Political Economy of Sanitation in India

Anurag Banerjee, Nilanjan Banik and Pranjal Chandrakar ()
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Pranjal Chandrakar: Mahindra University

No 2025_02, Department of Economics Working Papers from Durham University, Department of Economics

Abstract: We model the implementation of India's federal sanitation initiative (Swachh Bharat Mission or SBM) within its devolved, competitive multiparty democracy, characterized by intense regional electoral competition. The success of SBM depends on social and physical capital provided by the federal government but executed by the regional authorities. Through a political thought experiment, we analyze the impact of changes in the regional governance model. Transitioning from federally aligned to non-aligned political parties (or vice versa) results in a 1.7% decrease (or 2.0% increase) in household toilet access, with the least wealthy (bottom 10%) disproportionately affected. Regional trends in sanitation-related diseases empirically corroborate these findings.

Keywords: Multilevel governance; Political strategy; Social messaging; Sanitation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C5 I18 O11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-05
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