Groundwater depletion has become an increasingly important policy concern in many countries around the world especially so in India, which is the largest user of groundwater for irrigation. Groundwater is contended to have ushered green revolution in the country. However, a downside to this pattern of development is that it is not sustainable.
This paper examines if the land parcels in Indian villages exhibit caste-based clustering. Using digitised cadastral maps of two villages in Uttar Pradesh and a unique data set collected by conducting a survey in these two villages, we determine the caste of the owner of each parcel. We then used spatial methods to calculate Moran's Index for caste-based clustering. In both villages, we observed a statistically significant level of clustering of land parcels based on caste groups.
