Seminar by Dr. Tamoghna Halder

Title: Caste, Reservation and Social Mobility in Bengal: 1857 – 2017

By Dr. Tamoghna Halder, Assistant Professor of Economics at Azim Premji University.

Abstract:

Introducing a large new data set on college graduates in India (1856-2017), I show that educational mobility in India during this period was extremely low at the level of caste groups. By simulating counterfactual estimates, I show that perfect compliance to reservation policy could have substantially increased the rate of social mobility for the underprivileged lower caste and tribal groups. Some of the previous literature argues that the rigidity in Indian society is driven by caste-based endogamy. However, by analyzing social mobility at the level of exogamous sub-caste groups, I show that the absence of endogamy among the sub-groups does not promote higher rates of social mobility for those sub-groups. Threading these observations together, this paper suggests that seemingly informal yet historically persistent discriminatory institutions are a hindrance to accumulation of human capital and social mobility in the long run.