Welfare as Devolution: Evidence from India's NREGA Program

• In Event: The Politics of Social Welfare in Electoral Democracies in the Global South

Abstract

How do welfare programs affect citizens' relationships with government? In this paper, I argue that this effect varies with the level of government in question. I use a difference-in-differences strategy to show that districts in 6 states that received control of state-level welfare funds through India's National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) had lower levels of turnout for the 2006 and 2007 state-level elections than those that did not. I use survey data to show that decreases in turnout were accompanied by lower reported interest in state-level elections. At the same time, however, beneficiaries of NREGA are more likely to participate in local-level politics than non-beneficiaries. An event-study design further shows that a greater number of years of exposure to the program increased local-level political participation. Together, these findings suggest that the creation of NREGA, like certain other welfare programs, can be thought of as an act of devolution that increases the salience of local bodies relative to higher levels of governance.

Author

• Tanu Kumar, College of William and Mary