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Journal of Social and Economic Development Journal of Social and Economic Development Vol. 4 No.2 July-December 2002 Spatial Poverty Traps in Rural India: An Exploratory Analysis of the Nature of the Causes Time and Cost Overruns of the Power Projects in Kerala Economic and Environmental Status of Drinking Water Provision in Rural India The Politics of Minority Languages: Some Reflections on the Maithili Language Movement Primary Education and Language in Goa: Colonial Legacy and Post-Colonial Conflicts Inequality and Relative Poverty Book Reviews INSTITUTE FOR SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CHANGE BANGALORE JOURNAL OF SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT (Published biannually in January and July) Institute for Social and Economic Change Bangalore–560 072, India Editor: M. Govinda Rao Managing Editor: G. K. Karanth Associate Editor: Anil Mascarenhas Editorial Advisory Board Isher Judge Ahluwalia (Delhi) J. B. Opschoor (The Hague) Abdul Aziz (Bangalore) Narendar Pani (Bangalore) P. R. Brahmananda (Bangalore) B. Surendra Rao (Mangalore) Simon R. Charsley (Glasgow) V. M. Rao (Bangalore) Dipankar Gupta (Delhi) U. Sankar (Chennai) G. Haragopal (Hyderabad) A. S. Seetharamu (Bangalore) Yujiro Hayami (Tokyo) Gita Sen (Bangalore) James Manor (Brighton) K. K. Subrahmanian Joan Mencher (New York) (Thiruvananthapuram) M. R. Narayana (Bangalore) A. Vaidyanathan (Thiruvananthapuram) DTP: B. Akila Aims and Scope The Journal provides a forum for in-depth analysis of problems of social, economic, political, institutional, cultural and environmental transformation taking place in the world today, particularly in developing countries. It welcomes articles with rigorous reasoning, supported by proper documentation. Articles, including field-based ones, are expected to have a theoretical and/or historical perspective. The Journal would particularly encourage inter-disciplinary articles that are accessible to a wider group of social scientists and policy makers, in addition to articles specific to particular social sciences. The Journal also gives scope to Research Notes, Comments, Book Reviews and Review Articles. All correspondence to be addressed to: Editor Journal of Social and Economic Development Institute for Social and Economic Change Prof. V. K. R. V. Rao Avenue Nagarabhavi P.O. Bangalore 560 072, India Copyright Copyright rests with the authors of the respective papers, who alone are responsible for the views expressed. Journal of Social and Economic Development Vol. IV July – December 2002 No.2 Articles Spatial Poverty Traps in Rural India: An Exploratory Analysis of the Nature of the Causes 123 Amita Shah Time and Cost Overruns of the Power Projects in Kerala 148 N. Vijayamohanan Pillai and K. P. Kannan Economic and Environmental Status of Drinking Water Provision in Rural India 170 M. Ravichandran and S. Boopathi The Politics of Minority Languages: Some Reflections on the Maithili Language Movement 199 Manish Kumar Thakur Primary Education and Language in Goa: Colonial Legacy and Post-Colonial Conflicts 213 Afonso Botelho Inequality and Relative Poverty 235 N. Sreenivasa Iyengar Book Reviews Peter Ronald deSouza (ed.). Contemporary India — Transitions. 243 — Carol Upadhya S. Mahendra Dev, Piush Antony, V. Gayathri and R. P. Mamgain. 244 Social and Economic Security in India — M. Thangaraj Niraja Gopal Jayal and Sudha Pai (eds.). Democratic Governance in India: Challenges of Poverty, Development, and Identity 249 — Anand Inbanathan Naila Kabeer. Bangladeshi Women Workers and Labour Market Decisions: The Power to Choose — V. Gayathri 251 K. P. Kalirajan, G. Mythili and U. Sankar. Accelerating Growth Through Globalization of Indian Agriculture 253 — D. M. Diwakar Oliver Morrissey and Michael Tribe (eds.). Economic Policy and Manufacturing Performance in Developing Countries 258 — N. S. Siddharthan Ronaldo Seroa da Motta (eds.). Environmental Economics and Policy Making in Developing Countries — Current Issues 260 — K. N. Ninan Ranjani K. Murthy (ed.). Building Women's Capacities: Interven- tions in Gender Transformation — V. Gayathri 262 Books Received 264 Referees 265 Index 266 ISSN 0972 – 5792 Website: www.isec.ac.in/journal Spatial Poverty Traps in Rural India: An Exploratory Analysis of the Nature of the Causes Amita Shah * Abstract Analysis of the regional pattern of poverty in India reveals a number of spatial poverty traps, characterised by low levels of geographical capital and social-political marginalisation. Prima facie, these include vast tracts of dryland regions in the western-southern regions, and forest- based economies in the central-eastern regions. Apparently, poverty as reflected in the official statistics, depicts a rather contrary scenario with dryland regions having lower incidence of poverty despite their adverse agro-climatic