In this paper, we study the incidence of COVID-19 and the associated fatality with altitude using... more In this paper, we study the incidence of COVID-19 and the associated fatality with altitude using high frequency, district level data from India. To understand the implications of the nationwide lockdown after the outbreak, we use data for about four months- two from the lockdown period starting from March 25 till May 31, 2020 and about two months after unlocking was initiated (June 1-July 26, 2020). The multivariate regression result indicates slower growth in average rate of infection during the lockdown period in hilly regions, the gains of which attenuated after the unlocking was initiated. Despite these early gains, the rate of fatalities is significantly higher during the lockdown period in comparison to the plains. The findings remain robust to multiple alternative specifications and methods including one that accounts for confounding possibilities via unobservable and provides consistent estimates of bias adjusted treatment effects. The evidence supports the need for provisioning of public health services and infrastructure upgradation, especially maintenance of adequate stock of life support devices, in high altitude regions. It also underscores the necessity for strengthening and revising the existing Hill Areas Development Programme and integrating important aspects of public health as part of this policy.
Arresting COVID infections requires community collective action that is difficult to achieve in a... more Arresting COVID infections requires community collective action that is difficult to achieve in a socially and economically diverse setting. Using district level data from India, we examine the effects of caste and religious fragmentation along with economic inequality on the growth rate of reported cases. The findings indicate positive effects of caste homogeneity while observing limited impact of economic inequality and religious homogeneity. However, the gains from higher caste homogeneity are seen to erode with the unlocking procedure after the nationwide lockdown. We find that community cohesion through caste effect is relatively dominant in rural areas even when mobility restrictions are withdrawn. Our findings indicate planners should prioritize public health interventions in caste-wise heterogeneous areas to compensate for the absence of community cohesion. The importance of our study lies in empirically validating the causal pathway between homogeneity and infection and pro...
Higher duration of programs that involve legal protection may entail gradual positive changes in ... more Higher duration of programs that involve legal protection may entail gradual positive changes in social norms that can be leveraged by potential beneficiaries in their favor. This paper examines the heterogeneous impact of the duration of exposure to gender-neutral reforms in the inheritance law in India on two latent domains of women empowerment: intrinsic, which pertains to expansion of agency and instrumental which relates to ability to make decisions. The time lag between the year of the amendment in the respective states and the year of marriage generate exogenous variation in reform exposure across women. The findings indicate a significant non-linear increase in the instrumental as well as intrinsic empowerment. Importantly, improvements in education along with increase in the age of marriage and changes in family structure are found to be the potential channels that signal gradual relaxation of social norms and explain the higher returns to exposure on empowerment.
The city of Kolkata generates more than 4000 tons of solid waste per day. As a group, households ... more The city of Kolkata generates more than 4000 tons of solid waste per day. As a group, households are the single largest generators of municipal waste and account for more than 50 percent of the total waste in the city. As open dumping is no longer viable, the Kolkata Municipal Corporation is trying alternative modes of disposal such as composting. However, in the absence of incentives, households do not separate Email: psarkhelin@yahoo.com The useful suggestions of anonymous reviewers are gratefully acknowledged. The author is grateful to B.K. Sengupta of KMDA for insightful discussions. Thanks also go to Shukla Bhaduri of Geography Department, Calcutta University for information on some important references. Agnar Sandmo, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, gave some extremely valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper. Academic interactions with and supervisory support of Sarmila Banerjee and Soumyen Sikdar of Calcutta University played a crucial ...
