IMPACT OF RESERVATIONS OF PANCHAYAT PRADHANS ON TARGETING IN WEST BENGAL 1 Pranab Bardhan 2 , Dilip Mookherjee 3 and Monica Parra Torrado 4 November 29, 2005 Abstract We examine effect of randomized reservations of Pradhan (chief executive) positions in West Bengal local governments (panchayats) for women and members of Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribes (SC/ST) following the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amend- ments of 1993. Our sample consists of 89 villages spread throughout 15 rural districts of West Bengal, in which we examine effects on targeting to poor and SC/ST households of IRDP credit, agricultural extension programs, employment programs, and budgetary policies. We find the reservations were associated with improved targeting of the IRDP program, but poorer targeting of employment programs, and lower local revenues raised by the panchayats. Aggregating pecuniary effects of the IRDP and employment pro- grams, the net effect of the reservations appears to have worsened targeting to SC/ST and landless households. The effects also differ with local land inequality and poverty among SC/ST groups: reservations improved targeting in villages with low inequality and poverty, but worsened targeting among the rest. 1 We thank the MacArthur Foundation Inequality Network, and National Science Foundation Grant No. SES-0418434 for funding the data collection. We are grateful to Alfredo Cuecuecha for research assistance. For data collection we are indebted to Sankar Bhaumik and Sukanta Bhattacharya of the Department of Economics, Calcutta University who led the village survey teams, and Bhaswar Moitra and Biswajeet Chatterjee of the Department of Economics at Jadavpur University who led the teams that collected the farm management data. 2 Department of Economics, University of California, Berkeley 3 Department of Economics, Boston University 4 Department of Economics, Boston University 1