How sustainable are the Indian cities (original) (raw)
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How Sustainable Are Indian Cities
The Professional Geographers, 2023
This article examines the fifth iteration of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) to determine the state of urban India. We have some surprising revelations. First, regardless of class and caste affiliations, the gap between the higher and lower hierarchies in the NFHS-5 has shrunk since the previous edition, with the exception of provision of on-premises drinking water. Second, in combination with the growing body of literature on caste and ethnicity-based residential segregation in Indian cities, the most recent batch of data asserts unequivocally that such a segregation mechanism has not manifested itself in unequal access to public amenities; this is another positive sign. Third, profound inequality exists along class lines. Because class is only distantly tied to caste or ethnic ascriptions, we can observe a vast swath of wealthless residuals along the caste-ethnic hierarchy. We publish these studies in light of India's globally attuned aspiration to attain Sustainable Development Goals 6, 7, 10, and 11.
Recasting inequality: residential segregation by caste over time in urban India
Environment and Urbanization, 2019
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...
Spatial Demography, 2021
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.
Spatial Segregation in Indian Cities: Does the City Size Matter?
Environment and Urbanization ASIA, 2018
As India transforms into an increasingly urban society, ward-level data from the 2011 Indian Census is analysed to decipher how inequality patterns vary across different scales of urban settlements, highlighting the spatial segregation by gender, caste, socioeconomic status (SES) and access to goods, by examining a specific state (Uttar Pradesh) as a microcosm to account for the nation's enormous socio-political diversity. Caste-based spatial segregation is greater in small and medium cities compared to metropolises, possibly from greater intermingling of socio-cultural identities in larger urban locales that lower caste barriers. This also applies to segregation by SES. Contrastingly, segregation by gender or by access to essential goods is higher in larger and medium cities. Within cities, caste-based segregation is greater than that by SES. A stark spatial segregation in terms of households' (HHs) access to essential public and private goods exists, often higher than even caste-based segregation. Summary explanations for these differentials in spatial segregation across settlements scales are offered, highlighting probable further research aspects.
Urban Inequality in India: Going Beyond the Income for Inclusive Urbanisation
Urbanisation is sometimes synonymous to inequality. It is because of the fact that urban system is heterogeneous from its very inception. And that was due to more than one reason. The urban structure (dependent on land availability and land use), the supply of amenities and the monetised economy – everything created inequality among the inhabitants of urban areas irrespective of size. And that is the reason why even the most advanced capitalist economy had to allow government intervention. Whenever we talk about inequality, we start with the most commonly perceptible one, i.e. income and extensive researches were done on the dimension and impacts of income inequality. However, with changing perceptions about development, we have understood that income (and consequent consumption) cannot be the only measure of inequality. Most of the other requirements of life can be attained with a higher level of income but that is not the story always. Especially, in the urban areas, there are amenities, which are to be provided by the concerned authority. Income can sometimes buy substitutes of such amenities sometimes, e.g., you can install your own water filter if potable water is not available publicly. This presentation is an attempt to look into the issue of inequality going beyond the standard yardstick of income.
books.google.com, 2011
India’s urban transition, a once in history phenomenon, has the potential to shift the country’s social, environmental, political, and economic trajectory. It could catalyse, the end of calorie poverty if post-1989 China is any example. It could deepen democracy and human development, leading to more Indians living longer, better quality and better educated lives. It could enable the transition to a less resource intensive development, with lower throughputs, footprints and nvironmental impacts that could reshape global trends because of India’s demographic and economic size. But these are only aspirations. Hard evidence indicates that much work needs to be done to realize these opportunities over the next twenty to thirty years.
GeoScape
The literature on the concentration of urban poverty has considered two kinds of locations as the pockets of poverty: slums (vs. non-slums) and towns (vs. cities). Moving beyond these binaries in discussing spatial concentration of urban poverty, we have made an intersection of these two kinds of residential locations in the post-reform India using four rounds of data from the National Sample Survey. The proportion of relatively poor households was lower in city slum areas than in towns (both slum and non-slum households). Next, this paper tries to find out the level of basic services availability across these intersectional spatial categories and how public policies respond to existing poverty. Availability of basic services was higher in city slums than in town non-slum households. Across all these urban areas, the poor had a lower access to services than the non-poor, and the gap between them had increased over time. These findings also pose serious concerns on the geographical t...
India has the world's second largest urban population (after China). This paper shows the large disparities within this urban population in healthrelated indicators. It shows the disparities for child and maternal health, provision for health care and housing conditions between the poorest quartile and the rest of the urban population for India and for several of its most populous states. In the poorest quartile of India's urban population, only 40 per cent of 12 to 23 monthold children were completely immunized in 2004-2005, 54 per cent of under-five year-olds were stunted, 82 per cent did not have access to piped water at home and 53 per cent were not using a sanitary flush or pit toilet. The paper also shows the large disparities in eight cities between the poorest population (the population in the city that is within the poorest quartile for India's urban areas), the population living in settlements classified as "slums" and the non-slum population. It also highlights the poor performance in some health-related indicators for the population that is not part of the poorest quartile in several states -for instance in under-five mortality rates, in the proportion of stunted children and in the proportion of households with no piped water supply to their home.
Indian society divided along the lines of Caste is a unique case for the study of exclusion. Caste based divisions and consequent exclusion has a significant impact on human well being in India. Even after significant restructuring of living spaces and social equations in the form of urbanisation, exclusion is implicit in Indian cities. It manifest in the form of social and spatial exclusion in Indian urban landscapes. In this study, we examine linkages between socio-spatial exclusion and health and well-being through certain pathways. Based in an urban village of Varanasi in India, this study is built on a mixed method. The population of the study area, although historically an integral part of city, were found to be marginalised and excluded socially and spatially in the whole process of urban transformations. Continued exclusion suffered by this urban village amid the city influenced well-being of its inhabitants negatively, particularly their patterns of health.