Livelihood Insecurity, Social Exclusion, and Household Adaptation in Jammu and Kashmir Borderlands: A Sociological Analysis of Selected Rural Communities

Borderland households in Jammu and Kashmir occupy a distinctive social location in which territorial exposure, livelihood uncertainty, unequal service access and rural development institutions intersect. This revised manuscript specifies a field-valid empirical design for comparing R.S. Pura and Bishnah in Jammu district with Balakote and Mendhar in Poonch district. The four blocks represent analytically contrasting border settings: relatively accessible International Border plains and hilly Line of Control-adjacent areas. The study is designed around a target of 400 completed household interviews, multistage selection, three explicitly defined composite measures, and hypothesis-specific statistical models. The Livelihood Insecurity Index and Social Exclusion Index are treated as formative composites, while household resilience is defined as a distinct recovery/continuity outcome rather than being mechanically built from the same predictors later used in regression. This correction removes a major source of circularity in the earlier analytical model. Because the materials available for this revision do not contain a verified primary field dataset, field dates, interviewer logs, consent records or an ethics approval record, no simulated observations are reported as empirical findings. Tables 9-12 therefore provide analysis-ready reporting structures to be populated only after genuine survey data are imported, validated and analysed. The paper offers a publication-safe methodology, a corrected hypothesis framework, a critical 2020-2025 literature synthesis, and a reproducible pathway for generating genuine results without fabricating household evidence.