Impacts of caste based residential segregation in rural areas : a thesis

Abstract

India is the world’s second largest populous country with a population of 1.34 billion, among which around 70 percent of the population are found to be living in the villages as of 2016, and they sustain primarily on agriculture (The Hindu, 2016). The social system in rural India is mainly centered around the caste structure, its organization and caste identities. Caste plays a major role in rural areas. Social divisions of Indian society are primarily based on the caste system. Caste system in the rural areas decides the settlement pattern and settlement location. In most of the cases, caste of a person living in a rural area determines the type of work he has to do and also the location of his settlement. Thus the caste system in India is a leading cause for residential segregation in rural areas. Generally, residential segregation is evident when the caste system is not accepted in the society. This phenomenon is further accompanied by some other factors such as Conflicts between the dominant caste and the inferior caste people living in these areas and Migration due to these conflicts. Amidst these impacts people find it easy to get segregated in order to gain Identity, Cultural affinity and Security. Due to these factors people feel better to live in the segregated pockets rather than the conflict zones. But this has many effects on the people living in these areas.

As said by the father of the nation M.K. Gandhi “The true development of a nation is only made through the development of its rural areas”. Thus the need for studying the impacts of the caste based residential segregation came up. The rural areas in India people give more importance to the caste or sub-caste they belong to and the people living there are divided on the basis of caste. This further accounts for disparities at various levels among the segregated households. Knowingly or unknowingly people tend to prefer one group more than the other, if segregation persists, the gap between different communities increases significantly, may it be among the upper and lower caste people or people belonging to different ethnicities etc., in terms of their quality of living, status of well being and the availability of level of services. To further know the impacts of this phenomenon various historical and contemporary evidences were studied and three parameters were identified. These broad parameters were studied among the selected study area and analysis has been done. The selected three parameters were Quality of living of people living in the study area, Accessibility to services to the people in the study area and the Morphology of the study area. Then the objectives for this study have been designed, such as: To study and identify the factors responsible for the caste based residential segregation of the community. To explore the impacts of caste based residential segregation for the selected indicators in the study area. To analyze the level of services, livelihood conditions and other morphological aspects available for the population of the village on the basis of caste. To develop guidelines for upliftment of the rural areas where the caste based residential segregation exists.

The study area was selected on the basis of two factors first one being, that the study area must be a predominant rural area and it must have visible caste pockets where people belonging to different communities live in their respective caste pockets. Considering these two factors two villages were selected. Both the villages Jammipalem and Layguntapadu are villages predominantly with rural characteristics.These villages belong to the kovur mandal of the Nellore district from the state of Andhra Pradesh. Two villages were selected to know if the size and population of these rural areas has any affect on the impacts of the selected parameters. Layguntapadu village is twice the size and has population nearly one and half times that of the village Jammipalem. Both the villages have a visible number of caste pockets where people from particular caste live in them. After the selection of these villages the data was acquired through two sources; Primary sources and Secondary sources respectively. Under the primary sources the data was collected using the survey techniques such as household survey, collection of cognitive maps, focus group discussions and personal level interviews. This data IMPACTS OF CASTE BASED RESIDENTIAL SEGREGATION IN RURAL AREAS v was used to know the structure of caste system and its impacts of caste based residential segregation in these villages. Under the secondary sources, data regarding the demography, village boundaries, area of the villages and other details were collected from various online sources. The broad three parameters which were discussed in the beginning were further divided into 10 brief factors on which the data was collected. The collected data was analyzed on the basis of these 10 factors and then co-related with the caste system in the villages to know the impacts of caste system on these segregated caste pockets in these villages.

This co-relation analysis was done using the SPSS software and the analysis which was done through this process shows that caste based residential segregation is impacting the various parameters which were considered. After analyzing the acquired data, it was clear that segregation of people in different pockets of these villages are the main cause for disparities among the people living in these pockets.

Through this analysis the need for recommendations has been found. Thus a need for an integrated village development plan with an emphasis on land use came up. It must be considering 4 major land use patterns such as type of agriculture land area, residential land use, recreational landuse and community spaces. This could reduce the caste based settlement pattern and its impacts. Then the need to rename these caste pockets. The selected villages had different caste pockets and these pockets were named after the majority caste living in the pocket; which gives a predefined image about the people living in that pocket, thus it would be much better if the names of these pockets would be changed according to some famous social workers or any ideal person from the village, rather than naming it after the caste that resides over there. Thus the study tries to reduce this type of caste based residential segregation further and helps in the upliftment of the existing impacts on the people caused due to the caste based residential segregation