Amidst rumours of changing the demographic set up of J&K through the abrogation of articles 35A and 370, a study has demonstrated that minority ghettos are essential for the minority communities’ political survival.
A new research, published in the European Journal of Minority Studies, has investigated the effect of minority population’s concentration in a locality (clusterisation) upon the election outcome in a polarised nation. According to the research, in a divided electorate, ghettoization and subsequent consolidation of minority votes, result in an initial increase, followed by a marginal decrease in the number of elected minority representatives.
This is the overall trend that highly polarised electorates exhibit. This simply means that in nations where people vote for candidates from their own community only, a moderately-high amount of ghetto formation is favourable to minority representation, while low “clusterisation” is gravely detrimental to it.
In the original paper, the research was conducted in those states of the USA, where various surveys indicated a high degree of alienation and distrust between Blacks and Whites. The same mathematical model can be applied to study India, given how interfaith alienation has sharply arisen during the past few years.