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Tag Search: “caste”

Entrepreneurship or survival? Caste and gender of small business in India

Can entrepreneurship be a vehicle for social mobility in India? This column analyses data from micro, small and medium enterprises, and finds clear and persistent caste and gender disparities in virtu...

  • Articles

Caste and entrepreneurship in India

It is now widely accepted that the lower castes have risen in Indian politics. Has there been a corresponding change in their entrepreneurial activity? This column seeks to answer this question by ana...

  • Articles

Does caste influence access to agricultural loans in rural India?

Increasing access to agricultural credit in rural India is a major policy priority. This column examines whether farmers’ access to formal agricultural loans depends on their caste. It is found that w...

  • Articles

The role of informal caste networks in public service delivery

Large public programmes designed at the national level are often undermined by corruption at the local level. This column proposes local level monitoring and enforcement through informal networks as ...

  • Articles

Casteism and corruption: Beyond political correctness

Sociologist Ashis Nandy’s recent remark that most corrupt people belong to lower castes drew a lot of flak. In this column, Pranab Bardhan shares his views on what he considers to be the two substanti...

  • Perspectives

Saving Behaviour in India: Understanding the differences across castes

The past three decades in India have witnessed a sharp reduction in the historically large gaps in the education levels, occupation choices and wages of the backward castes relative to the rest of the...

  • IGC Research on India

Role of Information Provision in Improving Public Service Delivery

Informal monitoring and enforcement can increase the efficiency of public service delivery. This project studies the Targeted Public Distribution System of India and finds that Scheduled Castes (SC) h...

  • IGC Research on India

Political reservation in India: The effect on poverty

Over the last 60 years, India’s Constitution has set aside seats in parliament for people from historically discriminated groups, the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. This column documents one o...

  • Articles

A Novel, Market Based Mechanism to Incentivize Efficient Groundwater/Energy use in Indian Agriculture – Setting Up a Field Experiment in Gujarat

This project documents patterns of rural-urban migration and employment shifts in a region that is facing ongoing depletion of groundwater resources in northern Gujarat in India. Given that migration ...

  • IGC Research on India

Caste dominance in rural India: Cause and effect

Rural India remains a caste-based society. This column explores why caste continues to play such an important role and what the effects are. It argues that trade and agricultural productivity suffer, ...

  • Articles

The persistence of caste in India: An economic explanation

Despite many efforts by the government and by civic institutions, the caste system continues to have a firm hold on Indian society. This column presents an economic explanation for this persistence an...

  • Articles

Exploratory research on the impact of the Forest Rights Act, 2006, on deforestation, tribal welfare, and poverty, with implications for implementation

When the United Progressive Alliance came to power in the Indian general elections of May 2004, it published a Common Minimum Programme in which it promised to end the eviction of tribal and other for...

  • IGC Research on India