Elite Dominance and Under-Investment in Mass Education: Disparity in the Social Development of the Indian States, 1960-92

Sarmistha Pal and Sugata Ghosh ()

No 2852, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Inter- and intra-state disparities in levels of literacy rates in India are striking, especially for the marginalized groups of women and low caste population. The present paper offers an explanation of this disparate development in terms of elite dominance that discriminates against the minority groups of people and systematically under-invests in mass education. We experiment with various indirect economic and political measures of elite dominance. Results based on the Indian state-level data for the period 1960-92 suggest that higher share of land held by the top 5% of the population (a) lowers spending on education as well as total developmental spending and (b) increases total non-developmental spending. Greater proportion of minority representations (female and low caste members) in the ruling government however fails to have any perceptible impact on development (including education) spending in our sample. This analysis also identifies land reform and poverty alleviation as two important policy instruments to erode the initial disadvantage of the marginalised people.

Keywords: under-investment in education; discrimination against female and low-caste population; persistence of elite dominance; poverty; land reform (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I28 J15 O15 P48 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 45 pages
Date: 2007-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cwa, nep-dev, nep-edu and nep-hrm
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published - published as 'Poverty, Elite Heterogeneity and the Allocation of Public Spending: Panel Evidence from the Indian States' in: Review of Income and Wealth, 2012, 58 (1), 51-78

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Working Paper: Elite Dominance and Under-investment in Mass Education: Disparity in the Social Development of the Indian States, 1960-92 (2006)
Working Paper: Elite Dominance and Under-investment in Mass Education: Disparity in the Social Development of the Indian States, 1960-92 (2006)
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