Measuring Residential Segregation across Major Indian Cities

Trina Vithayathil, Brown University
Gayatri Singh, Brown University

This paper looks at residential segregation in India’s six largest cities. We use ward level 2001 census data to examine residential segregation by caste and socioeconomic status in the cities of Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, and Mumbai. We additionally employ two methods to investigate how differing ward sizes across the six cities affect our results. Initial findings suggest that residential segregation by caste is considerably greater in the older mega cities of Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata—cities that became important national and international centers for commerce and governance either prior to or during British Colonial rule. In comparison, Bangalore and Hyderabad, with their recent rise in the information economy, have relatively lower levels of residential segregation by caste.