What distinguishes Persistence of Poverty from most other poverty studies is the way in which it conceptualises the problem. This volume offers a variety of alternative analytical perspectives and fresh insights into poverty that are key to addressing the problem. In looking at the day to day lived realities of the poor the volume points out that in order to understand poverty one must take into account the wider system of class and power relations in which it is rooted. This volume suggests that ‘democracy in India may be as big a part of the problem as it is of the solution.’
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vii | |
| Preface |
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xi | |
| Contributors |
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xiii | |
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1 Introduction: On the Persistence of Poverty in India |
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1 | (34) |
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PART I IDENTIFYING THE POOR |
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2 The Construction of Poverty and the Poor in Colonial and Post-Colonial India: An Overview |
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35 | (32) |
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3 Measurement, Patterns and Determinants of Poverty |
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67 | (32) |
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4 Reconceiving the Impact of Population Change: A Class and Gender-based Analysis of Ageing in Poverty in Urban South India |
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99 | (30) |
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PART II TARGETING THE POOR |
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5 From Poverty to Poverty: Policies for Translating Growth into Development |
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129 | (17) |
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6 Redressing Poverty and Enhancing Social Development: Trends in India's Welfare Regime |
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146 | (27) |
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PART III EMPOWERING THE POOR |
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7 Poverty and Education in Rural Chhattisgarh |
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173 | (31) |
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8 Notions of Rights and State Benefits in Village West Bengal |
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204 | (23) |
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9 Flaunted Transcripts: Shaming Elites and Interrogating Domination in Bihar |
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227 | (34) |
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Part IV Controlling the poor |
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10 Neither a Dog, Nor a Beggar: Seasonal Labour Migration, Development, and Poverty in Andhra Pradesh |
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261 | (30) |
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11 Preventive Laws and the Policing of the Urban Poor |
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291 | (26) |
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PART V THE IMPROVING LOT OF THE POOR? |
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12 What's Happening to the Rural? Revisiting `Marginalities' and `Dominance' in North-West India |
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317 | (27) |
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13 Progress over the Long Haul: Dynamics of Agrarian Change in the Kaveri Delta |
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344 | (26) |
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14 The Dynamic Political Economy of Persistent Poverty |
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370 | (26) |
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15 How to Govern the Poor: The Role of Social Policies in Economic Transformation |
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396 | |
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Nandini Gooptu is Fellow of St Antonys College, Oxford, and currently Head of the Department of International Development at Oxford University. She is the author of The Politics of the Urban Poor in Early-Twentieth Century India (Cambridge University Press, 2001) and several highly acclaimed edited volumes.
Jonathan Parry is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the author of Caste and Kinship in Kangra (Routledge 1979), Death in Banaras (Cambridge University Press, 1994), and several distinguished edited volumes.