Can political reservations affect political equilibria in the long-term? Evidence from local elections in rural India

While many studies explored impacts of political quotas for females, often with ambiguous results, underlying mechanisms and long-term effects have received relatively little attention. Nation-wide data from India spanning a 15-year period allow us to explore how reservations affect leader qualifications, service delivery, political participation, local accountability, and individuals' willingness to contribute to public goods. Although leader quality declines and impacts on service quality are ambiguous, gender quotas are shown to increase political processes and participation, the willingness to contribute to public goods, and perceived ability to hold leaders to account. Key effects persist beyond the reserved period and impacts on females often materialize only with a lag. --Public goods,reservations,India,discrimination,political economy

Land reforms, poverty reduction, and economic growth : evidence from India

Recognition of the importance of institutions that provide security of property rights and relatively equal access to economic resources to a broad cross-section of society has renewed interest in the potential of asset redistribution, including land reforms. Empirical analysis of the impact of such policies is, however, scant and often contradictory. This paper uses panel household data from India, together with state-level variation in the implementation of land reform, to address some of the deficiencies of earlier studies. The results suggest that land reform had a significant and positive impact on income growth and accumulation of human and physical capital. The paper draws policy implications, especially from the fact that the observed impact of land reform seems to have declined over time.Rural Poverty Reduction,Political Economy,Rural Development Knowledge&Information Systems,Municipal Housing and Land,Rural Land Policies for Poverty Reduction

Efficiency and equity impacts of rural land rental restrictions : evidence from India

Recognition of the potentially deleterious implications of inequality in opportunity originating in a skewed asset distribution has spawned considerable interest in land reforms. However, little attention has been devoted to fact that, in the longer term, the measures used to implement land reforms could negatively affect productivity. Use of state level data on rental restrictions, together with a nationally representative survey from India, suggests that, contrary to original intentions, rental restrictions negatively affect productivity and equity. The restrictions reduce the scope for efficiency-enhancing rental transactions that benefit poor producers. Simulations suggest that, by doubling the number of producers with access to land through rental, from about 15 million currently, liberalization of rental markets could have far-reaching impacts.Rural Development Knowledge&Information Systems,Municipal Housing and Land,Housing&Human Habitats,Climate Change,Land and Real Estate Development

Determinants and consequences of land sales market participation : panel evidence from India

Although opinions on impacts of land market transfers are sharply divided, few studies explore the welfare and productivity effects of land markets on a larger scale. This paper uses a large Indian panel spanning almost 20 years, together with a climatic shock (rainfall) indicator, to assess the productivity and equity effects of market-mediated land transfers (sale and purchase) compared with non-market ones (inheritance). The analysis shows that frequent shocks increase land market activity, an effect that is mitigated by the presence of safety nets and banks. Land sales markets improved productivity and helped purchasers, many of whom were formerly landless, to accumulate non-land assets and significantly enhance their welfare.Banks&Banking Reform,Markets and Market Access,Municipal Housing and Land,,Real Estate Development

Equity and efficiency impacts of rural land rental restrictions: Evidence from India

Recognition of the potentially deleterious implications of high inequality of opportunity due to a biased asset distribution has led to increased interest in land reforms. However, little attention has been devoted to the potential longer-term impacts of the measures used to implement such reforms, despite evidence that, the restrictions on land rental in rural areas they imply can have potentially far-reaching consequences. Use of state level data on rental restrictions, in conjunction with a nationally representative survey from India suggests that, contrary to their original intention, rental restrictions significantly reduce supply of land to the rental market, prevent land access by the landless, and by more productive producers. Ways to counter these effects by liberalizing land rental markets are discussed.Land Economics/Use,

Determinants and Consequences of Land Sales Market Participation: Panel Evidence from India

Although opinions on impacts of land market transfers are sharply divided, few studies explore the welfare- and productivity impact of land markets on a larger scale. We use a large Indian panel spanning almost 20 years, together with a climatic shock (rainfall) indicator, to assess the productivity- and equity-impact of market-mediated land transfers (sale and purchase) as compared to non-market ones (inheritance). While frequent shocks increase land market activity, an effect that is mitigated by presence of safety nets and banks- land sales markets improved productivity and helped purchasers, many of them formerly landless, to accumulate non-land assets and significantly enhance their welfare.Land Economics/Use,