Arthaniti: Journal of Economic Theory and Practice
Bio-degradable waste accounts for major portion of municipal garbage in developing countries. A m... more Bio-degradable waste accounts for major portion of municipal garbage in developing countries. A major focus of waste management policies in these areas is to arrange for alternative disposal option that would convert the organic waste into usable products. Composting is one such option but it's applicability in municipal waste management practices have eluded the policy makers in low and middle income areas for Jong. One of the major reasons for this failure is inadequate regulatory attempts to ensure disposal of pre-sorted organic waste from the source of generation. Using a simple general equilibrium model this paper attempts to formalize incentive schemes that are required to induce source segregation at the household level and adoption of compost production as a garbage disposal service along with landfill in the setting of a developing urban area For effective source separation either a specific tax on mixed waste disposal or a deposit refund system is needed accompanied by a subsidy on compost production in both the cases. Comparative static results indicate that subsidizing compost producers with more productive resources could actually be efficiency enhancing leading to a strengthening of the case for competitive service provision of public utilities in developing countries.
Compliance with measures like social distancing, hand-washing and wearing masks have emerged as t... more Compliance with measures like social distancing, hand-washing and wearing masks have emerged as the dominant strategy to combat health risk from the COVID-19 pandemic. These behaviors are often argued to be pro-social, where one must incur private cost to benefit or protect others. Using self-reported data across India (n=934) through online survey, we assess if changes in perceived community compliance can predict changes in individual compliance behavior, controlling for the potential confounders. We observe statistically significant and positive relationship between the two, even after accounting for omitted variable bias, plausibly allowing us to view the results from a plausible causal lens. Further, we find subsequent lockdowns such as the ones imposed in India, have a detrimental effect on individual compliance though the gains from higher perceived community compliance seems to offset this loss. We also find that sensitization through community can be particularly effective ...
Gender discrimination in the labor market is usually seen as the result of the employers' cul... more Gender discrimination in the labor market is usually seen as the result of the employers' cultural bias. In this paper, we see the issue from a larger perspective by combining both labor market and household decision making together. It is often observed that women, prioritizing their families over their careers, willfully settle for less paying and less demanding job profiles. This leads to gender wage gap even if the employers do not discriminate between male and female employees. We argue that women may make such choices in presence of patriarchal social norms which see household chores as the primary duty of women. Our theoretical model predicts that women coming from families with stronger patriarchal values are more likely to accept less paying (and less demanding) jobs in the labor market than the women from liberal families. Our empirical section that uses a nationally representative survey data from India provides support for our theoretical predictions. Our results are...
To arrest the spread of COVID-19 infection, strict adherence to frequent hand washing and respira... more To arrest the spread of COVID-19 infection, strict adherence to frequent hand washing and respiratory hygiene protocols have been recommended. While these measures involve private effort, they provide health gains along with collective community benefits and hence are likely to be driven by pro-social motives like altruism and reciprocity. Using data from 934 respondents collected from April till May 2020 across India, we assess if changes in perceived community compliance can predict changes in individual compliance behaviour. We observe statistically significant and positive relationship between the two, even after accounting for observable and omitted variable bias allowing us to view the results from a plausible causal lens. Further, we find subsequent lockdowns having a detrimental effect on individual compliance though the gains from higher perceived community compliance seem to offset this loss. We also find positive perceptions about community can be particularly effective for people with pre-existing co-morbidities. Our findings underscore the need for multi-level behavioural interventions involving local actors and community institutions to sustain private compliance during the pandemic. We suggest these interventions need to be specially targeted for individuals with chronic ailments and emphasize on community behavioural practices in public messaging.
In recent times, land acquisitions in India for both public and private projects are facing stiff... more In recent times, land acquisitions in India for both public and private projects are facing stiff political resistance. Existing studies on land acquisition mostly focus on optimal compensation that would secure the consent of land owners. In this article, we argue that besides compensation, membership in different types of networks such as political parties and self-help groups might influence landowner consent. This could occur either because of pro-social concerns or access to better investment opportunities for the compensation amount. Using survey data from flood prone Indian Sundarbans, where the government sought to acquire land to construct embankments, we find evidence supportive of our hypothesis. The survey elicited reservation price response from land owners for a hypothetical land acquisition program. Our estimates show that land owners with self-help group members are more likely to have a higher ask price for agreeing to land sales. In contrast, controlling for length of party association, members of political networks are more likely to sell their land and have a lower reservation price than their non-political counterparts. Our results suggest that, rather than only increasing the compensation package, which is a stock of wealth, it is equally important to enhance the flow of income to ensure consensual land sales.
