Abstract
This article investigates the effect of the devolution of power to the village-level government on the household-level allocation of poverty alleviation programmes, namely, Integrated Rural Development Programmes (IRDP) and Rural Public Works (RPW), drawing upon National Sample Survey data and the Election Commission's election data. First, we found that a greater inequality in land holdings generally leads to less provision of the programmes. Second, the disadvantaged groups were not necessarily the primary beneficiaries. Third, our natural experiment approach confirms that decentralization negatively affected the provision of IRDP, whereas it had a positive impact on the allocation of RPW when Madhya Pradesh was compared with Bihar. It has been suggested that the power and resources were captured by the local elite after decentralization in the case of IRDP, whereas this was not the case for RPW as it involved a self-targeting mechanism and discretionary manipulation by the local elite was likely to be difficult.
Cet article examine les effets d’un transfert de pouvoir vers les autorités villageoises sur l′attribution directe aux ménages de programmes d′aide à la lutte contre la pauvreté, à savoir, les Programmes de Développement Rural Intégré et les Travaux Publics Ruraux. Nous nous appuyons sur des données tirées de l′Enquête Nationale et sur celles de la Commission Électorale. Nous constatons, tout d′abord, qu′une plus grande inégalité dans la possession de terres se traduit généralement par une attribution d′aides moins importante. Deuxièmement, les groupes les plus défavorisés ne sont pas toujours les principaux bénéficiaires. Troisièmement, notre approche d′ « expérience naturelle » confirme – quand on compare le Madhya Pradesh et le Bihar – que la décentralisation a eu un effet négatif sur l′attribution de PDRI alors que son impact sur l′attribution de TPR a été positif. Il semble qu′à la suite du processus de décentralisation, les élites locales se soient appropriés le pouvoir et les ressources dans le cas des PDRI, tandis que cela n′a pas été le cas pour les TPR qui mettent en jeu des mécanismes auto-ciblés, rendant difficile la manipulation discrétionnaire par les élites locales.
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Notes
Crook and Manor (1998, p. 61) based on the detailed fieldwork in Karnataka state: ‘Decentralisation in Karnataka yielded paradoxical results. The number of people involved in corrupt acts increased significantly. But the overall amount of money stolen almost certainly decreased – at least modestly. We cannot offer absolute proof of this latter point, but the evidence to support it is strong’.
Planning Commission, Government of India, Sixth Five Year Plan 1980–1985, Seventh Five Year Plan 1985–1990, Eighth Five Year Plan 1992–1997, Ninth Five Year Plan 1997–2002 and Tenth Five Year Plan 2002–2007.
Ministry of Rural Development, Role of Panchayati Raj Institutions in the Rural Development Programmes.
Other wage employment programmes include the Employment Assurance Scheme (EAS) and the Food for Work Programme (FWP). From September 2001, the JGSY, EAS and FWP were integrated into the Sampoorna Gramin Rozgar Yojana (SGRY) (Planning Commission, Government of India, Tenth Five Year Plan 2002–2007).
The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), a variant of RPW, has been launched since 2005. The plan was launched in February 2006 in 200 districts and eventually extended to cover 593 districts. More than 4 million rural households were provided jobs under NREGA during 2008–2009. Our results on RPW should have some implications for designing and implementing NREGS.
Ministry of Rural Development, Role of Panchayati Raj Institutions in the Rural Development Programmes.
The election data of Punjab are drawn from the Statistical Report on General Elections, 1992 to the Tenth Lok Sabha.
Matching at district levels is impossible because of the lack of district codes in the 50th NSS.
It could be argued that household income or consumption should be included as a control variable as participation in poverty alleviation programmes is supposed to be means-tested. However, while NSS data have the variable ‘monthly per capita expenditure (MPCE)’, this cannot be used because it is likely to be endogenous in the participation equation because of the fact that endogenous programme placement and the consumption data are not comparable across these two rounds because of the change in the recall period in the 55th round.
Precise owned land data are not available in the consumption module of the 55th NSS. Hence, we constructed the regional land inequality index from the employment-unemployment module of NSS.
See Duflo et al (2008) for a detailed account of the randomized experiment.
It is difficult to compare Tripura with the other states because Tripura is located in the North East region, which is specially treated by the central government and is thus not included in the treatment group.
See http://pd.cpim.org/2001/may27/may27_bihar.htm for details.
A limitation of this approach is that DMPT may reflect the unobservable factors that are specific to Madhya Pradesh in 1999 (not related to decentralisation) and are not captured by the survey data. While we make an assumption here that control variables capture most of these unobservable factors, the coefficient estimate of DMPT should still be interpreted with caution.
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Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Pranab Bardhan, Pradeep Chhibber, Raghav Gaiha, Hiroshi Sato, Kunal Sen and two anonymous referees for their useful comments and guidance. The first author acknowledges research support from RIEB, Kobe University during his stay in 2010 and financial support from the UK's Economic and Social Research Council (grant number: RES-000-22-4028). The usual disclaimer applies.
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Imai, K., Sato, T. Decentralization, Democracy and Allocation of Poverty Alleviation Programmes in Rural India. Eur J Dev Res 24, 125–143 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1057/ejdr.2011.35
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/ejdr.2011.35