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Tag Search: “caste”

Social Identity and Aspirations

The project is a field experiment in India that investigates whether the norms associated with one’s social identity affect one’s aspirations, beliefs, and eventual outcomes. Project exploits cues wit...

  • IGC Research on India

Quotas and schooling decisions

Affirmative action, as an instrument for bridging inequalities across social groups, has been a contentious issue for decades. This column analyses the impact of reservation in public sector jobs and...

  • Articles

How backward are 'Other Backward Classes' in India?

Since reservations were provided in government bodies for lower castes in the early 90s, ‘Other Backward Classes’ have been an important force in Indian politics at all levels. Has there been a corre...

  • Articles

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