Distributing Power: Public Service Provision to the Poor in India

How do governments distribute basic public services when budget constraints necessitate their rationing? This paper examines variations in the distribution of scarce electrical power in northern India over the last two decades. Drawing on a novel set of satellite imagery of the earth at night that avoids the biases and missing data problems affecting traditional measures, I construct annual indicators of electrification for all 98,000 villages in Uttar Pradesh. By observing temporal variations in nighttime light output at the village level over three election cycles, I use matching and multilevel models to show that representation by a low-Caste party increases electrification rates in India’s villages. ∗Originally prepared for presentation at the 2009 American Political Science Association Meeting in Toronto, Ontario. I have benefited greatly from discussions with Miriam Golden, Daniel Posner, Anoop Sarbahi, Ashutosh Varshney, and Andreas Wimmer. In India, I received priceless insights and advice from Anjoo and Priyankar Upadhyaya, Anil Verma, Ajit Kumar Singh, and Rajeev and Poonam Mishra. I thank Yogesh Uppal for sharing data on Indian elections. Several officials at the Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation generously answered questions and provided access to data. Financial support was provided from the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation. All errors are my own.