The dataset is compiled by Aklin, Michaël; Cheng, Chao-yo; Urpelainen, Johannes and examines unequal outcomes in the implementation of India’s national rural electrification program in Uttar Pradesh. It elaborates on understanding the extent to which the Dalits, the lowest group in India’s caste hierarchy, receive less attention when the state electrified rural communities. They use data from a hundred thousand villages, we provide robust evidence for unequal outcomes.
Villages inhabited solely by Dalits were 20 percentage points less likely to be covered by the program than villages without any Dalits. Moreover, a regression discontinuity analysis shows that the electoral success of BSP failed to reduce such differences. These results highlight the magnitude and persistence of caste inequality in the implementation of democratic public policy, despite political representation.
Source: Harvard Dataverse
People Involved: Aklin, Michaël, Cheng, Chao-yo, Urpelainen, Johannes