Confronting the Challenges of Household Selection in a Survey of Bangalore

Citizenship Index: A Brief Overview

The Brown-Janaagraha Citizenship Index (CI) is a massive undertaking that aims to understand the quality of citizenship in urban India, in particular, Bangalore. This topic is of great relevance as India is rapidly urbanizing which, in turn, means the world is rapidly urbanizing since a sizeable chunk (1.2 billion) of the world’s population (7 billion) resides in India. It is posited that the population of India’s cities will be 590 million by 2030. That is twice the population of United States today and 40 percent of India’s total population (McKinsey, 2010)

So, what explains the rapid and unceasing growth of urban India? Several postulations have been made in reference to rural-urban migration. One such theory is based on the Todaro (1969) and the Harris and Todaro (1970) model. It explains rural-urban migration in purely economic terms by presenting it as a function of the income differential adjusted for the probability of finding a job (Todaro, 1970).  However, this probabilistic model does not hold for all Indian cities. Migration to Delhi, for instance, was found to be an exception as migration to Delhi occurred for the objective of maximization of family rather than individual benefits (Banerjee, 1986). This suggests that factors other than economics are at play.

Push factors refer to inadequate non-agricultural jobs in the place of origin, political or social discrimination, poor public services and environmental degradation. These and other harsh push factors make migration the rational economic decision. It is posited that internal migration in India at large is ‘distress-led,’ and is induced by the absolute desperation experienced at the migrant’s place of origin (Bhatt, 2009).

Urbanization has also been attributed to the “attraction of city lights.” Pull factors refer to the attractiveness of an urban area because of its jobs, promise of higher incomes, prospects in marriage and the existence of social support networks for help in finding jobs (Bhatt, 2009). The decision to migrate also includes the expectation that in a city, a migrant will cease to be discriminated by his/her caste, gender, income, etc. Researchers want to explore the commonly used epithet, “amazing urban India,” as it relates to the idea of citizenship.

However the presence of slums, high rates of sex-selective abortion, and inept public goods suggests extreme inequality. The wealthiest tenth of the population typically earns over half of total income (Vasconcellos, 2001). We hypothesize that income inequality is just one of many factors affecting urban quality of life. CI will survey 6,000 Bangaloreans to grasp what it means to be a citizen of urban India in the hopes of understanding whether urban India really offers a higher quality of life and citizenship. Conducted over four months using pioneering methods in survey research, this project will be the first of its kind in India.

• What is Citizenship?
  For the purposes of CI’s research, citizenship is divided into the civil, political and social as per T. H. Marshall’s Citizenship and Social Class (Marshall, 1992). Civil citizenship refers mainly to individual freedoms such as speech, religion, the right to property, the right to nondiscrimination on the basis of gender and race, among other freedoms. Political citizenship refers primarily to the right to vote and run for office. The social component of citizenship is a newer concept and it is defined by Marshall in two parts: a. “the right to a modicum of economic welfare and security” and b. “the right to share to the full in the social heritage and to live the life of a civilized being according to the standards prevailing in the society.” (Marshall, 1992) This definition gained ground as recently as the 1990s and it has manifested itself in India in legislative form. Social citizenship can roughly be surmised by the rights that a developing country like India might strive for: right to housing, right to education, right to a certain standard of living.
  In addition to testing the presence of the aforementioned definition of citizenship, CI will aim to identify the importance of two additional concepts: social exclusion and civic identity. They are briefly described below.

• Social Exclusion
  Simply put social exclusion is, “the systematic marginalization of some specific groups from normal citizenship rights, or to systematic prevalence of prejudice, making citizenship rights, though legally available, actually less than fully operative” (Janaagraha, 2013). The researchers at Brown and Janaagraha have theories about who might be prone to this type of exclusion. In Bangalore, the researchers are looking to see if there are differences on many fronts such as caste (particularly the marginalization of SC/ST), gender, income, region of India from which one originates, and religion. Apart from these traditional modes of discrimination, the researchers are interested and open to understanding whether there are other arenas of discrimination specific to Bangalore. One hypothesized mode is the location of one’s neighborhood in Bangalore: does living in the periphery of Bangalore afford one a better quality of citizenship than living in the center? Is it the other way around?
  These and other socio-demographic characteristics are put to the test in CI’s exhaustive questionnaire. If someone is denied his/her rights because of any of these characteristics, it will be labeled a truncation of one’s citizenship.

