Over the past decade, India’s BJP-led national government has undertaken various reforms to welfare programs, aiming to reduce the scope for local officials to manipulate beneficiary selection or divert funds. Nevertheless state and local governments retained considerable discretion over beneficiary selection and the local delivery of central government funded welfare benefits, and have maintained exclusive control over state-funded programs. We use longitudinal household survey data from the state of West Bengal to evaluate the effects of these reforms on pro-poor targeting of welfare programs, and political competition between the BJP and the TMC, the incumbent political party in the state. We find that welfare programs were better targeted toward poorer and socially disadvantaged households in the period 2014–2018 than in 2010–2013. However the welfare reforms do not explain why the BJP’s vote share increased, as its electoral gains from the new nationwide programs were outweighed by their losses, stemming from the increased support for the TMC from recipients of new state and pre-existing benefits.

Together with private transfers, centralized redistribution policies form the backbone of social welfare systems worldwide. Examining their interplay is therefore crucial for understanding and addressing inequality. We investigate the relationship between private transfers and public redistribution policies using an experiment with nearly 4000 participants from Germany, India, Indonesia and the USA. The experiment creates large inequalities, then introduces one of four centralized redistribution regimes to address the inequality. Our findings reveal that redistribution policies do not change private pro-social or anti-social transfers, compared to an environment without centralized redistribution. Structural estimates show that egotistic, rather than social motives, drive private transfers, and that inequality aversion is unaffected by redistribution policies, thus explaining the lack of a private response.

This paper examines the political consequences of climate activism during the ongoing global energy transition. We exploit the quasi-experimental setup offered by the Stop-Adani convoy, a multi-week environmental protest that traversed Australia’s eastern states in the lead-up to the 2019 federal election, in opposition to the proposed development of a large coal mine. Our findings show that exposure to the convoy increased the (more conservative) Coalition’s vote share while reducing support for the (environmentalist) Greens party. These effects are concentrated in areas with high dependence on mining employment, particularly in Queensland and other mining-intensive regions. Our results demonstrate that environmental activism can trigger significant political backlash, localised precisely where the perceived material costs of the green transition are most concentrated.

Evidence suggests that politicians in advanced democracies are positively selected on characteristics relevant to their suitability for political office. Whereas stereotypes abound, much less is known about the quality of politicians in developing countries. Drawing on unique experimental and survey data on village-level politicians in West Bengal, India, we find some evidence of positive selection into office: elected politicians are more educated, motivated, and have greater integrity than their constituents. However, they also have lower cognitive ability and are more likely to come from politically networked families. Comparing first-timers with re-elected politicians, we observe that experienced politicians display somewhat more political knowledge and motivation than their inexperienced peers, but are also more likely to be wealthy and male. Our findings demonstrate that conclusions about politician quality depend critically on measurement choices and that there may be competing dimensions of politician quality in the developing world.

This study examines whether adherence to advice depends on an advisor’s identity and status beyond message content. Using a survey experiment with over 3000 farmers in India, we find that individuals are more likely to follow advice in a social dilemma game when it comes from high-status or in-group advisors, even when the advice diverges from prevailing norms. Admired role models can attenuate the influence of status and identity, though their beneficial effect is not universal. Our experimental findings align with evidence from an agricultural advisory program involving the same participant sample, highlighting the broader real-world relevance of these patterns.

It has been argued that since 2014, under the BJP-led central government, welfare benefits in India have become better targeted and less prone to clientelistic control by state and local governments.Arguably this has helped to increase the vote share of the BJP vis-a-vis regional parties.We test these hypotheses using longitudinal data from 3500 rural households in the state of West Bengal.We fail to find evidence that the new "central" programs introduced after 2014 were better targeted than traditional "state" programs, or that the targeting of state programs improved after 2014.Households receiving the new "central" benefits introduced since 2014 were more likely to switch their political support to the BJP.However, changes in the scale, composition or targeting of these programs, in clientelistic effectiveness of traditional state programs or in household incomes, fail to account for the large observed increase in the voters' support for the BJP.Non-Hindus, especially recent immigrant non-Hindus, were much less likely to switch support to the BJP, even after controlling for benefits received and changes in household incomes.Our results suggest that ideology and identity politics were more important factors explaining the rising popularity of the BJP.

Increasing the share of women in politics is often promoted as a means to reduce corruption. Recent studies indicate the importance of considering the gender gap in corruption as a dynamic, rather than static, phenomenon. Our study combines data from surveys and incentivized behavioral games among 400 inexperienced and experienced local politicians in West Bengal, India. We find no gender gap in attitudes toward corruption. However, in incentivized games, inexperienced female politicians are more honest than their male counterparts. No such gender gap exists among experienced politicians. Drawing on a theoretical discussion of four possible mechanisms, we find that the apparent increase in dishonest behavior among female politicians is associated with lower risk aversion and stronger political networks. Our findings indicate that women, like men, are socialized into their local political culture and that benefits from changing who is elected may be short-lived unless that culture is also changed.

Increasing the share of women in politics is often promoted as a means to reduce corruption. Recent studies indicate the importance of considering the gender gap in corruption as a dynamic, rather than static, phenomenon. Our study combines data from surveys and incentivized behavioral games among 400 inexperienced and experienced local politicians in West Bengal, India. We find no gender gap in attitudes toward corruption. However, in incentivized games, inexperienced female politicians are more honest than their male counterparts. No such gender gap exists among experienced politicians. Drawing on a theoretical discussion of four possible mechanisms, we find that the apparent increase in dishonest behavior among female politicians is associated with lower risk aversion and stronger political networks. Our findings indicate that women, like men, are socialized into their local political culture and that benefits from changing who is elected may be short-lived unless that culture is also changed.

