“Long-Run Effects of Colonial Land Redistribution: Evidence from India,” Working Paper (Job Market Paper)

Coverage: Ideas for India (English), Ideas for India (Hindi), Mercatus Center (George Mason University)

Land redistribution policies can directly impact outcomes such as agricultural productivity. At the same time, they may indirectly affect socio-economic outcomes by impacting social and political institutions. These indirect effects can impact both the beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of redistribution. I study the long-run indirect effects of land redistribution implemented in India’s most populous state in the 1820s. I exploit intra-state variation provided by a colonial policy that led to the recognition of property rights among village communities across 77% of the state. In the remaining area, a smaller number of revenue farmers were recognized as landowners. Using present day village-level microdata and novel archival data, I estimate treatment effects by means of a spatial RD design. Results suggest that redistribution led to an overall increase in wealth, nonfarm employment and years of schooling, and that non-beneficiaries also witnessed positive treatment effects. Using field survey data, I find that across treated areas, non-beneficiaries are less likely to adhere to restrictive pro-elite norms, which may be a channel of persistence. These results are consistent with a dynamic political economy model, which predicts that landowners facing higher competition (such as in the treated areas) may be less inclined to resist the dilution of such norms among non-beneficiaries.

“Road Connectivity, State Capacity and Bureaucratic Efficacy: Evidence from India,” Working Paper

Several developing countries have institutionalized social protection schemes to serve socio-economically marginalized groups. However, timely delivery of such public services remains a challenge. In this paper, I test the hypothesis that enhanced state capacity by means of improved roads can speed up delivery of public services by facilitating easier commutes for on-field bureaucrats. Using village-level data from 2014-15, I estimate the impact of rural roads on the timeliness of last-mile delivery in the context of a national public works scheme in India. Using an identification strategy inspired by fuzzy RD, exploiting exogenous variation in rural road construction provided by arbitrary population-based thresholds under a national road construction program, I find evidence that rural roads lead to a reduction in time taken to process beneficiary payments. Results from heterogeneity analysis show that these effects are driven by villages far away from local government headquarters. Spatial heterogeneity in treatment effects may point to complementarity between state capacity and bureaucrats’ incentives. 

"Divine Intervention? Religious Organizations and Public Service Delivery in India," Working Paper (with Avantika Prabhakar)

Religious institutions wield considerable influence over societies, particularly in resourceconstrained settings such as in developing countries with limited state capacity. In such environments, they can potentially evolve into important socio-political actors. Yet, our knowledge of how these institutions interact with the state is largely restricted to certain religions and regions, resulting in important gaps in our understanding. In this paper, we explore the impact of the presence of a specific type of religious institution on public service delivery in northern India. Through a primary census exercise conducted across 6000 villages in the state of Punjab, we construct a novel geocoded dataset of localized religious institutions, or deras. We employ an instrumental variable strategy based on birth locations of historical religious leaders as well as a local control strategy, and find that the presence of such institutions leads to higher provision of public services by the state. These effects are particularly significant for government-sponsored facilities related to health and education. Using primary data from a telephonic survey of village council members across 640 villages, we find that partial funding of such services is a potential mechanism, facilitating coordination that aligns the interests of both the deras and local governments in ensuring service delivery. These findings add to existing literature, which primarily point to a substitutive relationship between religious organizations and the state.

"Violence, Voter Realignment, and the Making of Partisan Identities," Under Review (with Neeraj Prasad and Ursula Daxecker)

Contrary to the view that political violence simply reinforces existing partisan identities, we argue that it can also transform them by activating previously unmobilized social cleavages. We theorize that violence along politically dormant social cleavages amplify the salience of related identities, reshapes intergroup dynamics, and alters political affiliations. We test this theory by examining subnational growth of India’s largest ethno-religious party. Using a generalized difference-in-differences design, we find that pre-election exposure to violence accompanying religious possessions increases support for the ethno-religious party. To identify mechanisms, we field an original survey along routes of processions that witnessed violence and show that exposure to violence heightens identification with conflict-relevant identities, intensifies intergroup polarization, and boosts support for aligned parties. These findings reveal that violence can reshape political landscapes not only by reinforcing identities, but by transforming them — activating politically latent social divisions, creating new political identities, alignments, and axes of contestation. (draft available upon request)

“Feudalism and Democracy: Evidence from Europe” (with Arseniy Braslavskiy, Ethan Kaplan and Weizheng Lai)

“Party Size and Candidate Wealth: Evidence from India”