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Riots: Understanding mindless criminality and the poverty impacts of civil violence?
11 November 2011
In his Sussex Development Lecture, IDS Research Fellow and alumnus Jaideep Gupte presented findings from a study of civil violence in 45 neighbourhoods in Maharastra, India. The study is part of the wider ongoing research project into Agency and Governance in Contexts of Civil Conflict based at the Institute (funded by Microcon as well as ESRC-DFID).
Jaideep examined why and how riots occurred in Maharastra and also looked at the impact of civil violence on local communities particularly in terms of welfare consequences. He began by defining civil violence as:
“…..public acts of violence directed either against the state or between groups of people.”
Jaideep highlighted that there were two different forms of civil violence - routine and spontaneous. The study focused on routine occurrences of civil violence which generally have more deep rooted causes that evolve over a longer period of time. However, Jaideep did acknowledge that there may well be links between routine and more spontaneous forms of civil violence.
In his book Theft of an Idol, Paul Brass explores in more detail the deep roots that routine civil violence has within society. Brass argues that riots are often very organised in nature and provides the example of riot captains who co-ordinate groups of people responsible for instigating public violence. Jaideep also highlighted the works of Steven Wilkinson who argues that riots are closely related to electoral cycles, and that of Ashutosh Varshney who argues that civil violence occurs as a result of low civic engagement. Jaideep argued that we know comparatively little about how non-elected state institutions, like the police, jails as well as administrative sections of the state, interface with civil violence.
Jaideep stated that the research identified two types of victims of riots:
- Acute victims - those who had been physically hurt or who had reported damages to financial or physical assets
- Non-acute victims – those who had experienced public violence but not suffered any damages to physical or financial assets and had not been hurt.
The research found structural differences between the two categories, in that acute victims generally resided close to other acute victims, whereas non-acute victims were more randomly dispersed in their neighbourhoods. Furthermore, Jaideep also found that neighbourhoods with a low presence of non-elected state institutions, including the police, were more likely to have experienced high intensity rioting and have high concentrations of acute victims. Conversely, neighbourhoods with a high presence of non-elected state institutions were neighbourhoods which experienced medium intensity civil violence and had a high number of non-acute victims.
Jaideep argued that violence is not linear and therefore cannot simply be addressed by increased policing after the event. As evidence from Maharastra showed, violence causes structural change and has direct impacts on education, health and life choices, particularly for women and girls.
Related Resources
Related Projects
- Agency and Governance in Contexts of Civil Conflict - analysing how the relationship between populations living in contexts of violence and armed non-state actors controlling or contesting those areas results in forms of local governance and order, and how this affects people's livelihoods. (Ongoing)
