Travelling agents : political change and bureaucratic turnover in India

We develop a framework to empirically examine how politicians with electoral pressures control bureaucrats with career concerns as well as the consequences for bureaucrats’ career investments. Unique micro-level data on Indian bureaucrats support our key predictions. Politicians use frequent reassignments (transfers) across posts of varying importance to control bureaucrats. High-skilled bureaucrats face less frequent political transfers and lower variability in the importance of their posts. We find evidence of two alternative paths to career success: officers of higher initial ability are more likely to invest in skill, but caste affinity to the politician’s party base also helps secure important positions

The Cost of Property Rights: Establishing Institutions on the Philippine Frontier Under American Rule, 1898-1918

We examine three reforms to property rights introduced by the United States in the Philippines in the early 20th century: the redistribution of large estates to their tenants, the creation of a system of secure land titles, and a homestead program to encourage cultivation of public lands. During the first phase of American occupation (1898-1918), we find that the implementation of these reforms was very slow. As a consequence, tenure insecurity increased over this period, and the distribution of farm sizes remained extremely unequal. We identify two primary causes for the slow progress of reform. The first was the high cost of implementing these programs, together with political constraints which prevented the government from subsidizing land reforms to a greater degree. The second was the reluctance of the government to evict delinquent or informal cultivators, especially on public lands, which reduced the costs of tenure insecurity.

Conflict and Development—Lessons from South Asia

South Asia is the second most violent place on earth after Iraq. Conflicts in Afghanistan and Pakistan have attracted global attention. Parts of India, Sri Lanka, and Nepal have experienced long-running conflict. Conflicts result in death, misery, social trauma, destruction of infrastructure, and have huge spillover effects. What is conflict? Where is it concentrated? Is conflict a problem for development, or a failure of development? What should policy makers do?Conflict, development, South Asia, violence, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, reconstruction, war

Poverty, social divisions, and conflict in Nepal

The authors conduct an econometric analysis of the economic and social factors which contributed to the spread of violent conflict in Nepal. They find that conflict intensity is significantly higher in places with greater poverty and lower levels of economic development. Violence is higher in locations that favor insurgents, such as mountains and forests. The authors find weaker evidence that caste divisions in society are correlated with the intensity of civil conflict, while linguistic diversity has little impact.Population Policies,Social Conflict and Violence,Services&Transfers to Poor,Post Conflict Reintegration,Peace&Peacekeeping

Mental health in the aftermath of conflict

The authors survey the recent literature on the mental health effects of conflict. They highlight the methodological challenges faced in this literature, which include the lack of validated mental health scales in a survey context, the difficulties in measuring individual exposure to conflict, and the issues related to making causal inferences from observed correlations. They illustrate how some of these issues can be overcome in a study of mental health in post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina. Mental health is measured using a clinically validated scale; conflict exposure is proxied by administrative data on war casualties instead of being self-reported. The analysis suggests that there are no significant differences in overall mental health across areas which are affected by ethnic conflict to a greater or lesser degree.Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Disease Control&Prevention,Population Policies,Gender and Health,Health Systems Development&Reform

Worry, the only constant

Journal # from Media Rise's Quarantined Across Borders Collection by Lakshmi Iyer From India. Quarantined in United States (Exton, Pennsylvania).As a middle aged mother of three, I constantly worry about my mother and my children. It is the only constant in my life.Media Rise Publications. Quarantined Across Borders Collection. Edited by Dr Srividya "Srivi" Ramasubramanian

Worry, the only constant

Journal # from Media Rise's Quarantined Across Borders Collection by Lakshmi Iyer From India. Quarantined in United States (Exton, Pennsylvania).As a middle aged mother of three, I constantly worry about my mother and my children. It is the only constant in my life.Media Rise Publications. Quarantined Across Borders Collection. Edited by Dr Srividya "Srivi" Ramasubramanian

Public Action for Public Goods

This paper focuses on the relationship between public action and access to public goods. It begins by developing a simple model of collective action which is intended to capture the various mechanisms that are discussed in the theoretical literature on collective action. We argue that several of these intuitive theoretical arguments rely on special additional assumptions that are often not made clear. We then review the empirical work based on the predictions of these models of collective action. While the available evidence is generally consistent with these theories, there is a dearth of quality evidence. Moreover, a large part of the variation in access to public goods seems to have nothing to do with the "bottom-up" forces highlighted in these models and instead reflect more "top-down" interventions. We conclude with a discussion of some of the historical evidence on top-down interventions.

The Bloody Millennium: Internal Conflict in South Asia

This paper documents the short-term and long-term trends in internal conflict in South Asian countries, using multiple data sources. I find that incidents of terrorism have been rising across South Asia over the past decade, and this increase has been concentrated in economically lagging regions in the post-2001 period. This is in contrast to both the historical patterns of conflict, and the evolution of other types of violence. Analyzing the role of economic, geographic and demographic factors, I find that poorer areas have significantly higher levels of conflict intensity. The paper reviews the various approaches taken by governments to deal with conflict, contrasting security-based approaches with political accommodation and economic approaches. Finally, the paper reviews the potential role of regional cooperation in mitigating conflict.

Information Systems in Bangalore Traffic: A Case Study

Year 2012, month of March, Monday morning 8.30 a.m. Ramesh, a techie1in his mid 30s with one of the popular software companies in Bangalore was on his way to office. He was waiting for the traffic signal to turn green in one of the busiest junctions of Bangalore city