Towards an Enhanced Understanding of Caste-Based Residential Segregation in Indian Cities: Reflections from Kolkata and Bengaluru

Abstract

As India urbanizes, residential patterns in her towns/cities have become progressively more complex in terms of caste, religion, income and other socioeconomic attributes. Many have conventionally used the Dissimilarity Index (an aspatial measure) to decipher such segregation patterns, yet seldom investigated the vital role of spatial scales and local geographies in shaping them. Utilizing neighborhood-level caste and demographic data for the cities of Kolkata and Bengaluru, this paper unravels the intricacies of caste-based residential segregation patterns and compares their respective trends, using spatially sensitive segregation indices to examine the interactions among different caste groups at varying spatial scales. The decomposition of these indices into local spatial segregation indices allowed examination of the intra-city segregation patterns existing within these urban spaces more thoroughly. Findings reveal that, in 2011, Kolkata exhibited a greater degree of caste-based residential segregation than Bengaluru. In terms of their respective decadal trends (1991–2011), caste primacy still played a crucial role in molding residential patterns across Kolkata's neighborhoods, since an almost negligible improvement was discerned in its global indices. The local segregation patterns, however, revealed a complex geography of caste-based residential patterning in these cities, thereby underscoring the necessity of considering scale-dependencies and spatial relationships in such studies.