Article 334 of the Constitution of India (1950) stipulates that certain electoral districts in each state should be reserved for minority groups, namely the “Scheduled Caste”(SC) and the Scheduled Tribe”(ST), through the reservation of seats in the states' legislative assemblies. Even though the original article stated that the reservation policy would be in place for just twenty years, it has been amended several times and is still in effect. This dissertation examines the impact of the policy on the education and health outcomes of the SC population. Variations in seat quotas are generated by the timing of elections in different states and the states’ fluctuating SC populations. The first paper on education uses data from 25 Indian States and 3 Union Territories for the years 1990-2011 to form a panel dataset to estimate the impact of the quota system on both enrollment and dropout rates among SC students in all levels of schooling. I use the fixed effect regression to test the mechanisms through which an elected SC legislator could have an influence on the education outcomes for the SC population in the represented state. I then use the resulting variables as my controls to identify the causal relationship using the dynamic panel data model. I find that a SC legislator has the potential to influence the number of schools built, as well as the amount of education and welfare expenditure allocated to the SC population. Moreover, I find that the SC political reservation has a positive and statistically significant impact on the SC enrollment rates and a negative and significant impact on the dropout rates, in all levels of schooling. Likewise, I use the NFHS-3 dataset and the Cox Proportional Hazard Model to estimate the hazard rates (risks of dying) of children under the age of 12 months (IMR) and under the age of 60 months (U5MR) as influenced by different SC quota share quintiles. I find that the 50-60% quota-share quintile has the biggest impact in reducing the IMR and U5MR among the SC children.

Doctorat en Sciences / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

This paper critically interrogates Nepal’s national policies on caste based discrimination, thatwere implemented post the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2006. It usesCarol Bacchi’s ‘What’s the Problem Represented to be?’ (WPR) method for policy analysis tounderstand the problem representations within existing policies that address discrimination based on caste in Nepal today. This study is conducted vis a vis the role of the current government in shaping the understanding of the ‘problem’ representation in these policies. This study aspires to show that the problem of caste based discrimination in Nepal cannot be represented solely as a problem of poverty and development. Instead, policy reforms need to prioritize the recognition of caste based discrimination as a problem, in and of itself, in order to alleviate the suffering and discrimination of caste affected groups in Nepal.

<p>This dissertation examines the role state-society dynamics play in influencing how people negotiate inequality. In particular, I analyze the interdependent relationship between state policies and the frames people use to interpret unequal access to food and care. While state policies shape people’s frames, people also negotiate with state policies to deploy frames that either challenge or adapt to inequality. Using in-depth observations, policy documents, and 50 semi-structured interviews with mothers, <i>Anganwadi </i>workers (childcare workers), union leaders, and state representatives associated with the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), a welfare program in India, I show that state-society dynamics are central to how inequality is sustained and challenged. When welfare policies encourage collectivization, disadvantaged groups appropriate policy frames to strengthen entitlement frames and in the process, challenge inequality. I refer to this mechanism as <i>frame appropriation</i>. In contrast, policies such as privatization encourage individualization, particularly in economically mobile groups, who then adopt neoliberal frames such as personal responsibility and choice, to weaken entitlement frames through a mechanism I call <i>reactive adoption</i>. Thus, alongside social movements that has made possible historically significant policy reforms, the path to social change also comes alive in daily interactions where policies mediate people’s everyday lives. </p>

Peu connu aujourd’hui en France en dehors des cercles orientalistes, le nom de Giuseppe Tucci est en revanche en Italie toujours associé à l’Orient. Sa figure apparaît ainsi comme celle d'un médiateur entre l’Italie et l’Orient, objet de définitions concurrentes. Agent de la politique extérieure italienne en Inde, organisateur des séjours en Italie des nationalistes indiens, mis en scène par le régime fasciste, intellectuel instrumentalisé par le fascisme de Mussolini, théoricien reprenant des idées conformes à celles des intellectuels fascistes ? La question est de savoir dans quelle mesure Tucci s’est rallié au régime, dans quelle mesure il l’a soutenu. L’orientalisme tourné vers l’Inde a en outre été le terrain d’instrumentalisations particulières, liées aux théories « racistes ». Une bonne part de ce courant entretient avec l’antisémitisme nazi et fasciste des liens complexes. L’approche historique de l’itinéraire de Tucci ne se limite pas à ses actions au service du régime, telles que l’organisation du voyage de Gandhi, elle implique une analyse des textes qui font allusion aux questions raciales. La question de la quête de l’origine est bien présente dans sa démarche de voyageur et de savant. L’intérêt précoce pour les langues anciennes comme l’hébreu et le sanscrit confirme le caractère central de cette quête dans la démarche de Tucci. Fut-il porteur des théories racistes cherchant dans la linguistique des arguments opposant les peuples « aryens » aux peuples « sémitiques » ? A cet égard, il importe d’étudier précisément ce qui peut rapprocher et différencier Tucci de Julius Evola (1898-1974), en se fondant sur leurs écrits respectifs et sur leurs prises de position publiques et privées. / Hardly known today in France except among Orientalist circles, Giuseppe Tucci is in Italy associated with the Orient. He still appears as a mediator between East and West. Indeed, as an actor of Italian Foreign Policy in India, he organized travels to Italy for leading nationalists Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi, in propagandist action in favor of Fascist Italy. Was he really a supporter of the Regime ? Was he only motivated by opportunistic reasons ? As a matter of fact, Indian Orientalism has been linked to racial theories that display complex links with Nazi and Fascist Anti-Semitism. An historical approach of Giuseppe Tucci’s life does not only deal with political actions for the regime, it implies to some extent an analysis of writings linked to “Race” as a topic of investigation. The Quest for the Origin was to be seen in his travels and in his scholarly approach of the East which shows his interest for old languages such as Hebrew and Sanskrit. Was he in favor of Race Theories seeking in linguistics, arguments opposing “Aryans" against "Semitic" people ? Did he share any common points with esoteric philosopher Julius Evola (1898-1974) ?

