Can political parties improve minority wellbeing? Evidence from India’s “Silent Revolution”

We study the impact of caste-based ethnic parties on the redistribution of public resources to historically disadvantaged low caste and indigenous communities in India. Exploiting the outcome of narrowly contested state assembly elections as a source of exogenous variation, we show that a 10 percentage point increase in legislators from low caste parties increases low caste households’ consumption from India’s largest safety net program by 4%. Further suggesting the importance of parties’ varying interests in redistribution to disadvantaged populations, we find that low caste representatives from major mainstream political parties have little effect on safety net access compared to such representatives from low caste parties. An analysis of mechanisms suggests that legislators from parties focused on low caste interests improve the overall targeting of safety net programs. The results highlight the important role played by political parties in facilitating minority representation within multi-ethnic democracies.