Person:
Rao, Vijayendra

Development Research Group

Fields of Specialization

Evidence-Based Public Policy, Community-Driven Development, Social Development, Gender, Poverty

Departments

Development Research Group

Last updated January 31, 2023

Biography

Vijayendra (Biju) Rao, a Lead Economist in the Development Research Group of the World Bank, works at the intersection of scholarship and practice. He integrates his training in economics with theories and methods from anthropology, sociology and political science to study the social, cultural, and political context of extreme poverty in developing countries. He leads the Social Observatory, an inter-disciplinary effort to improve the conversation between citizens and governments. His research, published in the American Economic Review, the American Political Science Review, the European Economic Review, the Journal of Development Economics, World Development and other places has spanned a variety of subjects. In his early work he pioneered empirical research in Economics on dowries, domestic violence and sex work. His 2004 edited book with Mike Walton, Culture and Public Action, was an effort to instigate a conversation between anthropologists and economists to open up (then) new questions at the intersection of culture and development including the role of aspirations, inequality traps, and cultural heritage. He is a proponent of mixed-methods to better understand and diagnose issues in development, and in using ethnography to understand the mechanisms that underlie outcomes estimated in impact evaluations. His recent work has focused on participatory approaches to development, deliberative democracy, and voice and agency among the poor. He has been experimenting with the use of Natural Language Processing methods to understand epistemic discrimination in Indian village meetings, and in employing natural experiments to tease out causal links with large-N qualitative data. He and Ghazala Mansuri co-authored Localizing Development: Does Participation Work? which the Nobel Laureate Roger Myerson has described as “one of the most important books in development in recent years.” His most recent book, co-authored with Paromita Sanyal, is Oral Democracy: Deliberation in Indian Village Assemblies (Cambridge University Press). Dr. Rao obtained a BA in Economics from St. Xavier’s College, Bombay University, a PhD in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania, was a Hewlett post-doctoral fellow at the Economics Research Center and an Associate of the Committee on Southern Asian Studies at the University of Chicago, and has been a Mellon Fellow at Population Studies Centers at the University of Michigan and Brown University. He was an Assistant Professor of Economics at Williams College before joining the World Bank’s research department in 1999. He is the Chair of the Advisory Committee of the interdisciplinary program on Boundaries, Membership and Belonging, at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. He is currently the editor of the Political Economy, Markets and Institutions section of Global Perspectives a new inter-disciplinary journal from the University of California Press, and serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Development Studies and World Development.

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Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 46

Can Participation Be Induced? Some Evidence from Developing Countries

(Taylor and Francis, 2013-04-08) Mansuri, Ghazala ; Rao, Vijayendra

Influenced by Amartya Sen, over the last decade, The World Bank has allocated nearly US$80 billion to local participatory development projects targeting poverty, improved public service delivery, and strengthened social cohesion and government accountability. But the success of these programs is hindered by both endogenous local factors and flawed program design and implementation. Two especially important local obstacles are (1) entrenched interests of political agents, civil bureaucrats, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) with either incentives to resist or capabilities to appropriate program resources, and (2) poverty and illiteracy, as the poor and illiterate participate less and benefit less from participatory projects than do the wealthier, more educated, and more connected. After reviewing hundreds of participatory projects, three lessons are clear for program planning. First, contextual factors like inequality, history, geography, and political systems (among others) are important. Second, communities do not necessarily have a ready stock of ‘social capital’ to mobilize. Third, induced participatory interventions work best when supported by a responsive state – donors cannot substitute for a non-functional state, and successful programs combine enlightened state action from above with social mobilization from below. Future participatory development projects would benefit substantially from revised planning and considerably more attention paid to evaluation and monitoring. Project managers have historically paid little attention to context, monitoring, or evaluation, in part because The World Bank’s operational policies did not provide incentives to do so. Donor agencies should also exercise greater patience and allow for flexible, long-term engagement to facilitate contextual and programmatic learning, including learning from failure.
Community-Based and Driven Development: A Critical Review

