Ashoka University is a private university located in Sonipat, Haryana, India, focusing on liberal arts and sciences. It was established in 2014.&nbsp;It is guided by an academic council of academics and scholars from around the world. The council sets the university&#39;s academic standard, advising on matters of curriculum, faculty hiring and research.&nbsp;

Ashoka University offers a full-time 3 (+ 1) year undergraduate programme. The University comprises of&nbsp;2500 plus students, with a mix of both national and international students.&nbsp; &nbsp;

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Ashoka University

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Department of Economics

Economic and Political Weekly

Viewing Caste Inequality Upside Down The Perversity of Special Schemes for Brahmins in South India

Examining high frequency national-level panel data from Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) on paid work (employment) and unpaid work (time spent on domestic work), this paper examines the effects of the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic on the gender gaps in paid and unpaid work until December 2020, using difference-in-differences (D-I-D) for estimating the before (the pandemic) and after (the pandemic set in) effects, and event study estimates around the strict national lockdown in April 2020. The DID estimates reveal a lowering of the gender gap in employment probabilities which occurs due to the lower probability of male employment, rather than an increase in female employment. The first month of the national lockdown, April 2020, saw a large contraction in employment for both men and women, where more men lost jobs in absolute terms. Between April and August 2020 male employment recovered steadily as the economy unlocked. The event study estimates show that in August 2020, for women, the likelihood of being employed was 9% points lower than that for men, compared to April 2019, conditional on previous employment. However, by December 2020, gender gaps in employment were at the December 2019 levels. The burden of domestic chores worsened for women under the pandemic. Men spent more time on housework in April 2020 relative to December 2019, but by December 2020, the average male hours had declined to below the pre-pandemic levels, whereas women’s average hours increased sharply. Time spent with friends fell sharply between December 2019 and April 2020, with a larger decline in the case of women. The hours spent with friends recovered in August 2020, to again decline by December 2020 to roughly one-third of the pre-pandemic levels. The paper adopts an intersectional lens to examine how these trends vary by social group identity.

Fulltext

Economia Politica

The Covid-19 pandemic and gendered division of paid work, domestic chores and leisure: evidence from India’s first wave

Current History

How India’s caste inequality has persisted—and deepened in the pandemic

To truly close the gender gap, gender equality must be mainstreamed into economic policymaking.

Economic cost of gender gap: To truly close the gender gap, gender equality must be mainstreamed into economic policymaking

Using longitudinal data from four countries–Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam– we show that early childhood stunting is highly persistent as measured by the association between stunting status in early childhood and stunting status at age 15. Stunting in early childhood is associated with lower grade completion by age 22 and has a negative relationship with cognition as measured by math, language and reading scores at ages 8, 12 and 15. Stunting in early childhood is also associated with poorer subjective assessment of a child's health at age 15. Analyzing determinants, we show that lack of preventive care and economic shocks are associated with an increase in the probability of stunting in early childhood. © 2021

Economics \& Human Biology

Early childhood stunting and later life outcomes: A longitudinal analysis

The “strength of weak ties” has been established in the context of labour market outcomes, with theoretical and empirical investigation showing how weak ties lead to an increase in mobility and job opportunities. The impact of weak ties on community organisation is less well understood. We contribute to this literature by investigating if weak ties, generated via membership of livelihood programmes, can lead to the creation or enhancement of social capital. Based on data from one of the largest independent primary surveys for India, we find that participation in self-help groups had little impact on livelihoods, but led to the creation of significant social capital, as measured by indicators related to personal efficacy and collective action. We use Entropy Balancing to estimate mean effects to tackle the problem of non-random selection into the programme. In contrast to the bulk of existing evidence on livelihood programmes that is based on small samples, our large sample size and innovative survey design allow us to detect a larger number of effects with greater certainty. We argue that the social capital generated by the programme is a significant positive impact (even though the main target of the programme is to strengthen livelihoods), as it strengthens the process of women's empowerment.

World Development

Can weak ties create social capital? Evidence from Self-Help Groups in rural India

India imposed one of the strictest lockdowns in the world to contain the spread of COVID-19 pandemic. According to the Stringency Index developed by the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford, by the 25th of March, 2020, India had already reached the highest possible level of stringency (index value = 100). This involved a near-complete shutdown of all economic activity. What were the labour market implications of this shutdown? The first-order effects are evident in the massive increase in total unemployment. However, is the pandemic and its aftermath a great leveller? Are the labour implications of the lockdown gender neutral? How did the lockdown affect domestic time allocation, in particular time spent on domestic work and with friends? Were these changes gender neutral, given that the lockdown was gender blind?

Indian Journal of Labour Economics

Early Effects of Lockdown in India: Gender Gaps in Job Losses and Domestic Work

What does work-from-home mean for women?

Economists are increasingly interested in subjective well-being, but the economic literature on perceptions of income adequacy, which is one of the factors that shape subjective well-being, is little. Our paper fills this lacuna. We utilize nationally representative data on perceptions of amounts considered as remunerative earnings from self-employment in India and examine how these are earnings shaped by social identity, namely, caste. We also investigate if institutional change such as the introduction of an employment guarantee scheme alters these perceptions. Finally, we examine the relationship between caste identity and actual earnings. We find that caste identity does shape both perceptions of income adequacy and actual earnings: lower-ranked groups perceive lower amounts as being remunerative and also earn lower amounts. Further, the employment guarantee scheme alters self-perceptions differentially for different caste groups, but in more nuanced ways than our ex-ante beliefs.

Review of Development Economics

Social identity and perceived income adequacy

This article seeks to understand stigma faced by students from groups who enter higher educational institutions on the basis of affirmative action. The article uses the theoretical insights from the “stereotype content model” which disentangles the social-psychological mechanisms of “externalization” and “internalization.” The data are from a primary survey administered to university students in India to understand the channel of stigma associated with caste-based affirmative action (AA). The article finds that despite a significant gap in entry scores at admission, there are no significant differences in the effort and academic attitudes between AA and non-AA students. Yet, there are clear and significant differences between caste groups that reveal the presence of stigma through the “externalization” mechanism, that is, upper caste peers tend to evaluate beneficiary performance prejudicially, indicating the prevalence of discriminatory attitudes toward students who are admitted through AA. However, there is no compelling evidence of “internalization”: that is, students from beneficiary groups do not necessarily internalize their peers' low evaluation of their own competence. These findings suggest the need for establishing an antidiscriminatory apparatus inside higher educational institutions to counter stigmatizing attitudes and microaggressions against AA admits.

Review of Black Political Economy

Double Jeopardy? Stigma of Identity and Affirmative Action

We compare successive age cohorts of three broad social groups – Scheduled Castes and Tribes (SC-STs), Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and “Others” and provide the first disaggregated picture of the evolution of inter-caste disparities in India. The results show that absolute caste gaps in years of schooling and prestigious occupation of white-collar jobs have remained static, whereas log wages below the median have convergence and above the median diverged. Examining extension of job quotas to OBCs in 1993, we find positive effects of affirmative action on probability of holding government jobs, as well as on secondary schooling completion.

Traditional hierarchies and affirmative action in a globalizing economy: Evidence from India

The 10% quota for the economically weaker sections completely overturns the original logic of reservations on its head, while misconstruing the EWS category itself. Data suggests that caste remains a critical marker of disadvantage, even amongst the “poor.” © 2019 Economic and Political Weekly. All Rights Reserved.