CHRONIC POVERTY in REMOTE RURAL AREAS: Evidence from Central Tribal Belt of India
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CHRONIC POVERTY IN REMOTE RURAL AREAS: Evidence from Central Tribal Belt of India A Project financially supported By Planning Commission, Government of India, New Delhi D.C. Sah Ashish Bhatt Tapas K. Dalapati MADHYA PRADESH INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH, UJJAIN Preface This monograph, analysing poverty from a non-economist perspective, tries to understand who and why people experience multi-dimensional unfreedom. In the process, the study documents experiences of people in the central tribal belt of India who have been poor for years and the forces that have trapped them into poverty. Viewing poverty in a multidimensional sense assumes significance for, it recognises that people can be trapped into poverty due to a variety of reasons; the economic unfreedom being only one of the important causes. We are grateful to Planning Commission, Government of India, New Delhi for accepting our research proposal and agreeing to financially support the research. Three considerations were responsible for selecting Central Tribal belt of India for this study. First, earlier work (Sah and Shah: 2003 and Sah and Bhatt: 2004) in Southwestern region of Madhya Pradesh identified through qualitative & quantitative research correlates of tribal poverty. There was a need to validate these findings in a larger area. Secondly, initiatives undertaken in the belt under the umbrella of decentralised governance have significant implications for addressing the poverty issues; these efforts cut across hierarchies when it tries to reach the masses through programmes that are planned, executed and monitored by the community. This belt, nevertheless, has a varied experience of decentralised governance; Madhya Pradesh was the first state in the country to enact and implement the 73rd Constitutional Amendment Act that created opportunities for self-governance by the community. On the other hand Jharkhand the Act was enacted as late as 2001 and even today there are no panchayats in the state. Development work is carried out without participation of the community. Poverty eradication has taken place within these variations it will be worth to decipher the role of decentralised governance in the process. And lastly, Planning Commission, Government of India insisted on a larger canvas when understanding on poverty-trap was premeditated. The monograph has tried to capture the incidence of chronic poverty, its correlates and why despite Panchayati Raj, tribal poverty is pervasive in the Central tribal belt. Apart from other findings, the monograph uncovers: Higher unpaid social debts rather than low increase the probability of a household to be chronic poor rather than not by 3 times. But higher debts in Under-developed villages increase the chances of being chronic poor 1.6 times more than in Developed villages. This is exceedingly constraining interaction between remoteness, access to credit and chronic poverty. A household is 3.3 times more likely to be chronic poor rather than not if it has lower health expenses than higher. When the control variable remoteness is introduced in this analysis, it is found that: In Developed villages, higher allocations to health reduce the incidence of chronic poverty significantly more as compared to Under-developed villages. Households without irrigation compared to irrigated are 1.2 times more likely to be chronic poor rather than not. But in Developed villages, unirrigated households are 2 times more likely to be chronic poverty as compared to Under-developed villages. Higher animal assets rather than lower reduce chronic poverty by 1.4 times but the phenomenon in relatively Developed villages is significantly more pronounced compared to Under-developed villages. A chronic poor household is 2.4 times more likely to be migrant rather than not compared to non-chronic poor household. But chronic poverty in Under-developed villages increases the likelihood of inducing migration significantly more than in relatively developed villages. ii Households with higher proportion of their illiterate members are 1.6 times more likely to be chronic poor rather than not compared to high literacy rate households. But literacy, in developed villages breaks the poverty trap significantly more than Under-Developed villages. Higher consumption expenditure, large possessions of consumer items, larger agricultural income, higher Organisational membership rather than lower reduce chronic poverty Significantly. But these factors, irrespective of the remoteness of the location, influences chronic poverty in the same manner in the two groups of villages. On the other hand, higher agricultural borrowings and higher size of family, rather than lower increases chronic poverty Significantly. But these factors, irrespective of the remoteness of the location, influences chronic poverty in the same manner in the two groups of villages. It was also argued in the research that chronic poor remains remote from policy makers rather than remoteness creates chronic poverty. Tentatively