Recasting inequality: residential segregation by caste over time in urban India

Abstract

This paper analyses residential segregation over time in Indian cities. We examine the change in caste-based segregation longitudinally, while exploring how caste dynamics manifest differently across city size and region. The paper uses successive rounds of decennial census data, from 2001 and 2011. Contrary to expectations, we find residential segregation by caste/tribe persisting or worsening in 60 per cent of cities in our all-India sample, with differences by region and city size. For example, in the states of Karnataka, Haryana, Punjab and Tamil Nadu, a majority of cities experienced decreasing levels of residential segregation by caste/tribe, while in Maharashtra and Gujarat, 34 and 29 per cent of cities, respectively, experienced an increase. A greater proportion of small cities (population 20,000–49,999) than large cities (100,000–999,999) experienced an increase in residential segregation between 2001 and 2011. Across all city-size categories, the dominant trend has been no improvement in residential segregation by caste/tribe over time.

Fractal urbanism: City size and residential segregation in India

“…Given data limitations, extant urban residential segregation portraits in India have relied on the ward as the spatial unit of analysis (Sidhwani 2015;Singh et al 2019;Vithayathil and Singh 2012).…”

“…However ethnographic case studies have documented how the city as a "liberating space of anonymity" has left residential segregation largely untouched so that even upwardly mobile Dalit residents in a city continue to be spatially segregated (Banerjee and Mehta 2017). Despite the share of lower castes in urban India increasing (Teltumbde 2020), larger cities in India continue to be characterized by pockets with negligible share of marginal groups (Bharathi et al 2019;Mitra and Nagar 2018;Singh et al 2019).…”

“…Existing segregation studies in India have relied on aggregate ward-level data due to lack of data availability at more finer spatial scales (Bharathi, Malghan, and Rahman 2019;Sidhwani 2015;Singh, Vithayathil, and Pradhan 2019;Vithayathil and Singh 2012) even when it is the immediate neighborhood in which one grows up as a child that determines opportunities for mobility (Chetty, Hendren, and Katz 2016). Wards are the most elementary administrative and political units in urban India that can contain over 100,000 residents in large cities.…”

Spatial Segregation in Indian Cities

“…This is crucial on the twin grounds that families do not take their housing decisions simply based on their caste, religion, and income alone and that the trajectories of their life-courses are not solely determined by these aspects as well. It would also be interesting to examine the trajectories of change in these spatial segregation patterns over time and follow their respective trends for each individual city, as well as across settlements grouped by size, as done by Singh et al (2016), using data from consecutive past and future censuses. Such an exercise, if undertaken, would certainly provide a more nuanced understanding on how the changing patterns of spatial segregation by caste or other such aspects differ across various scales of urban settlements and where it may be feasibly influenced by existent dynamics of urbanization, migration, globalization and state policies.…”

Editorial: Getting housing back onto the development agenda: the many roles of housing and the many services it should provide its inhabitants

“… 23. Singh, Gayatri, Trina Vithayathil and Kanhu Charan Pradhan (2019), “Recasting inequality: residential segregation by caste over time in urban India”, Environment and Urbanization Vol 31, No 2, pages 615–634. …”