Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/114025 
Year of Publication: 
2015
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 9160
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
There is growing awareness that development-oriented government policies may be an important counterinsurgency strategy, but existing papers are usually unable to disentangle various mechanisms. Using a regression-discontinuity design, we analyze the impact of one of the world's largest anti-poverty programs, India's NREGS, on the intensity of Maoist conflict. We find short-run increases of insurgency-related violence, police-initiated attacks, and insurgent attacks on civilians. We discuss how these results relate to established theories in the literature. The main mechanism consistent with the empirical patterns is that NREGS induces civilians to share more information with the state, improving police effectiveness.
Subjects: 
public works program
National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme
NREGA
NREGS
India
regression discontinuity design
terrorism
Naxalites
Maoists
conflict
insurgency
civil war
JEL: 
H12
H53
H56
I38
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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