Global Development Institute, Working Paper Series, 2020
Evaluation of Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programmes in a developing country context indicate... more Evaluation of Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programmes in a developing country context indicates a positive impact on increasing enrolment but finds mixed evidence on improving learning outcomes. Using representative rural household survey data, we evaluated one of the largest CCT programmes in India, the Kanyashree Prakalpa, implemented in the state of West Bengal from 2013. We examined the effect on adolescent female school enrolment and tested whether there were concomitant improvements in learning outcomes. Employing double difference, triple difference and synthetic control methods, we found significant positive effects on female school enrolment, even for children from villages without a secondary school. The enrolment increase in heterogeneous settings indicated that transfers from CCT programmes might outweigh supply side constraints like the travel costs of schooling. However, we found that enrolment gains, while associated with improvements in lower-order learning outcomes, were related to a significant decline in higher-order learning skills. Notably, improvements in higher-order learning were only found in schools with lower teacher absenteeism and better physical infrastructure. Our analysis suggests that, without complementary investments in learning amenities, CCT programmes might only redirect adolescent girls to school without greatly enhancing the learning skills that could have a significant impact on potential economic and social (in)security.
Bandyopadhyay S., Dutta M. (eds) Opportunities and Challenges in Development. Springer, Singapore, 2019
Contemporary assessment of water availability in India predicts that by 2020 close to 600 million... more Contemporary assessment of water availability in India predicts that by 2020 close to 600 million Indians would be under water distress. The threat is more potent for the rural households as more than 80% of them are yet to have tap water within their premise. Public authorities have scaled up the rural water supply schemes and have set the target of universalizing indoor tap water in rural areas by 2024. In this background, using a panel of rural household water use data from 2005 and 2012 rounds of India Human Development Survey (IHDS), this paper attempts to empirically investigate whether the extent of social network influences the households’ access to the public water supply via tap water connection. Our paper shows that even in water-scarce areas the planners might fail to tap the potential demand for tap water if community ties are weak and households are not well integrated into social network. We find that if access to public water schemes is contingent on the intensity of social ties, it might exclude asset poor and socially disadvantaged groups from its ambit. Our result, thus, suggests that strengthening networks including poor households and scaling up of information and communication activities might be effective strategies to ensure increased access to piped water.
In this paper, we study the incidence of COVID-19 and the associated fatality with altitude using... more In this paper, we study the incidence of COVID-19 and the associated fatality with altitude using high frequency, district level data from India. To understand the implications of the nationwide lockdown after the outbreak, we use data for about four months- two from the lockdown period starting from March 25 till May 31, 2020 and about two months after unlocking was initiated (June 1-July 26, 2020). The multivariate regression result indicates slower growth in average rate of infection during the lockdown period in hilly regions, the gains of which attenuated after the unlocking was initiated. Despite these early gains, the rate of fatalities is significantly higher during the lockdown period in comparison to the plains. The findings remain robust to multiple alternative specifications and methods including one that accounts for confounding possibilities via unobservable and provides consistent estimates of bias adjusted treatment effects. The evidence supports the need for provisioning of public health services and infrastructure upgradation, especially maintenance of adequate stock of life support devices, in high altitude regions. It also underscores the necessity for strengthening and revising the existing Hill Areas Development Programme and integrating important aspects of public health as part of this policy.
