“The highly provocative and wide-ranging essays here represent an authentically post-security and post-development sensibility. They are based on the premise that traditional concepts of both security and development have not only failed to fulfill their promise, but have contributed to unprecedented levels of poverty, inequality, social disruption and oppression, as well as of ecological destruction. Indeed the stench of security and development (a noxious miasma of gunpowder, toxic waste and overflowing sewers) pervades all of South Asia. It seems that even governments and international institutions continue to legitimate themselves through a discourse of security and development for the poor, huge and increasing numbers of people in South Asia- as elsewhere- are caught in a vicious circle of immiseration, environmental degradation, and more immiseration. Responding to this bleak picture, the voices in this anthology- of activists and politicized academics spread out over South Asia- speak out in anger, but also in hope and in humour, and explore strategies foe local revival and regional cooperation.” Reference: Rethinking Security, Rethinking Development