Ashish Adhikari

Political reservation brings disadvantaged groups into leadership and can change which policies are chosen and who benefits, but less is known about its effect on program implementation. Using administrative records that track nearly 11 million works under India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme from approval to completion or abandonment, I study two council terms in Uttar Pradesh. I exploit the rotation of reserved seats and a fuzzy regression discontinuity design to estimate the effects of reserving council leadership for Scheduled Castes (SCs), Other Backward Classes (OBCs), and women. I find that SC-reserved councils sanction fewer works and complete a smaller share of those they sanction. The effects are smaller for OBC reservation and absent for women’s reservation. The implementation gap under SC reservation is concentrated in community projects, which involve greater coordination and technical demands, rather than individual projects. This inefficiency is largest in the first year of the council term, and only about one-third remains by the end, consistent with learning over time.

Developing countries often rely on trade policy to stabilize food prices during supply disruptions, yet the spatial distribution of these benefits remains poorly understood. This paper studies India’s 2015–2016 pulses crisis, when consecutive domestic production shortfalls sharply raised pulses prices and triggered a surge in imports. We examine whether trade-based price stabilization reached domestic markets evenly or weakened with distance from major import ports. Using a district-level panel of wholesale pulses prices from 2009 to 2019 and a difference-in-differences design, we show that the import surge did not provide uniform price relief. During the crisis, each additional 100 kilometers from a major import port translated into about a 1.7 percent larger increase in pulses prices. This means that a district at the 90^th percentile of port distance faced a price increase about 12 percent larger than a district at the 10^th percentile. The results suggest that while imports can moderate national price spikes, their stabilizing effects may be limited by incomplete internal market integration.

This paper provides a unified, cross-country assessment of how unmet son preference shapes fertility and child health across South Asia, leveraging quasi-random variation in firstborn sex. First, we show that son preference, activated by a firstborn daughter, reduces contraceptive use, shortens birth intervals, and reduces breastfeeding duration. These responses are pronounced in India, Nepal, and Pakistan but substantially weaker in Bangladesh. Second, we show that son preference also affects child health, with estimates concentrated in India. Second-born girls with an older sister are shorter and lighter than those with an older brother, while second-born boys with an older sister are taller and heavier. Third, we document asymmetric survival responses consistent with activated son preference: girls’ survival is unaffected, but boys born after a sister are more likely to survive. Overall, the findings suggest that unmet son preference continues to shape fertility behavior and generate unequal child health outcomes.

This paper examines how seasonal variation in agricultural production shapes migration aspirations among rural households in Nigeria. Drawing on rich household panel data from the 2023–2024 wave of the Nigeria General Household Survey Panel (GHS Panel), we exploit within-season variation in harvest outcomes and migration intentions to estimate the short-run behavioral response to realized agricultural productivity. Our findings reveal a robust inverted U-shaped relationship: migration aspirations initially rise with improvements in harvest value but decline once households reach higher levels of productivity. This non-monotonic pattern reflects the joint influence of rising capability and diminishing incentive to migrate. Further analysis identifies food insecurity as a key moderating mechanism. Households experiencing moderate-to-severe food insecurity are significantly more responsive to agricultural shocks, with migration aspirations rising more steeply following poor harvests. By linking food security, agricultural outcomes, and migration intentions within the same season, this study highlights the dynamic nature of rural mobility preferences in response to production-based livelihood risks.

Irrigation in the Eastern Gangetic Plains is changing fast in water use and energy. Focusing on Nepal’s Terai, we provide an updated assessment of irrigation patterns, with attention to irrigation assets, costs, and access. Three findings stand out. First, irrigation is shifting from surface water to groundwater and from diesel to electric pumps. Second, despite cheaper electric pumping and rapid grid expansion, access remains uneven, with regional differences in ownership and rental markets shaping both cost and timeliness. Third, renters face higher irrigation costs and longer delays than owners. These patterns reveal persistent disparities in irrigation access despite ongoing transitions.

In India, state election (Vidhan Sabha) results significantly impact constituencies, as state governments hold substantial power over policies and expenditures. These elections occur at the assembly level, a smaller administrative unit than districts. “Low-caste parties,” or political parties focused on representing marginalized groups such as Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), and Other Backward Classes (OBC), can run for office. Using a fuzzy regression discontinuity design and assuming close election results are quasi-random, we examine the welfare impacts when low-caste parties win elections, particularly on health outcomes, which have historically been worse for these marginalized households. We also test whether these effects are lasting or depend on subsequent elections.

India’s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), the world’s largest rural workfare program, invests heavily in local water infrastructure, so the assets communities choose can shape water availability for years. We examine whether this investment strengthens or weakens rural water security. Preliminary evidence suggests villages often direct MGNREGA funds toward water-extraction rather than water-conservation assets. We construct a large, geolocated dataset linking MGNREGA spending and water-related assets to remotely sensed measures of rainfall, vegetation, surface water, and groundwater, together with village-level social audit records, and validate these measures against field survey data on asset quality and the distribution of benefits.