Arresting COVID infections requires community collective action that is difficult to achieve in a... more Arresting COVID infections requires community collective action that is difficult to achieve in a socially and economically diverse setting. Using district level data from India, we examine the effects of caste and religious fragmentation along with economic inequality on the growth rate of reported cases. The findings indicate positive effects of caste homogeneity while observing limited impact of economic inequality and religious homogeneity. However, the gains from higher caste homogeneity are seen to erode with the unlocking procedure after the nationwide lockdown. We find that community cohesion through caste effect is relatively dominant in rural areas even when mobility restrictions are withdrawn. Our findings indicate planners should prioritize public health interventions in caste-wise heterogeneous areas to compensate for the absence of community cohesion. The importance of our study lies in empirically validating the causal pathway between homogeneity and infection and pro...
Higher duration of programs that involve legal protection may entail gradual positive changes in ... more Higher duration of programs that involve legal protection may entail gradual positive changes in social norms that can be leveraged by potential beneficiaries in their favor. This paper examines the heterogeneous impact of the duration of exposure to gender-neutral reforms in the inheritance law in India on two latent domains of women empowerment: intrinsic, which pertains to expansion of agency and instrumental which relates to ability to make decisions. The time lag between the year of the amendment in the respective states and the year of marriage generate exogenous variation in reform exposure across women. The findings indicate a significant non-linear increase in the instrumental as well as intrinsic empowerment. Importantly, improvements in education along with increase in the age of marriage and changes in family structure are found to be the potential channels that signal gradual relaxation of social norms and explain the higher returns to exposure on empowerment.
The city of Kolkata generates more than 4000 tons of solid waste per day. As a group, households ... more The city of Kolkata generates more than 4000 tons of solid waste per day. As a group, households are the single largest generators of municipal waste and account for more than 50 percent of the total waste in the city. As open dumping is no longer viable, the Kolkata Municipal Corporation is trying alternative modes of disposal such as composting. However, in the absence of incentives, households do not separate Email: psarkhelin@yahoo.com The useful suggestions of anonymous reviewers are gratefully acknowledged. The author is grateful to B.K. Sengupta of KMDA for insightful discussions. Thanks also go to Shukla Bhaduri of Geography Department, Calcutta University for information on some important references. Agnar Sandmo, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, gave some extremely valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper. Academic interactions with and supervisory support of Sarmila Banerjee and Soumyen Sikdar of Calcutta University played a crucial ...
Arthaniti: Journal of Economic Theory and Practice
Bio-degradable waste accounts for major portion of municipal garbage in developing countries. A m... more Bio-degradable waste accounts for major portion of municipal garbage in developing countries. A major focus of waste management policies in these areas is to arrange for alternative disposal option that would convert the organic waste into usable products. Composting is one such option but it's applicability in municipal waste management practices have eluded the policy makers in low and middle income areas for Jong. One of the major reasons for this failure is inadequate regulatory attempts to ensure disposal of pre-sorted organic waste from the source of generation. Using a simple general equilibrium model this paper attempts to formalize incentive schemes that are required to induce source segregation at the household level and adoption of compost production as a garbage disposal service along with landfill in the setting of a developing urban area For effective source separation either a specific tax on mixed waste disposal or a deposit refund system is needed accompanied by a subsidy on compost production in both the cases. Comparative static results indicate that subsidizing compost producers with more productive resources could actually be efficiency enhancing leading to a strengthening of the case for competitive service provision of public utilities in developing countries.
Compliance with measures like social distancing, hand-washing and wearing masks have emerged as t... more Compliance with measures like social distancing, hand-washing and wearing masks have emerged as the dominant strategy to combat health risk from the COVID-19 pandemic. These behaviors are often argued to be pro-social, where one must incur private cost to benefit or protect others. Using self-reported data across India (n=934) through online survey, we assess if changes in perceived community compliance can predict changes in individual compliance behavior, controlling for the potential confounders. We observe statistically significant and positive relationship between the two, even after accounting for omitted variable bias, plausibly allowing us to view the results from a plausible causal lens. Further, we find subsequent lockdowns such as the ones imposed in India, have a detrimental effect on individual compliance though the gains from higher perceived community compliance seems to offset this loss. We also find that sensitization through community can be particularly effective ...