(World Bank, Washington, D.C., 2004-02) Mansuri, Ghazala ; Rao, Vijayendra

Community-based (and driven) development (CBD/CDD) projects have become an important form of development assistance, with the World Bank's portfolio alone approximating 7 billion dollars. The authors review the conceptual foundations of CBD/CDD initiatives. Given the importance of the topic, there are, unfortunately, a dearth of well-designed evaluations of such projects. But there is enough quantitative and qualitative evidence from studies that have either been published in peer-reviewed publications or have been conducted by independent researchers to glean some instructive lessons. The authors find that projects that rely on community participation have not been particularly effective at targeting the poor. There is some evidence that CBD/CDD projects create effective community infrastructure, but not a single study establishes a causal relationship between any outcome and participatory elements of a CBD project. Most CBD projects are dominated by elites and, in general, the targeting of poor communities as well as project quality tend to be markedly worse in more unequal communities. However, a number of studies find a U-shaped relationship between inequality and project outcomes. The authors also find that a distinction between potentially "benevolent" forms of elite domination and more pernicious types of "capture" is likely to be important for understanding project dynamics and outcomes. Several qualitative studies indicate that the sustainability of CBD initiatives depends crucially on an enabling institutional environment, which requires upward commitment. Equally, the literature indicates that community leaders need to be downwardly accountable to avoid a variant of "supply-driven demand-driven development." Qualitative evidence also suggests that external agents strongly influence project success. However, facilitators are often poorly trained and inexperienced, particularly when programs are rapidly scaled up. Overall, a naive application of complex contextual concepts like "participation," "social capital," and "empowerment" is endemic among project implementers and contributes to poor design and implementation. In sum, the evidence suggests that CBD/CDD is best done in a context-specific manner, with a long time-horizon, and with careful and well-designed monitoring and evaluation systems.
Just Rewards? Local Politics and Public Resource Allocation in South India

(Oxford University Press for the World Bank, 2012-06-01) Besley, Timothy ; Pande, Rohini ; Rao, Vijayendra

What factors determine the nature of political opportunism in local government in South India? To answer this question, we study two types of policy decisions that have been delegated to local politicians—beneficiary selection for transfer programs and the allocation of within-village public goods. Our data on village councils in South India show that, relative to other citizens, elected councillors are more likely to be selected as beneficiaries of a large transfer program. The chief councillor's village also obtains more public goods, relative to other villages. These findings can be interpreted using a simple model of the logic of political incentives in the context that we study.
Poverty and Public Celebrations in Rural India

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2001-01) Rao, Vijayendra

The author examines the paradox of very poor households, spending large sums on celebrations. Using qualitative, and quantitative data from South India, the author demonstrates that spending on weddings, and festivals can be explained by integrating an anthropological understanding of how identity is shaped in Indian society, with an economic analysis of decision-making under conditions of extreme poverty, and risk. The author argues that publicly observable celebrations have two functions: they provide a space for maintaining social reputations, and webs of obligation, and, they serve as arenas for status-making competitions. The first role is central to maintaining the networks essential for social relationships, and coping with poverty. The second is a correlate of mobility that may become more prevalent as incomes rise. Development policies that favor individual over collective action, reduce the incentives for the networking function, and increase the incentives for status-enhancing functions - thus reducing social cohesion, and increasing conspicuous consumption. Market-driven improvements in urban employment, for example, could reduce a family's dependence on its traditional networks, could reduce incentives to maintain these networks, and could reduce social cohesion within a village, and thus its capacity for collective action. In contrast, micro-finance programs, and social funds try to retain, and even build a community's capacity for collective action.
The Social Impact of Social Funds in Jamaica : A Mixed-Methods Analysis of Participation, Targeting, and Collective Action in Community-Driven Development

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2003-02) Rao, Vijayendra ; Ibáñez, Ana María

