Paper short abstract:

Affirmative action policies aim to provide preferential treatment to those belonging to disadvantaged communities, but a beneficiary is unable to acquire benefits without a valid caste certificate in India. We explore the factors that are associated with a household’s likelihood of caste certificate possession and show that their possessions improve jobs prospects and enhance well-being.

Paper long abstract:

Social discrimination continues to exist across social groups (e.g., castes, ethnicities, races, genders, religious affiliations etc.) in different parts of the world and so do ‘affirmative action’ policies—seeking to provide preferential treatment to disadvantaged or underprivileged communities. Indian affirmation action has been a subject of significant academic and policy interest and has been widely studied. Affirmative action in India is primarily implemented through reservations of slots in public services and educational institutions for key socially disadvantaged communities: scheduled castes (SCs), scheduled tribes (STs) and other backward classes (OBCs). SCs, being subjected to untouchability practices, and STs, comprising of geographically isolated tribal communities, have both hereditarily faced stringent social exclusions and have experienced restricted access to various opportunities, which justify the need for affirmative action. In this paper, we chiefly focus on the two most disadvantaged communities comprising of SCs and STs.

The effect of India’s affirmative action policies have been examined by a significant number of contemporary studies on various outcomes of these disadvantaged communities, such as welfare, poverty, education, occupation and productivity and public goods allocation. While the findings vary, with some observing positive effects and others observing none, they all implicitly presume that all members of disadvantaged communities are automatically eligible for the intended benefits of affirmative action policies. However, to access the targeted benefits—offered separately by the state (i.e., provincial) governments and the Union (i.e., national) government—a beneficiary must satisfy certain essential requirements in addition to belonging to the scheduled lists of castes and tribes. The beneficiary must possess a documentary evidence of caste identity, known as a caste certificate (alternatively called, Community Certificate or Jati Shansapatra), issued by the competent authority of the beneficiary’s native domicile state government. It is also vital to note that a certificate given by a state government is only valid for accessing benefits from the issuing state and assessing Union government benefits anywhere in the country, but it is not valid for accessing benefits offered in another state. In practice, an intended beneficiary may be denied the statutory benefits if either the beneficiary lacks a caste certificate or the beneficiary possesses a caste certificate but does not reside in the beneficiary’s domicile state.

The contemporary literature studying the effect of affirmative action has not investigated this important aspect at the national scale. This lack of investigation is unsurprising, since widely recognised household surveys, such as the National Sample Surveys and the National Family Health Surveys, do not readily collect information on caste certificate possession. To the best of our knowledge, the only nationally representative survey containing any information on caste certificate possession is the second round (2011-12) of the Indian Human Development Survey (IHDS-II hereafter). Upon initial examination, the survey reveals that in nearly half of the SC and ST households no member possesses any caste certificate. Furthermore, Figure 1 demonstrates that the SC/ST households with at least one member possessing a caste certificate is systematically better off in key social indicators than the SC/ST households with no one possessing a caste certificate. The differences are common both within urban and within rural areas. Not only the SC and ST households with caste certificates appear to be more likely to have at least one member with a public sector job than even non-SC/ST Hindu and non-ST Muslim households, but their well-being in monetary and non-monetary indicators also appear to be much closer, albeit lower except for urban STs, to the well-being of the non-SC/ST Hindu households.

The comparable performance of SC/ST households with caste certificates and non-SC/ST households on selected social indicators demonstrates the partial success of the Indian affirmative action. Nonetheless, the presence of noticeable heterogeneity by caste certificate possession among the scheduled households gives rise to inquiries concerning the role of caste certificates on effective executions of affirmative action policies, specifically in terms of their reach or distribution. Potential heterogeneous effect of affirmative action policies have been debated and examined previously in the literature. Some past studies, for example, have claimed that the benefits of these policies are disproportionately concentrated among the socio-economic elites of the disadvantaged communities. Recent studies have refuted the claim though and instead have posed a contrary view. Our findings in this paper, through a novel attempt, contribute to this debate establishing the existence of a different form of heterogeneity that arise through caste certificate possession (or its lack of).

If caste certificate possessions appear to be linked to better performance in different social indicators, then why do nearly half of the SC and ST households not possess any caste certificate? Given that a significant number of SC and ST households do not possess caste certificates, its acquisition can be seen as an informed choice and might be influenced by several factors. We first argumentatively explore different factors that may influence a scheduled household’s likelihood of caste certificate possession, by classifying them into demand-side, supply-side, procedural and community-level factors. Our corresponding empirical analysis reveals that the demand-side factors, such as aspirations, knowledge and strong social ties within and outside communities, are expectedly associated with increased likelihood of a household’s caste certificate possession. Similarly, the supply-side factors, such as the existence of public schools and colleges in a village and the availability of public sector jobs, are also associated with greater likelihood. Procedural factors—such as difficulties encountered during caste certificate applications—may reduce the likelihood of caste certificate acquirement, but are difficult to validate empirically owing to data limitations. However, we observe that SC households residing in constituencies, where the seat for the Member of Parliament (MP) is reserved for an SC candidate, are more likely to possess caste certificates.

We further examine whether there is a causal link between caste certificate possession and higher performance in different social indicators. We observe that caste certificate possession enhances monetary and multidimensional well-being among SC and ST households and improves their prospects for public sector jobs as well as professional- and formal-sector jobs. Our findings confirms the existence of the heterogeneous effect of affirmative action by caste certificate possession.