Does Land Fragmentation Reduce Efficiency: Micro Evidence from India

Land Economics/Use,

Does female reservation affect long-term political outcomes ? Evidence from rural India

Although many studies have explored the impacts of political quotas for females, often with ambiguous results, the underlying mechanisms and long-term effects have received little attention. This paper uses nation-wide data from India spanning a 15-year period to explore how reservations affect leader qualifications, service delivery, political participation, local accountability, and individuals’ willingness to contribute to public goods. Although leader quality declines and impacts on service quality are often negative, gender quotas are shown to increase the level and quality of women's political participation, the ability to hold leaders to account, and the willingness to contribute to public goods. Key effects persist beyond the reserved period and impacts on females often materialize only with a lag.Housing&Human Habitats,Population Policies,Gender and Law,Gender and Health,Parliamentary Government

Land fragmentation and its implications for productivity: evidence from Southern India

In developing economies land reform, in particular land redistribution has occupied a central role in debates about poverty — particularly chronic poverty — alleviation in rural areas. Even if it were accepted that land redistribution could alleviate poverty the enthusiasm for such redistribution needs to be tempered with consideration of the potential efficiency effects of land fragmentation. The fragmentation of land holdings could rise with land fragmentation. In turn, land fragmentation could lead to sub-optimal usage of factor inputs and thus to lower overall returns to land. The factors contributing to this could be losses due to extra travel time, wasted space along borders, inadequate monitoring, and the inability to use certain types of machinery such as harvesters. Fragmentation of land is widespread in India and it is believed that fragmented nature of land holdings may play a major role in explaining low levels of agricultural productivity. Despite substantial rise in yields India ranks 34th in yields for sugarcane, 57th for cotton, 118th for pulses, and, 51st for rice although India is a leading producer of each of these crops in aggregate terms. Further, there is evidence of inefficient use of resources in agriculture and the resulting increases in costs, e.g., 25 times more water/tonne of output is being used to irrigate Cotton in India than in Egypt. In response to the perceived adverse effects of land fragmentation the then Finance Minister allocated Rs. 5 million over a period of five years, as an incentive for land consolidation, in his 2000 budget speech. However, the Planning Commission of India has indicated a near complete failure on this front. To date, however, there has been no systematic attempt at quantifying the effects of land fragmentation and understanding the channels through which these effects operate. The present paper attempts to fill this void. In this paper, we undertake a detailed assessment of the consequences of land fragmentation using a unique panel data set from Southern India, with comprehensive information on all landholding households in two contiguous villages over a five-year period. In particular, we examine whether technical efficiency of farm production is significantly related to farm size, whether yield is importantly impacted by the degree of fragmentation as measured by the number of plots, average plot size, and an index of fragmentation,2 and whether such fragmentation impacts upon labor allocations. We then use stochastic production function methods to measure the degree of technical efficiency and relate this to the degree of land fragmentation. Our results show clearly that land fragmentation has a significant adverse effect on land productivity. The plan of this paper is a follows. In section II we review the literature on this issue whereas section III discusses the data asset. Section IV details the methodology and estimation procedure, section V presents the results and section VI concludes

Can political reservations empower women and affect economic outcomes? : evidence from rural India

While many studies explored impacts of political quotas for females on public goods provision, knowledge on immediate and longer term economic impacts of such interventions remains limited which is undesirable in view of the widespread adoption of such policies. We use nation-wide data from India on current outcomes and a village's reservation status for the entire period for which reservations had been in place to assess recurrent and longer-term impacts of this policy. Beyond recurrent impacts on public good delivery, we find evidence on persistent effects of reservation on voicing of concerns to local authorities if there are problems, the amount of time females spend on domestic duties and in the labour market, as well as their bargaining power regarding reproductive choices and control of finances within the household