ID | 180269 |
Title Proper | Permanent cordon sanitaire |
Other Title Information | intra-village spatial segregation and social distance in India |
Language | ENG |
Author | Bharathi, Naveen ; Malghan, Deepak ; Rahman, Andaleeb |
Summary / Abstract (Note) | Social distance,’ and ‘social distancing’ have become the linguae francae of our world ravaged by COVID-19. Pandemic related social distancing prescriptions, however, do not operate in a vacuum. How do social distancing strategies for containing the pandemic intersect with extant social divisions? Using a unique census-scale micro-dataset from rural Karnataka (an Indian state as large as France), we meditate on this question by drawing on theoretical insights from multiple disciplines including the intellectual genealogy of ‘social distance’ as a measure of social divisions. Our rich dataset contains independent India’s first census-scale enumeration (n ≈ 36.5 million) and coding of elementary caste categories (≈700 jatis). Our dataset is also the first to combine self-reported jati and religion information. To the best of our knowledge, we present the first systematic large-n portrait of intra-village residential segregation in rural India. Our micro-segregation analysis along jati and religion axes provides evidence for a ‘permanent cordon sanitaire.’ Our analysis also sheds light on how the pandemic intersects with internal migration trajectories in India. |
`In' analytical Note | Contemporary South Asia Vol. 29, No.2; Jun 2021: p.212-219 |
Journal Source | Contemporary South Asia Vol: 29 No 2 |
Key Words | Caste ; Religion ; Intergroup Contact ; Micro-Segregation ; Wald-Wolfowitz Runs Test |