The effect of political decentralisation and affirmative action on Multidimensional Poverty Index: evidence from Indian States

Kshitij Chaudhary ()

Journal of Social and Economic Development, 2015, vol. 17, issue 1, 27-49

Abstract: This essay examines the impact of decentralisation and political reservation for disadvantaged groups on Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) across states and disadvantaged minorities in India. The time variation in the implementation of the 73rd constitutional amendment across states has been exploited to analyse the impact of the amendment on multidimensional deprivation. National MPI*, similar to the standard international computed MPIs (using Alkire–Foster Methodology), has been decomposed across states and disadvantaged groups, and the effect of time variation in implementation of the amendment has then been seen on these indices. States implementing the amendment prior to 1997–1998 were found to have lower multidimensional deprivation in the year 2005, as compared to their counterparts which either implemented the amendment after 1998 or did not implement it at all. A similar impact of early implementation was seen on MPI* (of year 2005) of the disadvantaged groups that were given additional political representation under the 73rd constitutional amendment. The hypotheses, therefore, that decentralisation has a positive impact on general living standards, and that political reservation for certain classes improves the welfare indicators of members of the groups they represent, are verified by this study. Copyright Institute for Social and Economic Change 2015

Keywords: Multidimensional Poverty Index; Reservation and decentralisation in India; Decomposition of MPI; Scheduled castes; Scheduled Tribes; 73rd constitutional amendment; I32; C12; C21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s40847-015-0004-5 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:jsecdv:v:17:y:2015:i:1:p:27-49

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/40847

DOI: 10.1007/s40847-015-0004-5

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Social and Economic Development is currently edited by M.G. Chandrakanth, D. Rajasekhar, Anand Inbanathan and S. Madheswaran

More articles in Journal of Social and Economic Development from Springer, Institute for Social and Economic Change
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().