Caste, Urbanization, and Spatial Divergence: Evidence from Karnataka

Abstract

Caste is the principal axis of social stratification and segregation in India. One of the normative promises of Indian urbanization is the potential breaking down of the rigidities that characterize traditional caste hierarchies in an agrarian regime. In particular, urbanization holds the promise of breaking down spatial barriers between traditional caste groups. Using a unique census-scale dataset from urban Karnataka containing detailed caste data, we present a comprehensive portrait of the relationship between urbanization and patterns of spatial clustering.  The decennial census data that has been the basis for all previous studies collects caste information along three broad aggregate categories, and the data is reported at the level of urban wards (that can be home to over 80,000 people in large urban centers) rather than at the level of a census block (the elementary spatial unit containing around 600 people in urban areas). We show that using high resolution data results in a portrait of segregation patterns that are markedly different from those reported in extant literature. 

We use a new class of perfectly decomposable divergence metrics that allow the use of an arbitrary discrete or continuous distribution as a normative reference. Divergence metrics (as opposed to extant entropy class metrics) are particularly useful to characterize caste based segregation as particular caste identities are relevant beyond general patterns of ethnic fractionalization – especially when decomposed across hierarchical geographic units. Our analysis shows that urban wards (the extant elementary spatial unit used in the literature) are heterogeneous and segregation within the wards at census-block scales account for a significant part of the overall patterns of city scale segregation. In particular, we show how intra-ward segregation is a central driver of ghettoization of the most spatially marginalized groups in urban India – Muslims and Dalits. We provide the first census-scale evidence in independent India that corroborates anecdotal accounts of urban ghettoization. 

About the speaker

Deepak Malghan is a theoretical ecological economist with primary interest in the general theory of scale. Scale measures the proportional relationship between the economy and ecosystem that contains and sustains it. Among other recognitions for his contributions to scale theory, he received the 2015 VKRV Rao Prize in Social Sciences, India's top award for a social scientist under the age of forty-five.  He is the first ecological economist and the first engineer to be recognized by a VKRV Rao Prize. His prize-winning scale theory based reformulation of ecological economics will appear as a monograph in 2019. 
 
Malghan is an associate professor at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB). Beyond theoretical ecological economics, his lab at IIMB has also pioneered new approaches to ethnic inequality and stratification. He is also an adjunct faculty at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) where he works on problems in urban hydrology. 

Malghan holds a Ph.D. (chemical engineering and ecological economics) from the University of Maryland, and an MPA from Princeton University. He also holds a trade certificate as an electrician with a specialization in alternator rewinding and renewable energy technologies.