this remained our conclusion. But before accepting it, we also tried to understand how livelihood struggles, especially under failing agriculture, differ across developed and under-developed villages. Also relevant in establishing the implications of remoteness were the issues of governance, manifestation of social capital in development decision-making. Together, evidences from these processes enlightened us about the role the relative remoteness played in determining chronic poverty. The study owes a great deal to several people who have provided intellectual foundation to this research, those who have supported in conducting the research and those who have had an opportunity to go through the draft and provided critical comments. Amita shah, Andrew Shepherd, David Hulme, Kate Bird and Karen Moore through their work as well as interactions and discussion during the conception of this study have facilitated us and clarified many of our misconceptions. Anand Kumar, Rohini Nayyar and Phil Amis whose remarks and comments on an earlier paper were valuable inputs for the study. Sandeep Joshi has critically commented on some of the chapters as they were developing. Comments by B.R. Purohit and Yatindra S. Sisodia have also helped us in revising some of the chapters especially chapters 7 and 8. Comments by a team of researchers from Planning Commission are gratefully acknowledged. We have tried to include their suggestions as much as possible but for interpretations, errors and omissions we only are responsible. Data collection in the remote central tribal belt of India was a challenge. Access to these villages during the rainy season, when we were in field, was extremely difficult. Moreover, apprehension of submergence due to dam in the region has made the some of the tribals suspicious to outsiders. Some of the areas have had serious law and order problems as well. But Uttam Panda, Arbind Songhre, Pramod Jhanolia, Bhagwan Singh, Manoj Verma and Uday Rajput, and their team of investigators have patiently helped us generate quantitative data. Professor R.S. Gautam, President, Madhya Pradesh Institute of Social Science Research was extremely encouraging and helpful in arranging all kind of support, despite severe financial constraints. We also like to thank L.P. Gautam, Sunil Chandel, Manu Gautam and Yatindra S. Sisodia for providing logistic as well intellectual support. We must mention the contribution of Sudeep Mishra, and Punit who have provided able word processing support and also saw that the monograph is brought out in this form. And last but not least the villagers of 40 study villages have supported us in completing our data collection work. This monograph would not have taken shape without their support. MPISSR March 7, 2008 D.C. Sah Ashish Bhatt Tapas K. Dalapati iii Contents Preface i - iv 1 Introduction 1 - 10 D.C. Sah 2 Understanding Chronic Poverty 11 - 22 D.C. Sah 3 Marginalisation and Struggles 23 - 46 D.C. Sah and Tapas K Dalapati 4 Mapping Poverty in Central Tribal Belt of India 47 -61 D.C. Sah 5 Income and Food In-security in Central Tribal Belt 62 - 75 D.C. Sah 6 Migration as Coping Strategy 76 - 97 D.C. Sah 7 Governance and Chronic Poverty 98 - 117 D.C. Sah and Ashish Bhatt 8 Dissent, Trust and Social Capital 118 - 132 D.C. Sah 9 Looking Ahead 133 - 141 D.C. Sah iv CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION In order to address poverty in a comprehensive manner, the need to conceptualise what poverty is, who the poor are, what their characteristics are, and the appropriate ways that can reduce the incident of poverty cannot be overemphasised. This chapter attempts to debate these issues. Through a discussion in the first section, an attempt is made to understand how poverty in Indian planning circles has been conceptualised and measured, and the efficacy of such measures. The next section develops a tentative frame that explains poverty in its multidimensional form in a remote rural economy. Data and methods used in the study are presented in the third section. The last section presents the outline of this monograph. 1.1 Income Poverty Concept and Incidence Of the several ways to conceptualise and operationalise poverty1, the Indian state has narrowly defined poverty as income poverty2. A poverty line3 represented by an income that commands a minimum calorie intake to individuals4 is first defined and then estimates are made of all those people whose income falls below this line. The method is known as Head Count Ratio of poverty and is the commonly used measure in Indian planning and development. The official estimates are, however, based on consumption expenditure -- generated by National Sample Survey -- instead of income5 to estimate the number of poor6. Of late, such official estimates are under scrutiny; till 1993, the NSS consumption expenditure data were adjusted arbitrarily upwards so that they aggregate-up to consumption figures estimated by National Accounts Statistics (NAS). A serious debate7 resulted in discontinuing the arbitrary upward adjustment8. Aiyar (2000) has argued that it would be worth to replace average consumption series of NSS by consumption given by NAS.