Abstract
There is a general understanding about the existence of a close relationship between poverty and conflict because people in poverty live in stressful settings with high proclivity towards conflict. The marginalised in society may not all be poor but the poor are certainly marginalised. Poverty is an issue of social perceptions which are forever changing. It is an end product of a social process and has both a historical and a contemporary context.
With necessary permission, this chapter draws on Chap. 4 of the India Chronic Poverty Report and CPRC-IIPA working paper 42. We are grateful to the Chronic Poverty Research Centre (CPRC) for valuable comments and suggestions on the first draft of this paper. We would like to thank Aasha Kapur Mehta and Andrew Shepherd for their kind cooperation in completing this work. We are also grateful to the participants of the CPRC-IIPA workshop in New Delhi for useful questions and comments. An earlier version of this paper was presented at a seminar of the Centre for the Study of Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Fieldwork was carried out by Dr. Haridwar, Shri Surendra Kumar and Shri Vishwanand. The final draft became possible with the help of Shri Manish Tiwari and Shri Pradeep Kumar Jaina. We also received valuable help from Shri Bharat Kumar and Shri Sanjay Pratap.
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Notes
- 1.
Kumar (2013).
- 2.
- 3.
Johnson (2000, pp. 233–4).
- 4.
- 5.
Johnson, ibid. p. 305.
- 6.
- 7.
Deb (2009).
- 8.
Rao (2006).
- 9.
Srikakulam was the site of a clash between Maoists and the Congress-led state apparatus.
- 10.
Mandalisation refers to the policy of providing reservation to the other backward classes (non-upper castes who are considered above the category of the scheduled castes) in government jobs which has resulted in the consolidation of the middle castes into a ‘power block’ in elections in North Indian states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh in particular.
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Kumar, A., Kant, K. (2018). Addressing Poverty and Conflict: Learning from a Gandhian Initiative in Mushahari (Muzaffarpur, Bihar). In: Mehta, A., Bhide, S., Kumar, A., Shah, A. (eds) Poverty, Chronic Poverty and Poverty Dynamics. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0677-8_5
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