Decentralization, Democracy and Allocation of Poverty Alleviation Programs in Rural India

Takahiro Sato and Katsushi Imai

No DP2010-21, Discussion Paper Series from Research Institute for Economics & Business Administration, Kobe University

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 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C20 I38 O22 P46 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 39 pages
Date: 2010-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pbe and nep-pol
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https://www.rieb.kobe-u.ac.jp/academic/ra/dp/English/DP2010-21.pdf First version, 2010 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Decentralization, Democracy and Allocation of Poverty Alleviation Programmes in Rural India (2012)
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