Caste Discrimination in Provision of Public Schools in Rural India

This paper aims to understand discrimination in the provision of public schools in rural India and how it affects the educational outcome of social groups. Using census data, we find that villages with a higher share of marginalised castes viz. Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) have a lower probability of having public schools. The negative relationship is non-monotonic as the marginal probabilities get weaker beyond a threshold level of SC/ST share. Though the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (Education for All) programme, mainly intended to expand elementary education, has reduced the gaps in the provision of primary schools, the extent of discrimination has increased at the secondary level. A strong association between public schools and educational outcomes highlights the importance of public schools. Finally, we show that the caste-based provisioning of public schools partially explains the disparity in the educational outcomes across social groups.