Political Patronage from Programmatic Policy - the case of a primary health care
initiative in Delhi, India

<a href="https://embed.stanford.edu/iframe/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpurl.stanford.edu%2Fxn104ft9796" class="su-underline">Show Content</a>

Abstract/Contents

Abstract: Mohalla Clinics are community-based clinics in India's capital city Delhi set up in 2015 by the Aam Aadmi Party, a newly founded political party (2012) currently at the helm of Delhi's government. Mohalla Clinics routinely provide essential health services including medicines, diagnostics, and consultation free of cost to traditionally underserved urban residents. From the outset, the initiative was touted as one that would bring free health care to the poor as well as more public and national recognition to the Aam Aadmi Party as a champion of the ordinary citizen's cause. In this paper, I study whether the establishment of Mohalla Clinics affected the share of votes received by its main opposition the BJP in municipal elections. Through this, I test whether programmatic policy which is expected to generate added public goods is effective for political patronage. I find suggestive evidence from OLS and IV results that the clinics did reduce BJP vote margins, but less so in places that were strongholds. In addition, the clinics generated substantial public goods in the form of unprecedented health care access even though they may have fallen short in vote-garnering.

Type of resource	text
Date created	May 2019

Author	Soin, Arjun
Primary advisor	Alsan, Marcella
Degree granting institution	Stanford University, Department of Economics

Subject	Stanford Department of Economics
Genre	Thesis

Location	https://purl.stanford.edu/xn104ft9796

Use and reproduction: User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.

Preferred Citation: Soin, Arjun and Alsan, Marcella. (2019). Political Patronage from Programmatic Policy - the case of a primary health care
initiative in Delhi, India. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/xn104ft9796

Stanford University, Department of Economics, Honors Theses

Loading usage metrics...