Tanu Kumar on the Connection Between Housing Subsidies and Political Activity

For the next few weeks I will be speaking to young doctoral and post-doctoral candidates entering the academic job market and the policy world about their newly minted research on Indian political economy.

The third scholar in our young scholars series, Dr. Tanu Kumar is a postdoctoral fellow at William and Mary’s Global Research Institute. She is a political scientist studying urban politics and service delivery. I spoke with Tanu about her paper, “Home-Price Subsidies Increase Local-Level Political Participation in Urban India,” which has been conditionally accepted at the Journal of Politics. In her paper, Tanu studies the effects of a housing subsidy program in Mumbai through an original survey of winners and nonwinners of program lotteries, and its effect on local political participation.

We also discussed another one of Tanu’s papers, “The Human Capital Effects of Subsidized Government-Constructed Homes in Urban India,” on how this housing subsidy affects long-term investments in human capital.

Full transcript of this episode

Follow us on Twitter

Follow Shruti on Twitter

Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox!