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ABSTRACT
THE ROLE OF CIVIL SOCIETY IN CBMs IN SOUTH ASIA NAEEM AHMED* Civil society is a Western concept which establishes a balanced relationship between state and society and paves the way for creating a condition where
nations need each other so much that conflict would be impossible. As far as the South Asian states are concerned, most of them have been locked into the inter-state and intra-state conflicts and spend large amount of
their budget on defense and enhancing security at the expense of development sectors. On the contrary, they still face the same problem, rather it has helped in promoting the religious extremist forces in the region,
which has not only paralyzed the state machinery, but also increased the element of militancy in the society. The paper is based on a hypothesis that there is no viable and strong civil society existed in South Asia and so far no effort has been made in this direction.
Basically, the paper is divided into four parts. First part deals with the theoretical framework of the concept of civil society and its relationship with the concept of democracy and democratic culture. Part two deals
with the status of civil society in South Asia that how efforts have been made to hamper the process of establishing a civil society in South Asia and also to increase gap between state and society. This part also
discusses the role played by military establishment and religious parties in weakening the civic and political culture in South Asia. As the military rulers have no constituency of their own, they rely much on the
support of the religious parties for their survival, and thus, neutralize the forces of change. Third part deals with the hurdles, like the lack of democratic culture, failure of institution-building process, emergence
of religious extremism, role of vernacular press, etc, in creating a well-developed and matured civil society in South Asia. Lastly, the fourth part deals with the tools for peace building and some suggestions and
recommendations, which could help in the process of establishing a civil society in South Asia. Presently, South Asian societies are facing economic fragility, political turmoil and social unrest. The need of the hour is to establish a civil society in South Asia, which
should be based upon the norms of democracy, secularism, market economy and a balance in state-society relationship, so that the masses would feel secure at every level. *
Cooperative lecturer, Department of International Relations, University of Karachi.
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