Chronic Poverty and Remote Rural Areas in Eastern India

Bijaya Kumar Malik, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)
S. K. Mohanty, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)

People living in remote rural areas comprise a substantial proportion of the chronically poor. Spatial poverty traps result from low endowments of “Geographical Capital”, with one household poverty reinforcing another. This paper examines remote rural areas' effects on chronic poverty in the eastern part of the country. The evidence for this will be gathered from longitudinal quantitative studies which come from NFHS-2, covering a sample of 92,486 households. The analysis suggests that prevalence of chronic poverty is widespread in the remote rural eastern part of India, and profiles the variation pattern of severity in chronic poverty in the same region where the pattern of the poverty trap is shaped by factors such as no political voice, high dependency ratio, disabled population, low reserve of social capital, and social and political factors. The study suggests that policy makers need to develop methodologies for giving space and incentives to poor people to organize themselves in a participative manner.