This dissertation analyzes how cultural and behavioral frictions affect decision-making in labor markets of developing economies. It studies factors that have received relatively little attention in economics—namely concerns about preserving identity, cognitive strain from financial stress, and gender norms—and examines their impacts on labor supply and productivity. Field experiments in the state of Odisha, India are used to provide direct empirical evidence on these relationships. Chapter 1 investigates how identity—one's concept of self—influences economic behavior in the labor market, focusing on the effect of caste identity on labor supply. In the experiment, casual laborers belonging to different castes choose whether to take up various real job offers. All offers involve working on a default manufacturing task and an additional task. The additional task changes across offers, is performed in private, and differs in its association with specific castes. Workers' average take-up rate of offers is 23 percentage points lower if offers involve working on tasks that are associated with castes other than their own. This gap increases to 47 pp if the castes associated with the relevant offers rank lower than workers' own in the caste hierarchy. Responses to job offers are invariant to whether or not workers' choices are publicized, suggesting that the role of identity itself—rather than social image—is paramount. Using a supplementary experiment, I show that 43% of workers refuse to spend ten minutes working on tasks associated with other castes, even when offered ten times their daily wage. Results indicate that identity may be an important constraint on labor supply, contributing to misallocation of talent in the economy. Chapter 2—joint work with Supreet Kaur, Sendhil Mullainathan, and Frank Schilbach—tests for a direct causal impact of financial strain on worker productivity. The experiment randomly varies timing of income receipt among laborers who earn piece rates for manufacturing tasks: some workers receive their wages on earlier dates, altering when cash constraints are eased while holding overall wealth constant. Workers increase productivity by 5.3% on average in the days after cash receipt. The impacts are concentrated among poorer workers in the sample, who increase output by over 10%. This effect of cash on hand on productivity is not explained by mechanisms such as gift exchange, trust in the employer, or nutrition. The chapter also presents positive evidence that productivity increases are mediated through lower attentional errors in production, indicating a role for improved cognition after cash receipt. Finally, directing workers’ attention to their finances via a salience intervention produced mixed results—consistent with concerns about priming highlighted in the literature. Results indicate a direct relationship between financial constraints and worker productivity and suggest that psychological channels mediated through attention play a role in this relationship. Chapter 3 examines whether gender norms lead women to hold back their potential in the labor market. While the existing literature has shown that women tend to earn less than their husbands, there is limited direct evidence on whether women actively avoid earning more than their spouses and the determinants of such behavior. The experiment engages married couples working as casual laborers in a short-term manufacturing job that pays piece-rate on output. The experiment provides women an extra hour to work without this difference being salient, making it likely that they could earn more than their husbands. After husbands finish piece-rate production, women are randomized into one of three conditions in which 1) the wife is informed of her husband’s production and expects both spouses to learn how much each spouse has produced, 2) the wife is informed of her husband’s production and expects that only she will learn how much each spouse has produced, or 3) both spouses are only informed of their joint total production. Results show that women in the last two conditions achieve on average one hour’s worth of production more than that of their husbands, suggesting that women do not face intrinsic concerns about earning more than their husbands. However, this productivity gap substantially decreases when husbands are expected to learn about individual production. This finding suggests that norms in marriage may be an important factor contributing to gender inequality in the labor market.

Drawing on archival materials, family stories, and student artwork, “Schooling the Master: Caste Supremacy and American Education in British Ceylon, 1795–1855” examines how nineteenth-century American missionary education in South Asia facilitated dominant-caste supremacy while distributing negotiated sensibilities of colonial modernity. The work’s first section explores the arrangement of an educational nexus of mutual benefit between the Jaffna Peninsula’s dominant Veḷḷāḷar caste, the British Ceylonese government, and American Protestant missionaries. I track this nexus from its origins in the veranda school of Tamil Śaiva poet Kūḻaṅkai Tampirāṉ (1699–1795) to its apogee in the American Ceylon Mission boarding schools of the late 1840s. The dissertation’s second part examines two pedagogies of colonial modernity: the embroidery of needlework samplers that taught an American form of gendered domesticity, and map drawing that imparted a geographically specific and American-style national identity. By describing three moments in its development and two pedagogical facets of its career, the dissertation argues that an educational nexus crafted for some Veḷḷāḷars a distinct Jaffna Tamil identity that is geographically bound, gendered, and pervaded by a sense of superiority. This dissertation makes two significant contributions to South Asian studies, first by demonstrating an unexamined arrangement of power in the context of colonialism—the educational nexus—and second, by exploring the way colonial teaching methods in the first half of the nineteenth century transformed South Asian ways of being.

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