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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. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In recent times there has been a renewed interest in relationships between redistribution, growth, and welfare. Land reforms in developing countries are often aimed at improving the poor’s access to land, although their effectiveness has often been hindered by political constraints on implementation. In this paper we use panel data on the sixteen main Indian states from 1958 to 1992 to consider whether the large volume of legislated land reforms have had an appreciable impact on growth and poverty. We argue that such land reforms have been associated with poverty reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]