Agricultural production in developing countries is heavily rainfall dependent. Any unexpected variation in rainfall can affect the welfare of households. Using unit record data from India, this paper shows that households can insure against agricultural productivity (rainfall) shocks. Evidence suggests that they do so by varying the time allocation of individual members to different activities, particularly to regular wage work and human capital accumulation. There is a gender-differentiated aspect to this response. Rainfall shocks adversely affect women's human capital accumulation. While there is no evidence that households use participation in NREGS to insure against rainfall shocks, the availability of NREGS helps reduce the impact of rainfall shocks on human capital accumulation.

Do voters react to shocks that are beyond the control of politicians? We consider the case of the assassination of a senior politician in India, in the middle of an election. We find that Congress(I), the party of the assassinated leader, gained significantly from this event through increased vote shares and improved likelihood of victory. Sympathy towards Congress(I) and changed perceptions about governing abilities of the contesting parties in the post-assassination environment played crucial roles in determining the final outcomes of the election. Our results imply that even in environments where voters are expected to make their decisions based on prior performance of parties, an unanticipated, random, exogenous event can affect voting behaviour.

We conduct a field experiment in India comparing two ways of delegating selection of microcredit clients among smallholder farmers to local intermediaries: a private trader (TRAIL), versus a local-government appointee (GRAIL). Selected beneficiaries in both schemes were equally likely to take up and repay loans, and experienced similar increases in borrowing and farm output. However farm profits increased and unit costs of production decreased significantly only in TRAIL. While there is some evidence of superior selection by ability and landholding in TRAIL, the results are mainly driven by greater reduction of unit production costs for TRAIL treated farmers than GRAIL treated farmers of similar ability or landholding. We develop and test a model where the TRAIL agents' role as middlemen in the agricultural supply chain enabled and motivated them to offer treated farmers business advice, which helped them lower unit costs.

Rapid growth of the private provision of basic schooling around the world has given rise to a policy debate about the role of the private sector in the universal provision of basic schooling. In this chapter, the authors use three rounds of individual-level unit record data from India, collected over the period 1993–94 to 2011–12, to examine if the private sector can deliver schooling for all at a given point in time and also its evolution over time. Specifically, the authors focus on the role of gender and compare private school choice between mixed-gender (households with both boys and girls) and single-gender (those with only boys and only girls) households. The results using the IHDS1 and IHDS2 data show that private school enrolment is significantly lower for girls compared to boys. The magnitude of this disadvantage is double that of overall school enrolment. However, female disadvantage in private schooling disappears among mixed-gender (relative to single-gender) households. This can be attributed to the altruism of more motivated mixed-gender households choosing private schools for both their boys and girls. Girls with educated mothers are more likely to be sent to private schools while boys from more wealthy households are more likely to be enrolled in private schools; family wealth, however, does not boost girls' private schooling. Finally, female disadvantage in private schooling is significantly higher in 2004–05 relative to that in 1993–94 while there is no evidence of a declining gender gap post 2004–05. The results raise concerns for the private provisioning of basic schooling even at a time when the economy attained very high rates of growth and poverty went down significantly. This chapter concludes by discussing the possible role of direct pro-girl policies to tackle this gender gap. JEL Codes: I25, O10, C21

As in many other parts of the world, India has witnessed a surge in the popularity of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a right wing nationalist party. This paper examines the respective roles of economic policy and “identity politics” for the sharp rise in support for BJP in a region where it had a negligible vote share until 2014. Using household level panel data from 3500 rural households in West Bengal, we examine the effect of different welfare benefits delivered by state and national governments, on support for the regional incumbent (Trinamool Congress (TMC)) and the BJP after 2014. We find that receipt of these benefits was associated with increased support for the respective party controlling either level of government. However, changes in scale, effectiveness, composition or targeting of these benefits cannot account for the large observed increase in the relative popularity of the BJP. We also find no evidence of any association with post-2014 economic distress of the household, or political violence attributed to TMC party activists in the 2018 local government elections. On the other hand, religion, tribal and immigrant status of households are strong and robust predictors of changes in political support, irrespective of controls for welfare benefits and household incomes. Hence the results indicate that the BJP’s rise in West Bengal reflected the growing importance of identity politics per se, rather than economic policies. Authors' contact information Pushkar Maitra Department of Economics, Monash University, Clayton Campus, VIC 3800, Australia Email: pushkar.maitra@monash.edu.au Sandip Mitra Sampling and Official Statistics Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, 203 B.T. Road, Kolkata 700108, India Email: Sandip@isical.ac.in Dilip Mookherjee Department of Economics, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA Email: dilipm@bu.edu Sujata Visaria Department of Economics, Lee Shau Kee Business Building, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Hong Kong Email: svisaria@ust.hk Economic Policies vs. Identity Politics: The Rise of a Right-wing Nationalist Party in India ∗ Pushkar Maitra† Sandip Mitra‡ Dilip Mookherjee§ Sujata Visaria

We examine the impact of pollution from coal-fired power units on the anaemic status of children and women in India. The number of coal units in the district at the time of birth significantly increases the incidence of anaemia in young children as does in utero exposure. The number of coal units in the district also adversely affects the anaemic status of women, although the magnitude of impact is smaller than that for young children. The impacts are driven by the increase in PM2.5 pollution generated by coal-fired units. Our evidence points to anaemia as a significant health cost of coal-fired power generation in rapidly growing economies that use coal as a major source of fuel to meet increasing energy demands.