Kalahandi-Balangir-Koraput—the poverty triad, also known as KBK—is a geographical marker of destitution. The contiguous eight districts, with over 12,000 villages and covering over 30 per cent of Odisha, have poverty embedded in their landscape and time. As one explores its history, the region appears Janus-faced. With dense forests, it receives around 1,400 mm of rain a year, has over 50 rivers with perennial flows, and regularly records snowfall-like events. It was regarded the “rice bowl” of the Central Provinces of the British India.
Yet over the past 125 years, drought has struck the region for 100 years, 10 famines have left a collective memory of a dance macabre, and 20 severe floods have wiped out hundreds of villages. Between 1956 and 2005, over 10,000 people are recorded to have died of starvation, triggering an unprecedented uprooting of people and journeys to nowhere. Disasters have namesakes, as if to carry forward the memory. Many in this region bear names that recall a cataclysmic drought or famine, either of 1899, 1919-1920 or 1965-1966.
A common way people in the KBK region identify themselves is by saying: “I am a sukhbasi.” The term sukhbasi means those who live happily. But here it carries the weight of cataclysmic droughts and famines that have turned farmers in what was once the “rice bowl”, into landless labourers. And so, when they identity as sukhbasi, it implies: “I no longer have anything left to lose.” KBK is the land of sukhbasis—of landless labourers, or the orphans of ...
This article was originally published as part of the cover story Poverty’s own republic in the May 1-15, 2026 print edition of Down To Earth