To be poor is be trammelled amidst structures of power and stratification. Society, as is well known, is never an equal playing field— a variety of classes compose the social landscape, each of which have different levels of access to wealth, power and influence over prevailing systems and institutional mechanisms. The diverse social positions created by these inequalities typically establishes the context for varying socio-political interests and agendas. Social inequality, in this sense, reinforces the dynamics of poverty and immiseration. Elites in possession of power and resources regularly employ a number of strategies to maintain or expand their status and position, even though usually this process results in the distortion of policy objectives, the misuse of public funds and office, the exaction of rent and resource transfers from the less advantaged, and the extension of repressive controls over other social groups. Caught on the receiving end on many of these regressive manoeuvrings, the poor and the marginalized are left with few options for improving their own life-chances, unless noteworthy projects to redistribute wealth and power in their favour prove to be successful.