DISPOSSESSED

In 2005, starving members of the Bhuiya clan in one of Bihar's poorest villages dug up a dead goat, cooked and ate it. Sixteen people died within days, twelve of them children. Bengali-speaking Muslims who had moved to Rajasthan from West Bengal in the 1970s were summarily declared Bangladeshi terrorists in the aftermath of the 2008 Jaipur bomb blasts. They remain stateless in their own country. Landless Lodhas, members of an erstwhile 'Criminal Tribe' in Bihar grapple even today with centuries of shame and dispossession.

The authors have all worked with the Centre for Equity Studies on a study on destitution in India.