Veena Kukreja. Civil-Military Relations in South Asia: Pakistan,Bangladesh and India. New Delhi: Sage Publications. 1991. 257 pp.Bibliography + Index. Price: Rs 260 (Hardbound).

A quite large number of developing countries in Asia, Africa,and Latin America, which are today characterised by chronicunderdevelopment, general social retardation, slow social mobility, andpolitical instability became highly prone to military interventions inpolitics in their initial phases of decolonization soon after World WarII. These military interventions in the fragile civil polities andstagnant economies, termed by some scholars as the coup zone, arejustified and legitimised on various pretexts of modernisation,democratisation, and reform; which means that the military seeks to fillthe institutional vacuum when the overall civil administration of thecountry breaks down as a consequence of the rivalry for pelf and powerbetween various ruling classes. Thus, the military has emerged as themost powerful institution in these countries. Some social revolutions ofmodern times, in China in 1949, for example, and in Cuba in 1959, werecaused by endemic military interventions in the civilsociety.