Gender discrimination in the labor market is usually seen as the result of the employers' cul... more Gender discrimination in the labor market is usually seen as the result of the employers' cultural bias. In this paper, we see the issue from a larger perspective by combining both labor market and household decision making together. It is often observed that women, prioritizing their families over their careers, willfully settle for less paying and less demanding job profiles. This leads to gender wage gap even if the employers do not discriminate between male and female employees. We argue that women may make such choices in presence of patriarchal social norms which see household chores as the primary duty of women. Our theoretical model predicts that women coming from families with stronger patriarchal values are more likely to accept less paying (and less demanding) jobs in the labor market than the women from liberal families. Our empirical section that uses a nationally representative survey data from India provides support for our theoretical predictions. Our results are...
To arrest the spread of COVID-19 infection, strict adherence to frequent hand washing and respira... more To arrest the spread of COVID-19 infection, strict adherence to frequent hand washing and respiratory hygiene protocols have been recommended. While these measures involve private effort, they provide health gains along with collective community benefits and hence are likely to be driven by pro-social motives like altruism and reciprocity. Using data from 934 respondents collected from April till May 2020 across India, we assess if changes in perceived community compliance can predict changes in individual compliance behaviour. We observe statistically significant and positive relationship between the two, even after accounting for observable and omitted variable bias allowing us to view the results from a plausible causal lens. Further, we find subsequent lockdowns having a detrimental effect on individual compliance though the gains from higher perceived community compliance seem to offset this loss. We also find positive perceptions about community can be particularly effective for people with pre-existing co-morbidities. Our findings underscore the need for multi-level behavioural interventions involving local actors and community institutions to sustain private compliance during the pandemic. We suggest these interventions need to be specially targeted for individuals with chronic ailments and emphasize on community behavioural practices in public messaging.
In recent times, land acquisitions in India for both public and private projects are facing stiff... more In recent times, land acquisitions in India for both public and private projects are facing stiff political resistance. Existing studies on land acquisition mostly focus on optimal compensation that would secure the consent of land owners. In this article, we argue that besides compensation, membership in different types of networks such as political parties and self-help groups might influence landowner consent. This could occur either because of pro-social concerns or access to better investment opportunities for the compensation amount. Using survey data from flood prone Indian Sundarbans, where the government sought to acquire land to construct embankments, we find evidence supportive of our hypothesis. The survey elicited reservation price response from land owners for a hypothetical land acquisition program. Our estimates show that land owners with self-help group members are more likely to have a higher ask price for agreeing to land sales. In contrast, controlling for length of party association, members of political networks are more likely to sell their land and have a lower reservation price than their non-political counterparts. Our results suggest that, rather than only increasing the compensation package, which is a stock of wealth, it is equally important to enhance the flow of income to ensure consensual land sales.
Global Development Institute, Working Paper Series, 2020
Evaluation of Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programmes in a developing country context indicate... more Evaluation of Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programmes in a developing country context indicates a positive impact on increasing enrolment but finds mixed evidence on improving learning outcomes. Using representative rural household survey data, we evaluated one of the largest CCT programmes in India, the Kanyashree Prakalpa, implemented in the state of West Bengal from 2013. We examined the effect on adolescent female school enrolment and tested whether there were concomitant improvements in learning outcomes. Employing double difference, triple difference and synthetic control methods, we found significant positive effects on female school enrolment, even for children from villages without a secondary school. The enrolment increase in heterogeneous settings indicated that transfers from CCT programmes might outweigh supply side constraints like the travel costs of schooling. However, we found that enrolment gains, while associated with improvements in lower-order learning outcomes, were related to a significant decline in higher-order learning skills. Notably, improvements in higher-order learning were only found in schools with lower teacher absenteeism and better physical infrastructure. Our analysis suggests that, without complementary investments in learning amenities, CCT programmes might only redirect adolescent girls to school without greatly enhancing the learning skills that could have a significant impact on potential economic and social (in)security.
