During my doctoral study at LKYSPP, I observed that while the important intended and unintended consequences of different social policies are well documented within academic literature, the process that goes into the adoption of a social policy is relatively less explored. This is especially so in developing countries. This motivated me to study the parliamentary deliberations that result in the crafting of a social policy before its implementation. And that, in turn, led me to develop a paper titled 'Changing the Narrative: Studying Parliamentary Representation and Poverty Conceptualization in India', which focuses on understanding the aspects of the policymaking process in India.
I am extremely grateful to my advisors, Professors Saravana Ravindran, Ashutosh Thakur and Siddharth George for helping me develop this paper and for their advice and encouragement throughout the project.
The abstract of the paper is as follows:
“The policymaking process is a complex process, and policies are the outcome of extensive parliamentary discussions. In a representative democracy, elected parliamentarians are a bridge between citizens and the government. Parliamentary questions allow representatives to raise questions to the government and hold them accountable for their statements and policies. Using a novel dataset of nearly 350,000 parliamentary questions raised in a 24-year time period, this paper presents three findings. First, using a fixed effects design, it finds that the preferences of a constituency influences their parliamentarian's questions in parliament. Second, that the social and political identity of a parliamentarian has an independent influence on their questions in parliament. Using a regression discontinuity and pre-post identification strategy, the paper reports that that the social (gender, caste and tribal) identity of a parliamentarian influences their priorities in parliament. A two-way fixed effects model finds that the political (party, state) identity exerts an independent influence on their parliamentary questions. It is thus, the social policy domain that determines which identity becomes salient and how representatives frame their parliamentary questions.”
Finally, parliamentary questions positively impact aspects of the agenda-setting and decision-making process of a development-related policy.
This paper presents new evidence about the causal link between political identity and substantive representation along with the relationship between representation and parliamentary accountability.”
I had the opportunity to present this work at Singapore Management University’s (SMU’s) Singapore Rising Scholars Conference 2025. This is an annual conference which brings together doctoral students in the social sciences to present their research, and this year, students from 20 institutions were represented. It was a wonderful opportunity to discuss my work with other students that are working in similar fields.
This work is part of my broader research, which lies at the intersection of development economics, political economics and public policy. The overarching theme of the research is to better understand the political causes and consequences of policies for marginalised communities. Through this work, I hope to be able to contribute to the understanding of how the public policymaking process, political institutions, and public policies affect the welfare and perceptions of marginalized communities.
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If you are interested in reading further about Chitra’s work, her research can be found on this website: Chitra Pratap