White flight : Evidence from India

White flight means migration by middle class white people from city to suburbs in British, American and European cities to go for better housing and social environment and move away from Muslims, blacks and immigrants.

Based on my limited observation I guess similar thing is happening.

Here it is Muslims, and rural people or dominating landed OBCs (coming from village to city) who are prompting "white flight" in addition to lure of better housing and facilities on periphery of cities as cities are poorly managed, no space to grow, very less privacy and many times unhealthy water and air conditions. So those who can afford move out.

Chandni chowk of Delhi or Shivajinagar of Bangalore or Bhindi bajar,byculla area of Mumbai are prime examples which are slowly converting into Muslim ghettos. Even in my hometown the place where I used to live earlier you would find a man with no job and a millionaire livieng in same mohalla but now it only has migrant laborer or purely antisocial elements as its residents.

Many people leave these areas because they fear bad influence on children , or restricted movement of women and girls or lack of equal standard society.


Recently when I was going throguh RBI website there was a list of minority population districts in India.I think this approach is very simplistic. better approach to measure extent ghettoize would be some kind of standard deviation. Take percentage of Muslims to total population say in a district or city and then choose lowest administrative unit in the city or area say a ward or revenue circle to find out % population of Muslims in that unit. Find its deviation from citywide number and square it and find root average of all such deviations. If they are concentrated in few areas this number would be high.

to avoid outliers stop when 90% population is covered as one or two families would be living in other areas which will grossly affect number.

Similar ratio can be found comparing average umber of Muslim students enrolled in area, ratio of Muslim workers in place where they are working and similar participation rate.

Mind you it does not measure relative deprivation but rather extend of segregation in areas. This would give policymakers a chance to calibrate their responses better suited to local needs rather than using blunt instruments all over India.