Development programs, security, and violence reduction: Evidence from an insurgency in India

Abstract

India has employed a variety of military, political and economic measures to combat the long running insurgency in Kashmir with little evidence on what contributes to stability in the region. This paper uses a variety of tests to detect structural breaks in the time series for violence over the period 1998–2017. We identify a transition from a high violence regime to a low violence regime that coincides with (i) the fencing of the border with Pakistan (ii) the implementation of a large-scale development program, and (iii) the phasing in of the Indian National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS). Panel data analysis using district-level data further corroborate these findings. Our results highlight the complementary roles of development programs and security in reducing violence.