The authors develop an evaluation method that combines qualitative evidence with quantitative survey data analyzed with propensity score methods on matched samples to study the impact of a participatory community-driven social fund on preference targeting, collective action, and community decision-making. The data come from a case study of five pairs of communities in Jamaica where one community in the pair has received funds from the Jamaica social investment fund (JSIF) while the other has not-but has been picked to match the funded community in its social and economic characteristics. The qualitative data reveal that the social fund process is elite-driven and decision-making tends to be dominated by a small group of motivated individuals. But by the end of the project there was broad-based satisfaction with the outcome. The quantitative data from 500 households mirror these findings by showing that ex-ante the social fund does not address the expressed needs of the majority of individuals in the majority of communities. By the end of the construction process, however, 80 percent of the community expressed satisfaction with the outcome. An analysis of the determinants of participation shows that better educated and better networked individuals dominate the process. Propensity score analysis reveals that the JSIF has had a causal impact on improvements in trust and the capacity for collective action, but these gains are greater for elites within the community. Both JSIF and non-JSIF communities are more likely now to make decisions that affect their lives which indicates a broad-based effort to promote participatory development in the country, but JSIF communities do not show higher levels of community-driven decisions than non-JSIF communities. The authors shed light on the complex ways in which community-driven development works inside communities-a process that is deeply imbedded within Jamaica's sociocultural and political context.
Can Participation Be Induced? Some Evidence from Developing Countries

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-07) Mansuri, Ghazala ; Rao, Vijayendra

The World Bank has allocated close to $80 billion towards participatory development projects over the last decade. A comprehensive review of the evidence on the efficacy of the approach conducted by the authors for the forthcoming Policy Research Report, Localizing Development: Does Participation Work?, finds that while participatory projects have been reasonably effective in improving access to basic services, there is far less evidence of their effectiveness in improving household income or in building sustainable participatory institutions at the local level. A key issue is that the institutional culture in development agencies such as the World Bank lacks the flexibility and long-term commitment necessary for effective externally induced participatory development. Induced participation -- driven by large-scale bureaucratically managed processes, is quite different from more organic types of participation endogenously organized by civic groups. It requires a very different approach to development, one that pays close attention to contextual variation and to uncertain trajectories of change. In order to be effective, induced participatory projects need a strong focus on learning-by-doing; on monitoring and evaluation and a willingness to learn from failure. A review of the World Bank's practices in monitoring and evaluation, and of its incentives to learn from failure, reveals that without significant changes, including changes in the incentive structures facing management, the Bank cannot be effective in inducing participation.
Localizing Development : Does Participation Work?

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2013) Mansuri, Ghazala ; Rao, Vijayendra

The Policy Research Report Localizing Development: Does Participation Work? brings analytical rigor to a field that has been the subject of intense debate and advocacy, and billions of dollars in development aid. It briefly reviews the history of participatory development and argues that its two modalities, community-based development and local decentralization, should be treated under the broader unifying umbrella of local development. It suggests that a distinction between organic participation (endogenous efforts by civic activists to bring about change) and induced participation (large-scale efforts to engineer participation at the local level via projects) is key, and focuses on the challenges of inducing participation. The report provides a conceptual framework for thinking about participatory development and then uses this framework to conduct a comprehensive review of the literature. The framework develops the concept of “civil society failure” and explains its interaction with government and market failures. It argues that participatory development, which is often viewed as a mechanism for bypassing market and government failures by ”harnessing” civic capacity, ought to be seen instead as a mechanism that, if done right, could help to repair important civil society failures. It distills literature from anthropology, economics, sociology, and political science to outline the challenges for effective policy in this area, looking at issues such as the uncertainty of trajectories of change, the importance of context, the role of elite capture and control, the challenge of collective action, and the role of the state. The review of the evidence looks at a variety of issues: the impact of participatory projects on inclusion, civic capacity, and social cohesion; on key development outcomes, such as income, poverty, and inequality; on public service delivery; and on the quality of local public goods. It draws on the evidence to suggest several recommendations for policy, emphasizing the key role of learning-by-doing. It then reviews participatory projects funded by the World Bank and finds the majority lacking in several arenas – particularly in paying attention to context and in creating effective monitoring and evaluation systems that allow for learning.
Symbolic Public Goods and the Coordination of Collective Action : A Comparison of Local Development in India and Indonesia

