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It is widely acknowledged that top-down support is essential for bottom-up participatory projects to be effectively implemented at scale. However, which level of government, national or sub-national, should be given the responsibility to implement such projects is an open question, with wide variations in practice. This paper analyzes qualitative and quantitative data from a natural experiment in the state of Rajasthan in India, where a large national flagship project that mobilized women into self-help groups for micro-credit and created a women's network for other development activities was implemented in two different ways. Some sub-regions were given to the state government of Rajasthan to manage, while the Government of India centrally managed other sub-regions. The study finds that the nature of top-down management had a large bearing on the nature and quality of local-level facilitation. Centrally and locally managed facilitators formed several groups with similar financial performance. But centrally managed facilitators formed groups that were less likely to engage in collective action, be politically active, and engage with other civil society organizations. These results raise important questions on how responsibilities for participatory development projects should be devolved, and how the nature of management affects the sustainability of bottom-up interventions.
Community Driven Development --- Decentralization --- Self-Help Groups
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In response to the problems of high coordination costs among the poor, efforts are underway in many countries to organize the poor through "self-help groups" (SHGs)-membership-based organizations that aim to promote social cohesion through a mixture of education, access to finance, and linkages to wider development programs. The authors randomly selected 32 of 80 villages in one of the poorest districts in rural India in which to establish SHGs for women. Two years of exposure to these programs increased women's participation in group savings programs as well as the non-agricultural labor force. Compared to women in control villages, treated women were also more likely to participate in household decisions and engage in civic activities. The authors find no evidence however, that participation increased income or had a disproportionate impact by women's socio-economic status. These results are important in light of the recent effort to expand official support to SHGs under the National Rural Livelihood Mission.
Access to Finance --- Collective action --- Community development --- Gender --- Housing & Human Habitats --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Population Policies --- Poverty --- Primary Education --- Social Accountability --- South Asia
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The institution of consanguineous marriage-a marriage contracted between close biological relatives-has been a basic building block of many societies in different parts of the world. This paper argues that the practice of consanguinity is closely related to the practice of dowry, and that both arise in response to an agency problem between the families of a bride and a groom. When marriage contracts are incomplete, dowries transfer control rights to the party with the highest incentives to invest in a marriage. When these transactions are costly however, consanguinity can be a more appropriate response since it directly reduces the agency cost. The paper's model predicts that dowry transfers are less likely to be observed in consanguineous unions. It also emphasizes the effect of credit constraints on the relative prevalence of dowry payment and consanguinity. An empirical analysis using data from Bangladesh delivers robust results consistent with the predictions of the model.
Anthropology --- Culture & Development --- Dependence --- Dowries --- Dowry --- Education --- Education and Society --- Extended Family --- Families --- Finance and Financial Sector Development --- Financial Literacy --- Folklore --- Gender --- Gender and Law --- Health, Nutrition and Population --- History --- Households --- Law and Development --- Marriage --- Marriages --- Partners --- Population and Development --- Population Policies --- Populations --- Power --- Property --- Religion --- Rural Areas --- Social Development --- Social Inclusion and Institutions --- Social Networks --- Societies --- Villages --- Women
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This paper examines the relationship between caste and gender inequality in three states in India. When households are grouped using conventional, government-defined categories of caste the paper finds patterns that are consistent with existing literature: lower-caste women are more likely to participate in the labor market, have greater decision-making autonomy within their households, and experience greater freedom of movement. When households are grouped by the narrower sub-caste categories of jati, where caste is lived and experienced, the paper finds the relationships to be far more varied and nuanced. These results suggest that focussing on broad caste categories such as "scheduled castes" and "scheduled tribes" can be misleading for understanding the relationship between caste and gender, and for targeting anti-poverty programs.
Caste --- Economic Empowerment --- Jati --- Rural Development
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Caste is a persistent driver of inequality in India, and it is generally analyzed with government-defined broad categories, such as Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe. In everyday life, however, caste is lived and experienced as jati, which is a local system of stratification. Little is known about economic inequality at the jati level. This paper uses data from poor rural districts in Bihar to explore expenditure inequality at the jati level. Inequality decompositions show much more variation between jatis than between broad caste categories. The analysis finds that even within generally disadvantaged Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, some jatis are significantly worse off than others. Consistent with previous work, the paper also finds that inequality is largely driven by inequality within jatis. This finding has implications for the implementation of large-scale poverty alleviation programs: the benefits of programs intended for disadvantaged castes are concentrated among specific jatis.
