The great equalizer: Inequality in tribal energy access and policies to address it

In this paper, researchers explored two questions: what are the causes of in equality in electricity access? And can government policies reduce in equality? We focus on one particular set of causes of inequality: social cleavages. By social cleavages, we mean social and cultural divisions that characterize a society [3], [4]. Social groups may be defined along religious or cultural lines, or, as in India, be shaped by caste and tribal status (among other existing cleavages) [5], [6], [7]. We build on research that shows how energy access in general varies considerably across different social groups[8], [9]. In some cases, differences in energy access reflect broader welfare inequality. In other cases, energy inequality follows a political logic. Groups that are well represented politically tend to benefit from better access to electricity [10], [11]. What we ask in this paper is whether social cleavages represent one of the causes of inequality in electricity access. This is our primary research question, which has drawn considerable interest but has mostly focused on industrialized countries [12], [13].We ask this question in the context of Jharkhand, India. One of Jharkhand’s key features is the presence of large tribal populations. According to recent census data, 8.6 out of Jharkhand’s 32 million inhabitants belong to a tribal group (also referred to as Scheduled Tribes or STs) [14].1 STs are important social actors in the state’s politics [15: 281], but they are also known to suffer from high degrees of poverty [16: 40]. Our paper investigates whether ST households suffer from poor electricity access compared to the rest of the population. Lack of electricity access despite secular trends toward universal electrification would suggest the presence of electricity in equality. To study these questions, we build on new survey data on energy access in rural Jharkhand. We interviewed a representative sample of 1,440households across the state about their energy situation. Using this survey, we can explore the prevalence and determinants of electricity availability among tribal households and the broader population. We find that households that belong to tribes are systematically less likely to have an electric connection of any kind. In general, we find that a tribal household is about 10 to 11 percentage points less likely to have electricity compared to a generic household. For context, electrification rates in the general population of rural Jharkhand stands at about 87%. The differences are statistically insignificant when we focus on hours of electricity