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    Signs of Discrimination: The Effect of Politician Identity and Party Affiliation on Development Outcomes for Minorities in India

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    Creator
    Jilani, Amir Hamza
    Advisor
    Brauw, Alan D
    Abstract
    This paper evaluates whether politician identity, and in particular, the party affiliation of legislators affects employment and welfare outcomes for minorities in India. I combine data on the outcome of close elections to state legislative assemblies over 18 years for 19 Indian states with data on employment and access to social security benefits to determine whether an increase in political representation by legislators belonging to India’s right-wing, Hindu nationalist party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has a meaningful and causal effect on Muslim development outcomes. Close elections provide a unique window of opportunity to capture random variation in the assignment of legislators to certain districts in India. This natural experiment allows me to isolate the effect of a random increase in BJP political representation using the share of seats won by the BJP in close elections as an instrument for the share of seats won by the BJP across all elections. I find that increasing the district-level proportion of BJP legislators when the BJP is in power at the state-level reduces the likelihood of Muslim employment in both the public and private sector as well as the probability of Muslims having access to social security benefits. These results remain robust with the addition of various individual-level and electoral controls as well as with variations in the definition of a close election. I find no evidence of an adverse effect on Muslims with an increase in the political representation of the Indian National Congress (INC).
    Description
    M.P.P.
    Permanent Link
    http://hdl.handle.net/10822/1040790
    Date Published
    2016
    Subject
    Discrimination; Economic Development; Employment and Welfare; India; Muslims; Politician Identity and Party Affiliation; Public policy; Economics; Political Science; Public policy; Economics; Political science;
    Type
    thesis
    Collections
    • Graduate Theses and Dissertations - Public Policy
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    Georgetown University Seal
    ©2009 - 2018 Georgetown University Library
    37th & O Streets NW
    Washington DC 20057-1174
    202.687.7385
    digitalscholarship@georgetown.edu