Chronic Poverty in a Remote Rural District in South West Madhya Pradesh: A Multidimensional Analysis of its Extent and Causes

Abstract

The structuralist perspective envisages poverty, especially in rural India, as a long duration phenomenon. Over time, most of the structural features of poverty have remained more or less intact. As a result, a large proportion of the poor in India are also chronically poor in terms of duration as well as severity (Mehta and Shah, 2002). Economic growth achieved through the processes of planned development since the early fifties, have made a significant dent in the incidence of poverty measured in terms of average expenditure of the households. Thus, incidence of poverty in India declined from 52 per cent in 1977-78 to 39 per cent in 1987-88 and further to 36 percent in 1993-94 and 27 per cent in 1999-2000 (Hirway and Dev, 2000). This suggests a substantial impact in terms of poverty reduction at an aggregate level. The impact, however has been fairly varied across regions and households. Three different trajectories can be visualized for those who were poor in the initial period. These are: (i) crossing over the poverty barrier on a sustained basis, (ii) moving above and below the poverty line, and (iii) always remaining below the poverty line. The households experiencing different trajectories represent non-poor, transient poor, and chronically poor (in duration sense). A fourth category consists of households that have never been poor.