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Testing information constraints on India's largest antipoverty program

Author

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  • Ravallion, Martin
  • van de Walle, Dominique
  • Dutta, Puja
  • Murgai, Rinku

Abstract

Public knowledge about India's ambitious Employment Guarantee Scheme is low in one of India's poorest states, Bihar, where participation is also unusually low. Is the solution simply to tell people their rights? Or does their lack of knowledge reflect deeper problems of poor people's agency and an unresponsive supply side? This paper reports on an information campaign that was designed and implemented in the form of an entertaining movie to inform people of their rights under the scheme. In randomly-assigned villages, the movie brought significant gains in knowledge and more positive perceptions about the impact of the scheme. But objectively measured employment showed no gain on average, suggesting that the movie created a"groupthink,"changing social perceptions about the scheme but not individual efficacy in accessing it. The paper concludes that awareness generation needs to go hand-in-hand with supply-side changes.

Suggested Citation

  • Ravallion, Martin & van de Walle, Dominique & Dutta, Puja & Murgai, Rinku, 2013. "Testing information constraints on India's largest antipoverty program," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6598, The World Bank.
    • Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:6598
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Fox, Jonathan A., 2015. "Social Accountability: What Does the Evidence Really Say?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 346-361.
    2. Merfeld, Joshua D., 2019. "Spatially heterogeneous effects of a public works program," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 151-167.
    3. Achmad Tohari & Christopher Parsons & Anu Rammohan, 2017. "Does Information Empower the Poor? Evidence from Indonesia’s Social Security Card," Working Papers id:12241, eSocialSciences.

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