The Six Segments of Poverty
Through his research and observations, Mahesh Sriram, our Indian program director, has developed a 2×3 classification schema to organize the various impoverished populations in India. He has found that the schema holds in other developing countries as well, like China, for example. He divides the impoverished first into urban and rural segments. He then breaks the urban segment into three sub-segments: migrant workers, slum dwellers, and mainstream poor. The rural segment is also divided into three sub-segments: tribal villages, farming villages, and developing villages.
Urban migration is occurring at increasing rates in India, and the path that many families follow to arrive in the cities and pull themselves into the middle class follows these six segments. It may take generations for families to move from tribal villages towards life in the big cities, but a lot of families move at least one step up the scale over their lifetime.
During their time in India, students study the six segments of urban and rural poverty and use these six segments to study urban migration in India. Students begin in tribal villages, the groups of people most removed from the urban system, and progress through the stages of migration until they finish in the homes of urban families who have managed to pull themselves out of poverty and reach the middle class.
Urban migration is occurring at increasing rates in India, and the path that many families follow to arrive in the cities and pull themselves into the middle class follows these six segments. It may take generations for families to move from tribal villages towards life in the big cities, but a lot of families move at least one step up the scale over their lifetime.
During their time in India, students study the six segments of urban and rural poverty and use these six segments to study urban migration in India. Students begin in tribal villages, the groups of people most removed from the urban system, and progress through the stages of migration until they finish in the homes of urban families who have managed to pull themselves out of poverty and reach the middle class.
