Thursday, July 31, 2014

Communalism pays in votes [Data Stories Update]

The previous elections were highly polarized in riot-hit Muzzaffarnagar and Western Uttar Pradesh in general:
What was apparent was that many,many booths across the constituency essentially turned into winner-take-all contests. In these booths, the largest party ended up with a very high vote share – often in excess of 90%. Whole villages or areas under a single booth chose to vote sharply one way or the other. This was in contrast to 2009, where the average booth saw a much more diverse pattern of voting behaviour.

The map below essentially extends that analysis to the whole of UP. The darker areas saw more polarised voting, and the lighter areas saw less. What we see is a sharp difference between Western UP (where Muzaffarnagar is located), and the rest of the state. Voting in both central and Eastern UP was far less polarised than it was in the West.


Plus, a toilet map of different social groups:
*Four regions – Maharashtra, Kerala, Gujarat and North East states stand out from the rest of the country, in having generally lower disparity measures than elsewhere, for dalits. In addition, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh seem to be relatively better off than other areas as well.
* The southern states of Karnataka, Andhra and Tamil Nadu are interesting. All three are relatively higher income states – yet on the disparity measure for dalits, their performance is spotty at best.
* For most districts, tribal households are even worse off than dalit households when it comes to access to toilets. The disparity measure for the country as a whole, for dalits, is about 0.61. For tribals, it is 0.43. Again, the North-East states stands out when it comes to access to toilets for tribal households vis-a-vis non-tribal households.
Also, interestingly, the Tribal disparity in use of toilets does not seem to track the Dalit disparity i.e there are states where Tribals fare better than Dalits.

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