conditions vis-à-vis forest-based regions. This could be largely due to the relatively more diverse and developed market economies, out-migration as an important livelihood strategy and the favourable agrarian conditions with better rights over land and other natural resources. Apparently, all these factors are missing in forest- based economies. This paper analyses the nature and causes of chronic poverty in the two sets of regions in a comparative framework. Introduction The recent discourse on poverty has highlighted increasing disparities across the states and regions in India. This has been manifested in terms of growing evidence on the rural-urban divide, frequent failure of crops and non-sustainability of livelihood base in the remote rural areas (RRAs) facing severe failure of entitlement as well as access to productive resources. The incidence of chronic and/or severe poverty can be largely attributed to the weak geographical capital reflected through unfavourable agro-climatic conditions, physical isolation, and social alienation faced by a vast proportion of the rural community in these regions (Bird et al. 2001). These factors seem to have widened the existing gulf between the ‘mainstream’ economic system and those who live in perpetual poverty in some of the remote rural areas in different parts of the country. While the bulk of the poor in India are concentrated in five major states, viz., Bihar, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan, and the north- * Gujarat Institute of Development Research, Gota, Ahmedabad - 380 060. e-mail: [email protected]. The author is grateful to Aasha Kapur Mehta, Kate Bird and Karne Moore for their comments on the earlier drafts. 124 Journal of Social and Economic Development July - Dec. 2002 eastern regions, conditions of acute or perpetual poverty exist in most parts of the country, including some of the developed states like Maharashtra, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Haryana (Kapur and Shah 2001). Prima facie, this dual scenario suggests the crucial importance of some of the spatial factors that put these regions at a disadvantage geographically, economically, and socially. Given the criticality of agricultural growth for reducing rural poverty in India, spatial poverty traps may broadly include two sets of regions: (i) vast tracts of dryland regions in the western-southern states and (ii) forest-based regions in the central- eastern states of the country. While the main constraints faced by the former emanate from the regions’ weak agro-climatic conditions, and relative neglect by the State in terms of investments for drought-proofing measures, the problems faced by the poor in the forest-based regions originate from a complex mix of factors like physical isolation, low social capabilities, and failure of entitlements to the regions’ rich natural resources. These initial conditions of marginalisation seem to have been aggravated by the political economy of mainstream development, which, by and large, had focused on growth maximisation rather than livelihood security for people who primarily depend on agriculture and related activities. Apparently, people in these two sets of regions face different kinds of poverty conditions and have different strategies to cope with them. Chart I depicts a broad typology of the situations likely to obtain in the two sets of regions representing the spatial poverty traps in rural India. Understanding these dynamics is very important for formulating a long- term strategy for amelioration of poverty, especially chronic poverty, in these regions. This paper tries to examine the nature and causes of chronic poverty among the two sets of regions in a comparative framework. The analysis is based mainly on secondary data at both state and regional levels. Moreover, it draws from the existing micro studies of the dryland and forest-based regions in the country. Incidence of Rural Poverty: A Spatial Profile Recent evidence pertaining to the post-liberalisation period, 1991–1997, clearly suggests that despite a significant increase in per capita income, rural poverty did not decline appreciably. This is mainly due to increased inequality not only vis- à-vis the urban areas but also within the rural population. As a result, real per capita consumption of the bottom 40 per cent of the rural population has experienced either negligible or negative growth during this period. It is therefore important to identify the regions where the bottom 40 per cent of the rural population is concentrated and understand the intensity of poverty in terms of the income gap represented by per capita household expenditure estimated by National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO). Ideally, identification of spatial poverty traps in RRAs requires disaggregated information
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