India's Stalled Internal Security Reforms(1)

Following the 2008 terrorist attack on Mumbai-an attack which had been amply foreshadowed by intelligence and previous, similar strikes-India's government promised unprecedented reforms to the nation's internal security architecture. Five years after Mumbai however, these reforms have almost completely failed to bear fruit. This article reviews both the reasons that the Mumbai attacks had such an impact within India's politics and also why the promised reforms were never able to take shape. It argues that the high-profile nature of the Mumbai attacks, and their effect on India's economic elite, forced the central government to respond. But India's states are so adamantly opposed to the loss of autonomy, particularly over their police forces, that substantive security reform would entail. Thus the prospects for effective reform in the foreseeable future are dim. © 2013 Copyright Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.