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2005-08) Rao, Vijayendra

Most economists think of common property as physical-a body of water, a forest-and as bounded within geographic space. In this paper, building on work in social theory, the author argues that common property can also be social-defined within symbolic space. People can be bound by well-defined symbolic agglomerations that have characteristics similar to common property. He calls these "symbolic public goods" (SPGs) and make the case that such constructs are central to understanding collective action. He illustrates the point by contrasting how conceptions of nationalism in Indonesia and India created SPGs that resulted in very different strategies of local development. Indonesia emphasized collective action by the poor that resulted in a form of regressive taxation, enforced by the ideology of svadaya gotong royong (community self-help) that was both internalized and coercively enforced. India emphasized democratic decentralization through the panchayat system driven by the Gandhian ideology of gram swaraj (self-reliant villages). This has resulted in an unusual equity-efficiency tradeoff. Indonesia has delivered public services much more efficiently than India did, but at the cost of democratic freedoms and voice. The author argues that the challenge for these countries is not to undermine their existing SPGs but to build on them. Indonesia should retain the spirit of svadaya gotong royong but channel it in an equitable and democratic direction, while India should build the capacity of the panchayat system by giving it fiscal teeth, while promoting underutilized institutions such as Gram Sabhas (village meetings) that encourage accountability and transparency.
Governance in the Gullies : Democratic Responsiveness and Leadership in Delhi’s Slums

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2005-09) Jha, Saumitra ; Rao, Vijayendra ; Woolcock, Michael

The authors use detailed ethnographic evidence to design and interpret a broad representative survey of 800 households in Delhi's slums, examining the processes by which residents gain access to formal government and develop their own informal modes of leadership. While ethnically homogeneous slums transplant rural institutions to the city, newer and ethnically diverse slums depend on informal leaders who gain their authority through political connections, education, and network entrepreneurship. Education and political affiliation are more important than seniority in determining a leader's influence. Informal leaders are accessible to all slum dwellers, but formal government figures are most accessed by the wealthy and the well-connected.
Symbolic Public Goods and the Coordination of Collective Action: A Comparison of Local Development in India and Indonesia

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2004) Rao, Vijayendra

Most economists think of common property as physical - a body of water, a forest - and as bounded within geographic space. In this paper, building on work in social theory, the author argues that common property can also be social-defined within symbolic space. People can be bound by well-defined symbolic agglomerations that have characteristics similar to common property. He calls these "symbolic public goods" (SPGs) and makes the case that such constructs are central to understanding collective action. He illustrates the point by contrasting how conceptions of nationalism in Indonesia and India created SPGs that resulted in very different strategies of local development. Indonesia emphasized collective action by the poor that resulted in a form of regressive taxation, enforced by the ideology of svadaya gotong royong (community self-help) that was both internalized and coercively enforced. India emphasized democratic decentralization through the panchayat system driven by the Gandhian ideology of gram swaraj (self-reliant villages). This has resulted in an unusual equity-efficiency tradeoff. Indonesia has delivered public services much more efficiently than India did, but at the cost of democratic freedoms and voice. The author argues that the challenge for these countries is not to undermine their existing SPGs but to build on them. Indonesia should retain the spirit of svadaya gotong royong but channel it in an equitable and democratic direction, while India should build the capacity of the panchayat system by giving it fiscal teeth, while promoting underutilized institutions such as Gram Sabhas (village meetings) that encourage accountability and transparency.