Do public welfare projects reduce or instigate civil unrest? A study in India

Left-wing extremism (LWE) and related conflict between insurgents and Government troops have claimed several lives and hampered inclusive development in the last five decades in some eastern, central and southern states in India. Several papers in the field found a strong association between such insurgency and socio-economic deprivation. In that regard, central and state governments have launched several development programs directed towards the affected areas in the last couple of decades. In this project, we plan to use the spatial regression discontinuity model to estimate a relationship between government programs and Maoist/Naxalite insurgency and violence.