of Coercion and Accommodation by Bidisha Biswas, Lexington Books: Plymouth, United Kingdom, 2014, ISBN 13:978-0-7391-8754-8, 144 pp. $75.00(Hardcover),$59.95 (Kindle).

The Indian narrative reflects an obsession with "economic reform," and its impact. For several decades American media has touted the story of "India Shining," as economic growth made inroads into endemic poverty. In 2004, the then ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) hoped to return to power by reminding Indian voters of India's economic success. In 2014, the BJP's Prime Ministerial Candidate Narendra Modi is promising to enact economic reforms to restore India's economy to previous high growth rates from its current relatively endemic 5 percent.

Not too long ago educated observers were speculating whether divisive forces would tear India apart. Today's observers would have to be reminded that restive minorities once agitated for separation, and separatist insurgencies seemed to pose a serious challenge to India's survival. In Managing Conflicts in India, Bidisha Biswas, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Western Washington University, examines how the Indian state dealt with two separatist movements, Punjab (1984-1993) and Kashmir (1989-present), and India's Maoist guerrilla movement (the Naxalites, 2004--present). These are only three of the nine insurgencies India has seen since independence.

Managing Conflicts in India is an academic treatise aimed at serious students of India and Political Science. It is not a book for the layman or the casual reader. In classic academic style, Biswas presents a thesis and rigorously tests it to determine its applicability. The book is not meant to explain why so many Indians at different times did not want to belong to India. That has been the subject of many previous studies. Instead, Managing Conflicts in India examines the strategies adopted by the Indian state to counter insurgency.

Biswas extracts from the literature two separate strategies that can be adopted exclusively or in tandem to deal with insurgent threats. At one end of the spectrum is the strategy of "coercion." States, which rely on this strategy, have concluded that the insurgents' demands are without sufficient merit, the insurgent movement is dominantly criminal rather than political, and the state must demonstrate its power to control its territory without...