In poverty’s own republic, its sway no longer shocks. But here, something more insidious seems to be taking shape. As the lives of Sangu, Phanas and Sana suggest, poverty is becoming hereditary, at least for a sizeable population in certain geographies. Some years ago, the Chronic Poverty Research Centre (CPRC), an international association of researchers and academicians, published findings of a rare study that tracked 3,000 households for 30 years (1968-99) across six states—Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar and Telangana, home to the country’s poorest districts, including Balangir, Nuapada and the Bastar region. Over this period, the study examined what drives poverty; what retains it; and what enabled people to escape it.
Aasha Kapur Mehta, the economist who led the study, says the survey explains the “two Indias”. One, among the fastest growing economies of the world; and the other, the persistently poor. She says the forensic study answers the two questions that India’s geography of poverty evokes: “Why do some people remain poor for a longer period of time? Why do poor remain poor forever?” She identifies a new set of poor population emerging in the poorest districts—the chronic poor, difficult to eradicate but easy to mutate.
The chronic poor are “people, households and social groups who are poor for sustained and significant or extended periods of their lives and whose families and children may inherit this persistent condition. While chronic poverty is dynamic in that people do climb out of, or fall into poverty in significant numbers, exiting such poverty can prove difficult.” And they constitute about half of the poor population. The slipping back of people who had risen above the poverty line is the most important reason of chronic poverty, according to the CPRC study.
Most of the chronic poor live in natural resource-dense areas—most likely in forest areas. Their dependence on these resources is high. They have a long history of being poor and therefore lack the capacity to absorb unforeseen shocks such as natural disasters or personal emergencies like health crises. With each disaster, each health expense and each policy decision that affects these factors, poor persons take the first—and often fast—step towards chronic poverty.
People in tribal and forested or degraded forest regions are more likely to remain poor forever. “In forest regions, the issues are not so much agronomic or natural conditions as poor people’s access to the resources that are there, their human capital endowment and the way they are incorporated ...
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