To be poor is to be engaged in a number of political projects and activities. Even while the poor and the marginalized endure all kinds of exclusions from the formal political arena, many of them practice sustained resistance to the power relations and inequalities that they find themselves caught amidst.

On one hand, this can take the form of the poor participating in mass-based, nationwide campaigns or outright insurrections. On a more local level, but no less significant, a variety of ‘everyday’ forms of resistance are also evident. When asymmetries of wealth and power are not consented to, the poor and the marginalized may refuse to cooperate with the designs of the affluent and the influential in a more subtle manner than head-on rebellion.

Other forms of resistance are present, though the interests, techniques and objectives involved in them may vary significantly from other social groups pressing for socio-political change. As changes in power relations, as projects of empowerment cannot be undertaken without the active struggling of those whom they are supposed to benefit, it is vital for advocates to understand, if not support, the forms, dynamics and aims of resistance that many of the poor are always-already engaged in.