From States to Markets: The Growth of Non-State Service Providers in India

• In Event: By Sword and Market: The Comparative Politics of Education Regimes

Abstract

Low- and middle-income democracies have seen a substantial growth in non-state service provider providing basic services such as health and education. What explains this recent growth? This paper argues that the underlying logic for the provision of mass education has shifted from broad contours of nation-building and state formation to a narrower individual logic of human capital formation. As a result, governments attempted to expand mass public primary, they passed laws that also allowed for the expansion of mass private primary education. Tracing the drafting and impact of two laws in India as a case, the chapter shows that laws initially designed to facilitate the provision of mass public education paradoxically also allowed the expansion of mass private primary education. The chapter then tests the argument more broadly by assembling a dataset of seven household surveys from 1986 to 2018, and administrative data on international financial institution education programs, to show that where state-level governments attempted to expand mass public education, this also led to a subsequent expansion of mass private primary education and exit by wealthier and higher caste households to the private section. States that expanded mass education later have greater educational segregation measured by exit to the private sector and expenditure on private education. The chapter develops a theory that argues that the mechanism driving this effect is that in hierarchical ethnic societies such as India, upper castes will use private service provision to segregate from lower castes.

Author

• Emmerich Davies, Harvard University