• Civic Identity
  The researchers hope to identify the obligations, motivations, and actions of Bangaloreans and whether they vary on the basis of a certain characteristic. They are interested in understanding not only the relationships between citizens and their state, but also those between citizens and citizens. What motivates citizens to actively participate in their surrounding? What differentiates the active participants from the passive ones? Who votes and why? What social norms contribute to the identity of citizens and their belief of their place in society? The researchers hypothesize that, in addition to citizen state relations, relationships between citizens are also responsible for engendering discrimination—both social and institutional.
  As such, CI will be inquiring about the nature of citizen-citizen relationships in the respondent’s life in an effort to determine whether it contributes to institutional or social discrimination.

Ideal Household Selection

The CI sampling framework uses various innovative methods to avoid bias and to present a representative sample of Bangalore.  The sample size is 6,000 citizens chosen by stratified random sampling to ensure proportionate representation on various fronts: core and periphery areas as well as overall geographical representation, socioeconomic representation of all strata, and representation of selected minority and historically marginalized populations. Each method of purposive sampling is outlined below:

• Geographical representation
  • Bangalore is divided up into 198 wards. Central wards are densely populated while the outer wards are sparsely populated. Wards are further divided up into polling parts.[5] First, the researchers chose 20 wards on the basis of geographic location and other factors that are discussed later. CI will test 30 polling parts in each of the 20 wards chosen. In each polling part, the team will conduct 30 surveys. Geographic variety is critical, as such CI will sample appropriately so that any differences between the quality of citizenship in core vs. periphery areas are revealed.
  • Groundmapping is a method by which selected areas are scoped out to determine their population density and socioeconomic spread. Earlier, ward boundaries and even smaller polling part boundaries were roughly used to define a community. Since Bangalore is incredibly heterogeneous in that one can find shacks erected next to expensive high rises, groundmapping is critical because it will prevent us from making false assumptions about what constitutes a neighborhood. Groundmapping is also critical in helping researchers formulate their field plan as it helps us identify an x (discussed later) because we are surveying the polling part for its density and then putting it in perspective with the number of desired surveys. This method provides an alternative, more natural, means of identifying a neighborhood as well as a numerical tool for creating a field plan.
• Socioeconomic representation
  • As mentioned earlier, groundmapping allows us to observe the spread of people over a polling part. Additionally, the counts of population density allow us to assign an ‘x,’ which is defined as the number of houses left in between surveys. If an area is densely populated, the x will be larger because fewer people have to be interviewed to understand the neighborhood. If an area is sparsely populated, the x will be smaller because more people need to be interviewed to get a sense of the neighborhood. Having a neighborhood where density varies across the polling part means that there will be multiple x’s—one for each region of the polling part as determined by its density.
• Minority/marginalized community representation
  • Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe
    Data depicting the size of SC/ST population at the ward level was obtained from the 2011 Census. 21 wards were systematically chosen[6] to give a sample that would ultimately yield a representative number of SC/ST respondents.
  • Religious minority
    A five-step process that, “results in classifying a ward (and all polling parts within the ward) as either ‘religious minority’ or ‘non-religious minority’” (Janaagraha, 2013) was employed. A proxy variable was used to classify the wards and polling parts as the Census does not disclose data with a breakdown by religion. The 20 wards were also chosen on the basis of their categorization as ‘religious minority,’ or ‘non-religious minority,’ for the objective of obtaining a representative sample.

A Preliminary Analysis

As of June 17, the researchers completed 245 surveys in Ward 1. This was one of the 20 chosen wards for its characteristically high religious minority and SC/ST population. In order to test whether we had used the right method of household selection, I performed a preliminary analysis of the data collected in Ward 1. I was able to determine whether the sampling framework was working to produce a representative sample by answering the following:

• Were the surveys spread out consistently throughout the polling part as per the density observed in the groundmaps?
• Was the method for avoiding bias by socio-economic status effective? Are the groundmappers’ and the surveyors’ classifications consistent?
• Did we meet the SC/ST and Religious minority benchmarks set for Ward 1?
• What is the socio-demographic makeup of Ward 1 respondents? How did they respond to the survey?