IN what context the word perpetual is used here?

IN what context the word perpetual is used here? My acquaintance with the barefoot ragpickers leads me to Seemapuri, a place on the periphery of Delhi yet miles away from it, metaphorically. Those who live here are squatters who came from Bangladesh back in 1971. Saheb's family is among them. Seemapuri was then a wilderness. It still is, but it is no longer empty. In structures of mud, with roofs of tiriancU tarpaulin, devoid of sewage, drainage or running water, live 10,000 ragpickers. They have lived here if this is only an excuse to explain away a perpetual state of poverty. I remember a story a man from Udipi once told me. As a young boy he would go to school past an old temple, where his father was al priest. He would stop briefly at the temple and pray for a pair of shoes. Thirty years later I visited his town and the temple, which was now drowned in an air of desolation. In the ba d, where lived the new priest, there