Historical Inequality at the Grassroots: Local Public Goods in an Indian District, 1905-2011

How do historical inequalities influence modern public goods provision? This paper analyses a new panel dataset of local public goods provision in a single North Indian district with observations at the village-decade level going back to 1905 and detailed information on colonial land tenure institutions and demographics. The presence of large colonial landowners is positively associated with rural public goods provision when the landlord was resident in the early 20th century, and has a null effect when the landlord was an absentee. Villages inhabited or owned by upper castes had an advantage in the colonial and immediate post-independence eras, but not afterwards. The results suggest that within unequal societies, economic and status inequalities can have positive effects on public goods provision when they link elites to extra-local decisionmakers.