This post presents our monthly curation of recent developments in the Indian policy landscape – highlighting I4I content pertaining to the issue of women’s safety and how it affects their work participation, and the Supreme Court judgement allowing sub-classification within Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes for affirmative action policies. We also take a look at the speculation around the potential trade implications of the political unrest in Bangladesh.

Women’s safety (or the lack thereof)

The disturbing incident of rape and murder of an on-duty woman doctor at a Kolkata hospital sparked protests across the country and brought the matter of women’s safety to the fore of the policy discourse. In economics research, the threat of sexual violence has been put forth as one of the factors behind the observed disconnect between (increasing) women’s education and (declining) fertility in India on the one hand, and (low) female labour force participation (FLFP) on the other. 

Analysing National Sample Survey (NSS) data for the period 2004-05 to 2011-12, combined with police records on district-level incidence of reported sexual crimes in urban areas, Chakraborty and Lohawala (2021) show that an additional crime Siddique (2019) contends that high-profile media reporting can make the “extreme consequences of being a violence victim salient for women, and consequently deter them from going out to work.”  In her study, she brings together labour market data from the 2009-10 and 2011-12 rounds of the NSS, and geographically referenced data on media reports of sexual assaults that take place in Indian districts over time. She finds that an increase of one standard deviation in sexual assault reports (approximately 0.03 reports per 1,000 people) over a three-month period within the local area of a woman causes a decrease in the probability that she works outside her home by 5.5% of the sample average of female labour supply. 

Focusing on the demand side of women’s work, Buchmann, Meyer and Sullivan (2024) argue that the lack of women’s safety, and the associated global norm of protecting women, contributes towards discrimination against them in the job market. Based on a field study in Dhaka, involving night-shift jobs and experimentally varying the provision of worker transport and subsidies, the researchers find evidence of ‘paternalistic discrimination’ by employers – that is, preferential hiring of men to protect women from dangerous or unpleasant tasks. They advocate for investment in gender-sensitive public transport, crime reduction efforts and workplace safety initiatives such that work is safer for women and the need for employers to protect women is reduced.  

Even as these are crucial measures to enhance women’s safety in public and at work, there is a deeper issue of attitudes towards women in society – which is the central premise of new research by Lee Crawfurd and co-authors at the Center for Global Development (CGD). Their analysis of school textbooks published by the NCERT (National Council of Educational Research and Training) between 2020 and 2022, reveals that just 34% of gendered words (such as ‘he’ or ‘she’) are female, and 66% are male. Read more about their state-level analysis here. 

Supreme Court judgement pertaining to caste-based affirmative action

In a landmark verdict on 1 August, the Supreme Court of India has permitted states to create sub-categories within Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (SC/ST) for the purpose of affirmative action policies – based on “historical and empirical evidence…that Scheduled Castes are not a homogenous class.” The intention of this significant ruling is to ensure that the most marginalised groups among SC/STs receive greater benefit from reservation, and it overturns the earlier stance of the top court that any sub-classification would violate the right to equality within the castes. 

In his I4I article in 2016, Ashish Singh noted that the focus of the discussion on socioeconomic inequality in India has been on inequality between SC/STs and the non-scheduled groups, and there is a lack of evidence on disparities within SC/STs. Examining consumption expenditure data from the NSS during 1983-2012 for 17 major Indian states, Singh documents that economic inequality increased substantially for both SCs and STs across rural and urban areas in this three-decade period in a majority of the states. This is true to a far greater extent for SCs vis-à-vis STs. 

In a 2022 study, Goli and Tiwari consider the issue of inequality within broad caste groups in the state of Uttar Pradesh. Using data from a primary survey conducted by the Giri Institute of Development Studies in 2014-15, the authors demonstrate that inequality among sub-castes is significantly higher in the case of backward castes as compared to upper castes. 

As with any policy change that creates gainers and losers, there are divergent reactions to this move. More data and empirical evidence² may help present a clearer picture of the extent and nature of within-caste inequalities, and guide state-level implementation. 

Bangladesh unrest and potential trade implications

Peaceful protests in Bangladesh by university students for abolishment of quotas in civil services jobs, spiraled into a wider movement against the government leading to violent clashes and ultimately the resignation of the Prime Minister and dissolution of Parliament. 

Bangladesh is among the largest apparel exporters in the world, and persistence of political uncertainty may impact global supply chains. According to Pandey and Sharma, this can present new opportunities for India in international textile trade. However, they highlight that most of India’s textile and apparel production comes from the MSME (micro, small and medium enterprises) that suffers from low economies of scale and efficiency – constraints that would need to be addressed to be able to compete with other contenders like Vietnam and Cambodia. 

In terms of bilateral trade, Bangladesh is India’s biggest trade partner in South Asia and India is Bangladesh’s second biggest trade partner in Asia – with total bilateral trade valued at US$14.01 billion in FY2023-24 (Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, June 2024). Bangladesh’s imports from India had been falling in recent years on account of its economic challenges such as dollar shortage and inflation, which dampened domestic demand. On the whole, the trade balance has been in favour of India, with a surplus of US$9.3 billion in FY2023-24. To boost bilateral trade, the two countries had initiated discussions in October 2023 for a Free Trade Agreement, the future of which now looks hazy. 

While many are expressing concern around the prospects of India-Bangladesh trade, a view (by S&P Global Ratings) on the other side is that even if Indian exports to Bangladesh take a hit, there is unlikely to be a meaningful impact on India’s trade position overall as India is a “well diversified exporter”.

Notes:

1. In their article, the researchers discuss various issues that can make it difficult to establish a causal relationship between crime against women and women’s work participation. For example, there may be causality in the other direction as well: in regions where women are more likely to work, women are more exposed to crime and hence, there may be a higher incidence of such crimes. They use statistical techniques to address these issues and tease out the extent to which crime against women reduces FLFP.
2. Here, it may be noted that an increase in inequality relative to the starting point is a normal part of the growth and development process. However, what is important is whether the rate of dispersion is increasing or decreasing. Further, if data analysis finds that inequality  within SC/STs has been increasing at a higher rate as compared to the increase in inequality across the broad caste groups (upper caste, SC, ST, Other Backward Classes (OBC)), this may suggest that the benefits of reservation are not being uniformly distributed within SC/STs.