Work in progress
The Local Bureaucrat: Between Capture and Responsiveness (early stage)
Should bureaucrats be isolated from local capture or is being locally embedded conducive to the quality of public service provision? Exploiting a quasi-random assignment mechanism of members of the Indian Administrative Service, India’s elite civil service, this paper investigates the impact of local embeddedness on learning outcomes across public schools in rural Indian districts. The focus on learning in government schools has two novel aspects: first, it focuses on a difficult-to-monitor task; second, unlike infrastructure provision, it offers few patronage opportunities. I find a substantially and statistically significant impact of the share of local bureaucrats on learning that hinges on the literacy rate in the districts: for low literacy districts, a higher share of local bureaucrats lowers learning outcomes; for high literacy districts, a higher share increases learning outcomes. I find a similar pattern for the timely arrival of learning-related funds and no such effect on learning for private schools or infrastructure-related funds. Potential mechanisms explaining this contrasting effect are also discussed.
Non-academic articles (selection)
Other work I contributed to (selection)
The Local Bureaucrat: Between Capture and Responsiveness (early stage)
Should bureaucrats be isolated from local capture or is being locally embedded conducive to the quality of public service provision? Exploiting a quasi-random assignment mechanism of members of the Indian Administrative Service, India’s elite civil service, this paper investigates the impact of local embeddedness on learning outcomes across public schools in rural Indian districts. The focus on learning in government schools has two novel aspects: first, it focuses on a difficult-to-monitor task; second, unlike infrastructure provision, it offers few patronage opportunities. I find a substantially and statistically significant impact of the share of local bureaucrats on learning that hinges on the literacy rate in the districts: for low literacy districts, a higher share of local bureaucrats lowers learning outcomes; for high literacy districts, a higher share increases learning outcomes. I find a similar pattern for the timely arrival of learning-related funds and no such effect on learning for private schools or infrastructure-related funds. Potential mechanisms explaining this contrasting effect are also discussed.
Non-academic articles (selection)
- The Hindu: The World Bank's STARS projects needs an overhaul (with Kiran Bhatty (CPR India); available here)
- The Wire: Why RCTs aren't the simple answer to solving India's learning crisis (with Rakesh K. Rajak; available here)
- Ideas for India: कोविड-19: संकटग्रस्त स्कूली शिक्षा और व्याप्त शैक्षणिक विषमता में अप्रत्याशित वृद्धि [COVID-19: Unprecedented increase of the schooling crisis and prevailing educational disparity] (with Abhishek Anand; available here)
Other work I contributed to (selection)