Caste Structure --- Education --- Educational Sciences --- Gender --- Gender and Development --- Inequality --- Labor Markets --- Poverty --- Poverty Reduction --- Rural Poverty --- Social Protections and Labor --- Tribe
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In many developing countries, environmental quality remains low and policies to improve it have been inconsistently effective. This paper conducts a case study of environmental policy, focusing on an unprecedented ruling by the Supreme Court of India, which targeted industrial pollution in the Ganga River. Difference-in-difference estimations indicate that the ruling led to reductions in river pollution and one-month infant mortality. To look at the mechanisms of impact, the paper tests whether the identified health impact is fully explained by changes in pollution induced by the policy, and fails to reject that it indeed is. In so doing, the analysis also quantifies the adverse impact of water pollution on infant health and documents the persistence of such impacts in downstream communities.
Communities & Human Settlements --- Development --- Environment --- Urban Development --- Water Resources
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The institution of consanguineous marriage-a marriage contracted between close biological relatives-has been a basic building block of many societies in different parts of the world. This paper argues that the practice of consanguinity is closely related to the practice of dowry, and that both arise in response to an agency problem between the families of a bride and a groom. When marriage contracts are incomplete, dowries transfer control rights to the party with the highest incentives to invest in a marriage. When these transactions are costly however, consanguinity can be a more appropriate response since it directly reduces the agency cost. The paper's model predicts that dowry transfers are less likely to be observed in consanguineous unions. It also emphasizes the effect of credit constraints on the relative prevalence of dowry payment and consanguinity. An empirical analysis using data from Bangladesh delivers robust results consistent with the predictions of the model.
Anthropology --- Culture & Development --- Dependence --- Dowries --- Dowry --- Education --- Education and Society --- Extended Family --- Families --- Finance and Financial Sector Development --- Financial Literacy --- Folklore --- Gender --- Gender and Law --- Health, Nutrition and Population --- History --- Households --- Law and Development --- Marriage --- Marriages --- Partners --- Population and Development --- Population Policies --- Populations --- Power --- Property --- Religion --- Rural Areas --- Social Development --- Social Inclusion and Institutions --- Social Networks --- Societies --- Villages --- Women
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The authors use recent data from the 2006 National Family Health Survey of India to explore the relationship between religion and demographic behavior. They find that fertility and mortality vary not only between religious groups, but also across caste groups. These groups also differ with respect to socio-economic status. The central finding of this paper is that despite their socio-economic disadvantages, Muslims have higher fertility than their Hindu counterparts and also exhibit lower levels of infant mortality (particularly female infant mortality). This effect is robust to the inclusion of controls for non-religious factors such as socio-economic status and area of residence. This result has important policy implications because it suggests that India's problem of "missing women" may be concentrated in particular groups. The authors conclude that religion and caste play a key role in determining the demographic characteristics of India.
Economic status --- Family Health --- Fertility --- Fertility Rate --- Gender --- Gender bias --- Health, Nutrition and Population --- Important policy --- Infant mortality --- Law and Development --- Levels of infant --- Mortality --- Number of children --- Policy implications --- Policy Research --- Population growth --- Population growth rate --- Population Policies --- Progress --- Religious groups --- Respect --- Sex --- Son preference
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Bihar is widely regarded as one of India's poorest and most divided states. It has also been the site of many social movements that have left indelible marks on the state's politics and identity. Little is currently known about how structural inequalities have affected the functioning of formal systems of justice in the state. This paper uses a novel dataset of more than one million cases filed at the Patna high court between 2009 and 2019 together with a variety of supplementary data to analyze the role of religion, caste and gender in the high court of Bihar. The analysis finds that the courts are not representative of the Bihari population. Muslims, women and scheduled castes are consistently under-represented. The practice of using "caste neutral" names is on the rise. Though there is little evidence of "matching" between judges and petitioners or judges and filing advocates on the basis of names, there is evidence that petitioners and their advocates match on the basis of identity such as the use of "caste neutral" names. These results suggest that the social movements that disrupted existing social structures in the past may have inadvertently created new social categories that reinforce networks and inequalities in the formal justice system.
Bihar --- Caste --- Gender --- Gender and Law --- Inequality --- Judicial Performance --- Judicial System Reform --- Justice System --- Law and Development --- Nationalities and Ethnic Groups --- Religion --- Social Category --- Social Development --- Social Inclusion and Institutions
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