DINSHA MISTREE | Graduate Student in Politics, Princeton University
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Welcome
to my website! I am a graduate student in the Department of Politics at Princeton University. Prior to arriving at
Princeton, I received a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in Political Science from MIT.
My
research interests include comparative politics, international relations,
political economy, and Indian politics. I am especially interested in assessing
and remediating corruption, particularly in developing countries. To this end,
I investigate how transparency and efficiency can be improved in bureaucratic
organizations. Why do some apparatuses of the state work well, even while
others flounder?
I am currently working on two projects:
· The
Child and the State in 21st Century India
Indian politicians have
historically skirted the issue of poverty, and they have been especially
reluctant to improve mass education for poor and rural citizens. In recent
years, however, Indian politicians have increasingly supported mass education
reform, and have even reversed their long-standing resistance to compulsory
education. As a result, literacy has increased almost 20% in the last 20 years,
tens of thousands of new schools have been built in the last 10 years, and just
last summer a compulsory education act was unanimously supported in the Rajya
Sabha, subsequently flying through the Lok Sabha before being signed into law.
To finance these education reforms, both major parties have pledged to increase
spending on education by 2% of GDP by 2012 on top of the already-substantial
increases in outlays made recently. Why are Indian politicians now supporting
mass education reform when they have historically been reluctant to do so? I
argue that, more than domestic factors such as rising incomes, changes in
ethnic divides, or pressures from industrialists, this shift is due to
international factors. International donors are authorizing unprecedented
financial support to government-administered initiatives, creating incentives
for India's politicians to support education expansion and compulsory
education. Understanding the nature of these incentives and how they have
shaped political support for education reform helps frame future discussions of
Indian education policy, while identifying why politicians are now providing
unprecedented support in an inherently redistributive policy-space may also
help us understand how to motivate the state to more effectively fight poverty
more broadly.
· Historical
Institutional Lineages
How do different patterns of historical property
rights' systems affect contemporary public goods provision? Through a careful
examination of rural India, Iyer and Banerjee (2005) have shown that when proprietary
rights in land were historically given to landlords, modern-day provision of
public goods is significantly reduced, compared to when proprietary rights were
issued to farmers directly. In this project, we examine the external validity
of these findings by examining Italy and Spain. History suggests that Southern
Italy and certain regions in Spain both have historically had proprietary
rights to land issued to landlords, while Northern Italy and other specific
regions in Spain have had proprietary rights to land issued directly to
farmers. Following IBS, we expect to find that Northern Italy and regions of
Spain have enjoyed better public goods provision than Southern Italy and other
regions in Spain, despite the European regions' experiences of World Wars,
civil wars, and national re-organizations.
I have also made a reading list
for my comprehensive exams in South Asian Studies.
Princeton University, Department of Politics,
Corwin Hall, Princeton, NJ 08544
e-mail: dmistree@princeton.edu
tel: +1 (404) 403 1643
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