IIMB doctoral scholar receives honorable mention for PhD paper at Global Research Conference on caste at Saïd Business School
Gopinath Annadurai is a doctoral scholar in the Public Policy area
25 July, 2025, Bengaluru: Gopinath Annadurai, a doctoral programme student in the Public Policy area at IIMB, received the Honorable Mention – Best PhD Paper Award at the 3rd Global Research Conference on Caste, Business and Society, held at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, from 21 to 23 July 2025.
The award recognized Gopinath’s paper for its innovative and empirically grounded contribution to understanding caste-based spatial segregation in rural India. Titled ‘India Lives in Her Caste Hamlets: Rethinking the Village in Caste-Divided Rural India’, the study interrogates one of India’s most cited demographic adages —“India lives in her villages”—and reframes it through the lens of intra-village caste segregation in the agrarian social order. Drawing on census-scale administrative data spanning over 1.7 million hamlets across all districts of India, the paper constructs the first-ever nationwide portrait of how residential segregation operates within the village unit itself.
Gopinath’s research indicates that India’s caste-based spatial hierarchies are not merely inter-village phenomena but are deeply embedded within the village fabric. The findings compel a re-evaluation of rural India’s administrative categories and spatial assumptions, deriving implications for development policy, resource allocation, and theories of social justice.
Gopinath’s broader research lies at the intersection of political economy and political sociology, with a focus on social and spatial mobility among historically marginalized groups. His work combines large-scale administrative data, spatial analytics, and quasi-experimental methods to investigate how ranked ethnic structures shape access to public goods, educational and employment outcomes, and mental health disparities.
IIMB doctoral scholar receives honorable mention for PhD paper at Global Research Conference on caste at Saïd Business School
Gopinath Annadurai is a doctoral scholar in the Public Policy area
25 July, 2025, Bengaluru: Gopinath Annadurai, a doctoral programme student in the Public Policy area at IIMB, received the Honorable Mention – Best PhD Paper Award at the 3rd Global Research Conference on Caste, Business and Society, held at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, from 21 to 23 July 2025.
The award recognized Gopinath’s paper for its innovative and empirically grounded contribution to understanding caste-based spatial segregation in rural India. Titled ‘India Lives in Her Caste Hamlets: Rethinking the Village in Caste-Divided Rural India’, the study interrogates one of India’s most cited demographic adages —“India lives in her villages”—and reframes it through the lens of intra-village caste segregation in the agrarian social order. Drawing on census-scale administrative data spanning over 1.7 million hamlets across all districts of India, the paper constructs the first-ever nationwide portrait of how residential segregation operates within the village unit itself.
Gopinath’s research indicates that India’s caste-based spatial hierarchies are not merely inter-village phenomena but are deeply embedded within the village fabric. The findings compel a re-evaluation of rural India’s administrative categories and spatial assumptions, deriving implications for development policy, resource allocation, and theories of social justice.
Gopinath’s broader research lies at the intersection of political economy and political sociology, with a focus on social and spatial mobility among historically marginalized groups. His work combines large-scale administrative data, spatial analytics, and quasi-experimental methods to investigate how ranked ethnic structures shape access to public goods, educational and employment outcomes, and mental health disparities.