ABSTRACT
This chapter delineates the constitutive contexts of the governance of poverty, specifically of adivasi poor women in India. The term is used to indicate the multiple and overlapping contexts that demarcate the sources and shape of and constraints on, the governance of poverty, going beyond descriptions of the political economy or the background of the policy. The aim is to historicize and de-naturalize the convergence of consensus on the formulation of SGSY and to scrutinize the foreclosures of policy alternatives. The chapter analyses practices in constitutive contexts by examining the identification of poor people and the allocation of resources for them two critical practices that shape the governance of poverty in India. This is followed by the delineation of regional contexts, or the locally specific representations, political technologies and political strategies in the case study regions of Gadchiroli district in Maharashtra and Dhar district in Madhya Pradesh.
