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Poverty Alleviation Effort of West Bengal Panchayats Pranab Bardhan and Dilip Mookherjee
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Bardhan, Pranab K. |
| Copyright Year | 2003 |
| Abstract | We examine poverty alleviation effort of West Bengal panchayats, comprising implementation of land reforms and pro-poor targeting of credit, agricultural minikits, employment programs and fiscal grants. The sample includes 89 villages and covers four successive panchayat administrations. While average levels of poverty alleviation effort were high, there were significant variations both across and within villages over time. Poverty alleviation effort within villages improved when land was distributed more equally, the poor became more literate, there were fewer low caste households, and local elections were more contested. We argue that this reflects the phenomenon of limited accountability of gram panchayats to the poor in the presence of high inequality in socio-economic status and political power. The allocation bias was considerably stronger with regard to allocation of resources across gram panchayats, implying the need to incorporate need-based formulae in interpanchayat allocations instead of political discretion of higher level officials. |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://eml.berkeley.edu/~webfac/bardhan/papers/BardhMookhPanchayats.pdf |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://www.bu.edu/econ/workingpapers/papers/Dilip%20Mookherjee/epwsumm.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
