REGIONAL PHYSICAL CONNECTIVITY IN SOUTH ASIA: IMPACTS ON NON-TRADITIONAL SECURITY THREATS IN THE REGION

Abstract

The regional integration is a buzzword in the present days as it has vast potential
for accelerating economic growth, reducing poverty and economic disparity
within and across the countries involved in a region. South Asia is one of the
least integrated regions, especially in terms of physical connectivity. Recognizing
the fact that physical connectivity can boost up the economic growth of this
comparatively backward region, presently the governments of the South Asian
countries are coming closure on the issue than ever before. However, this region
has another fact to its record that it is overwhelmed by the non-traditional
security threats apart from the traditional ones in every countries of the region.
There are good number of research on regional integration, physical connectivity
and non-traditional security threats of South Asia. There is hardly any research
found to determine what effect ‘better regional connectivity’ might have over
the phenomena of non-traditional security threats, especially manmade societal
threats like arms trafficking, drug trafficking, child trafficking, women trafficking,
terrorism, etc. existing in this region. The research focuses on that issue by
consulting good number of hard and soft copies of books and articles in the
dailies and magazines; in order to gather and analyse empirical data, conduct
survey among military officers and civil counterpart and conduct interview of
resource parsons related to the research topic. The research was limited to some
types of manmade non-traditional security threats to derive the result. It is found
that regional physical connectivity would directly or indirectly create environment
conducive for reduction of manmade non-traditional threats like in South Asia.
However, the research also highlighted the importance of further detail research
on this issue.