Determinants of redistributive politics: An empirical analysis of land reforms in west bengal, india

Abstract

We investigate political determinants of land reform implementation in the Indian state of West Bengal. Using a village panel spanning 1974–98, we do not find evidence supporting the hypothesis that these can be explained by differ-ences in redistributive ideologies of the Left Front and the Congress party, i.e., their relative control of local governments. Instead, the evidence is consistent with the role of opportunism (re-election concerns) and electoral competition. 1We thank the MacArthur Foundation Inequality Network for funding the data collection. We are grateful to various officials of the West Bengal government for giving us access to the data; to Sankar Bhaumik and Sukanta Bhattacharya of the Department of Economics, Calcutta University who led the village survey teams, and Indrajit Mallick for helping us collect the election data. For useful comments and suggestions we thank Debu Bandyopadhyay, Abhijit Banerjee, Partha Chatterjee