Bandyopadhyay S., Dutta M. (eds) Opportunities and Challenges in Development. Springer, Singapore, 2019
Contemporary assessment of water availability in India predicts that by 2020 close to 600 million... more Contemporary assessment of water availability in India predicts that by 2020 close to 600 million Indians would be under water distress. The threat is more potent for the rural households as more than 80% of them are yet to have tap water within their premise. Public authorities have scaled up the rural water supply schemes and have set the target of universalizing indoor tap water in rural areas by 2024. In this background, using a panel of rural household water use data from 2005 and 2012 rounds of India Human Development Survey (IHDS), this paper attempts to empirically investigate whether the extent of social network influences the households’ access to the public water supply via tap water connection. Our paper shows that even in water-scarce areas the planners might fail to tap the potential demand for tap water if community ties are weak and households are not well integrated into social network. We find that if access to public water schemes is contingent on the intensity of social ties, it might exclude asset poor and socially disadvantaged groups from its ambit. Our result, thus, suggests that strengthening networks including poor households and scaling up of information and communication activities might be effective strategies to ensure increased access to piped water.
Arresting COVID infections requires community collective action that is difficult to achieve in a... more Arresting COVID infections requires community collective action that is difficult to achieve in a socially and economically diverse setting. Using district level data from India, we examine the effects of caste and religious fragmentation along with economic inequality on the growth rate of reported cases. The findings indicate positive effects of caste homogeneity while observing limited impact of economic inequality and religious homogeneity. However, the gains from higher caste homogeneity are seen to erode with the unlocking procedure after the nationwide lockdown. We find that community cohesion through caste effect is relatively dominant in rural areas even when mobility restrictions are withdrawn. Our findings indicate planners should prioritize public health interventions in caste-wise heterogeneous areas to compensate for the absence of community cohesion. The importance of our study lies in empirically validating the causal pathway between homogeneity and infection and providing a basis for zoning infection prone areas.
Higher duration of programs that involve legal protection may entail gradual positive changes in ... more Higher duration of programs that involve legal protection may entail gradual positive changes in social norms that can be leveraged by potential beneficiaries in their favor. This paper examines the heterogeneous impact of the duration of exposure to gender-neutral reforms in the inheritance law in India on two latent domains of women empowerment: intrinsic, which pertains to expansion of agency and instrumental which relates to ability to make decisions. The time lag between the year of the amendment in the respective states and the year of marriage generate exogenous variation in reform exposure across women. The findings indicate a significant non-linear increase in the instrumental as well as intrinsic empowerment. Importantly, improvements in education along with increase in the age of marriage and changes in family structure are found to be the potential channels that signal gradual relaxation of social norms and explain the higher returns to exposure on empowerment.
Compliance with measures like social distancing, hand-washing and wearing masks have emerged as t... more Compliance with measures like social distancing, hand-washing and wearing masks have emerged as the dominant strategy to combat health risk from the COVID-19 pandemic. These behaviors are often argued to be pro-social, where one must incur private cost to benefit or protect others. Using self-reported data across India (n=934) through online survey, we assess if changes in perceived community compliance can predict changes in individual compliance behavior, controlling for the potential confounders. We observe statistically significant and positive relationship between the two, even after accounting for omitted variable bias, plausibly allowing us to view the results from a plausible causal lens. Further, we find subsequent lockdowns such as the ones imposed in India, have a detrimental effect on individual compliance though the gains from higher perceived community compliance seems to offset this loss. We also find that sensitization through community can be particularly effective for people with pre-existing co-morbidities. Our findings underscore the need for multi-level behavioral interventions involving local actors and community institutions to sustain private compliance during the pandemic.
In: Dasgupta, B., Sarkhel, P., Ghosh, A., Ghosh, B. (eds) In Quest of Humane Development. India Studies in Business and Economics. Springer, Singapore., 2022
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