The persistent effects of compulsory education in Baroda, 1901-2011

Hemanshu Kumar, Meeta Kumar and Rohini Somanathan
Additional contact information
Meeta Kumar: (Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi)
Rohini Somanathan: (Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi)

No 356, Working papers from Centre for Development Economics, Delhi School of Economics

Abstract: Literacy was extremely low in colonial India - by 1931, average gross literacy was about 8%. In comparison, the princely state of Baroda stood out by achieving an average literacy rate close to 18% in the same year. The ruler of Baroda introduced a set of policies in 1906 that included compulsory education and public provision of free, primary schools. We examine the short and long-run effects of this set of policies. We do this through a comparison of areas within Baroda with regions bordering them, using a difference-in-difference framework. Since administrative boundaries changed dramatically over this period, our long-run comparisons rely on a careful mapping of boundaries. We find large effects through the colonial period and in the decades immediately following independence. These differences eventually narrowed as public good provision expanded. In 2011, sixty-four years after independence, there still remained a gap in literacy rates in areas that were historically in Baroda, and those that were outside it.

Keywords: Literacy; persistence; education policy; compulsory education; colonial India; princely states; Baroda JEL codes: I21; I28; N35 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2025-12
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.cdedse.org/pdf/work356.pdf

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:cde:cdewps:356

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.cdedse.org/

The price is free.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working papers from Centre for Development Economics, Delhi School of Economics Delhi 110 007. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sanjeev Sharma ().