Caste, Space, and Green
Caste Geography and the Distribution of Urban Green Infrastructure in Delhi
The Problem
Urban green space research in Delhi — and in Indian cities more broadly — has largely avoided the question of caste. Distributive analyses focus on income, settlement type, or administrative classification. This project argues that caste geography is a structuring force in urban environmental inequality that existing frameworks systematically undercount.
Approach
Using Census 2011 data at the enumeration block level, the study maps the relationship between Scheduled Caste population concentration and green space distribution across Delhi. NDVI derived from satellite imagery and per-capita green space estimates provide the environmental outcome variables.
Methods include Spearman rank correlation, Geographically Weighted Spatial Error Regression, bivariate LISA (Local Indicators of Spatial Association), and Lorenz curve and Gini coefficient analysis to assess the degree of distributional inequality.
The analysis is designed to distinguish between the effects of settlement type, income, and caste geography — asking whether caste concentration predicts green space deprivation independently of class-based explanations.
Argument
The preliminary findings suggest that caste geography and green space deprivation are not simply co-located by coincidence. Historically, the spatial logic of caste-based residential segregation in Delhi has deposited Dalit and lower-caste communities in peripheral, low-amenity zones. Urban green infrastructure investment has followed — and reinforced — these pre-existing geographies rather than counteracting them.
This makes caste a recognition justice problem before it is a distributive one: planning frameworks that do not name caste cannot address caste-based deprivation, even when their stated goal is equitable green space distribution.
Significance
The paper contributes to a growing literature on environmental casteism in Indian cities while grounding it empirically at a scale — the enumeration block — that allows spatial precision rather than aggregate inference.
Status
Analysis ongoing. Part of the doctoral dissertation on spatial justice and urban green infrastructure in Delhi.