Tilte: Electoral Cycles in Crop Residue Burning: Evidence from India
Abstract: Open burning of crop residue (straw) is a common practice in many developing countries and leads to air pollution which has many adverse effects on health. However, there is scant evidence on the determinants of crop residue burning (CRB). In this paper, we look at the political economy of CRB; in particular, whether CRB incidence is related to electoral cycles in India. Crop residue burning (CRB) is widely held responsible for the air pollution problem in India, particularly North India. Using the fact that state elections in India are not perfectly synchronized, we test whether temporal proximity to the year-month of state legislative assembly elections influences the extent of crop residue burning. For our analysis, we put together a unique dataset on CRB using 1-km resolution disaggregated daily data from NASA's remote sensing products over the period 2008-2017. We aggregate this dataset at the state electoral constituency level and match it with election data to form an all India dataset. Our identification strategy rests on the fact that our sample includes no unscheduled elections, that is, no elections were held before the scheduled time-period of five years. We find that intensity of CRB significantly increases before elections. We also find that the increase in CRB in election years is more pronounced in state assembly constituencies where the margin of victory is relatively narrower or in other words electoral competition is high. Our findings suggest that political incentives are at work behind the continued open burning of crop residue.
Bio: Shampa Bhattacharjee is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at Shiv Nadar University. She has a Ph.D. in Economics from University of British Columbia. She is an empirical researcher and her primary areas of interest are development economics, health economics and political economy with a focus on India.