We study the impact of an innovative program in the Indian state of Bihar that aimed to reduce the gender gap in secondary school enrollment by providing girls who continued to secondary school with a bicycle that would improve access to school. Using data from a large representative household...

This paper examines the impact of state level political reservation for two minority groups - Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes - on child labor in India. We estimate the effect of political reservation on child labor by exploiting the state variation in the share of seats reserved for the...

This paper examines the relationship between elected minority representatives, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, and health worker visits in rural India. We estimate the effect of minority representation on the frequency of visits to villages by health workers by exploiting the state...

The recent increase in the number of criminally accused politicians elected to state assemblies has caused much furor in India. Despite the potentially important consequences and the widely divergent views, the implications of their elections to state legislative assemblies on constituency-level...

Illegal trafficking of women is a result of their disadvantageous position in the society that is often reflected in increasing preference for son and neglect for daughters. Multiple reports point to India as country confronted with both higher levels of illegal trafficking of girls and abnormal...