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Abstract
Does decentralisation promote clientelism? If yes, through which mechanisms? We answer these questions through an analysis of India’s (and the world’s) largest workfare programme, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), in two Indian states: Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh (AP). The two states adopted radically different implementation models: Rajasthan’s decentralised one stands in contrast with Andhra Pradesh’s centralised and bureaucracy-led model. Using a mixed method approach, we find that in both states local implementers have incentives to distribute MGNREGA work in a clientelistic fashion. However, in Rajasthan, these incentives are stronger, because of the decentralised implementation model. Accordingly, our quantitative evidence shows that clientelism is more serious a problem in Rajasthan than in AP.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank James Manor, Louise Tillin, Simon Toubeau, Sten Widmalm and two anonymous reviewers of this journal for their comments on a previous draft. We also thank participants to the ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops in Nottingham and to seminars at Griffith University (Brisbane) and Uppsala University for their feedback. Finally, we thank APVVU (in particular Ajay Kumar and Chakradhar Buddha) and PRIA (in particular Alok Pandey) for their support for the conduction of the survey in AP and Rajasthan, respectively. All remaining errors are our own.
Notes
1. In June 2014, the state of AP was bifurcated. The ten northern districts now form the state of Telangana. In this paper, we refer to the unified state.
2. See for example Mansuri & Rao, Citation2013; Stokes, Dunning, Nazareno, & Brusco, Citation2013; WDR, Citation2017, p. 11; Weitz-Shapiro, Citation2014
3. Elite capture refers to the appropriation of benefits meant for the poor or the public at large by locally powerful elites.
4. Examples of such studies are Weitz-Shapiro (Citation2014) and Heath and Tillin (Citation2018).
5. At least as far as the implementation of the MGNREGA is concerned. In line with other scholars, we take the average number of persondays per household as a key indicator of success (Chopra, Citation2015).
6. The MGNREGA Act mandates that at least 50% of the funds are spent through the GPs. AP has blatantly violated this provision of the national Act. This was confirmed to us in interviews with Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) Jayaprakash Narayan (Hyderabad, 17 December 2012). The Union Minister for Rural Development has repeatedly asked the AP government to rectify this (to no avail). See The Hindu (Citation2013).
7. This refers to the Dalit leader, B. R. Ambedkar, who believed that Indian village councils were a major source of oppression by the dominant castes on the Dalit communities.
8. The districts in AP are Visakhapatnam, Chittoor and Karimnagar; in Rajasthan: Churu, Kaurali and Sirohi.
9. Sub-district units are referred to as ‘blocks’ in Rajasthan and ‘mandals’ in AP.
10. One GP in Kaurali was excluded from the final data-set due to lower data quality. All respondents had a job card and had worked under the scheme in at least one fiscal year since 2008/09.
11. Form 6 is the form that needs to be filled in to demand work.
12. The functionary in charge of the MGNREGA at the village level.
13. Marcesse (Citation2018) finds the same in Uttar Pradesh.
14. In AP all MGNREGA beneficiaries are organised in groups of about 20 members called SSS groups. A ‘mate’ leads each group. The groups’ members get employment as a group, rather than individually.
15. Recently, the Rural Development Department has introduced a standardised procedure for ‘capturing’ the demands for work. In most villages across the state, job applications are registered on one given day every week, irrespective of the will of the FA. During one field visit to one pilot site by one of us in October 2013, we saw that the procedure was duly followed and written receipts were issued.
16. We focus here on village-level political incentives. Other papers (Elliott, Citation2011; Johnson, Citation2009; Zimmermann, Citation2015) have explored this type of incentives at higher levels.
17. The post of sarpanch is reserved for women, Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Castes on a rotation basis.
18. Chau, Liu, and Soundararajan (Citation2018), in contrast to most literature and to our argument, argue that sarpanches adopt an expansionist strategy.
19. This came out of interviews with four MLAs, two ministers and numerous state government officials.
20. Indeed MGNREGA has been identified as one of the factors contributing towards the upward trend in rural wages (Himanshu & Kundu, Citation2016; Imbert & Papp, Citation2015).
21. This came from numerous interviews with farmers in both states. See also Veeraraghavan (Citation2015).
22. This was confirmed by almost all the sarpanches we spoke to in Rajasthan.
23. Mukhopadhyay et al. (Citation2015) and Dey and Sen (Citation2016) adopt the same criterion to analyse distributive strategies of the sarpanches.