Title
Decentralization, Democracy and Allocation of Poverty Alleviation Programs in Rural India
Abstract
This paper investigates the effect of the devolution of power to the village level government on the household-level allocation of poverty alleviation programs drawing upon National Sample Survey data and the Election Commission's election data. First, greater inequality in land-holdings and less competition between the two major political parties generally lead to less provision of the poverty alleviation programs. Second, the disadvantaged groups were not necessarily likely to be the primary beneficiaries of the poverty alleviation programs. Third, our results based on the natural experiment approach suggest that decentralisation did not lead to wider household access to poverty alleviation programmes during the 1990s. Our results imply the possibility that the power and resources were captured by the local elite after decentralisation, that is, decentralization did not necessarily contribute to the improvement of the welfare of the socially disadvantaged groups.
Keywords
Decentralization, Democracy, Poverty Alleviation Programs, Poverty, IRDP (Integrated Rural Development Programme), RPW (Rural Public Works), India
JEL Classification
C20, I38, O22, P46
Inquiries
Research Institute for Economics and Business Administration
Kobe University
Rokkodai-cho, Nada-ku, Kobe
657-8501 Japan
Phone: +81-78-803-7036
FAX: +81-78-803-7059
Katsushi S. IMAI
Economics, School of Social Sciences, University of Manchester, UK
and
Research Institute for Economics & Business Administration (RIEB), Kobe University
Rokkodai-cho, Nada-ku, Kobe
657-8501 Japan
Phone: +81-78-803-7036
FAX: +81-78-803-7059