Beyond the Ashes: Tracing Women's Empowerment in the Wake of Gujarat's Communal Violence
This study explores the long-term effects of the 2002 Gujarat riots on the empowerment of Muslim women. In the aftermath of the violence, many women were forced to assume greater financial and social responsibilities, leading to shifts in traditional gender roles. The study examines key indicators such as labor force participation, education levels, decision-making autonomy, and access to healthcare to assess how communal violence reshaped women's socio-economic trajectories.
Using a difference-in-differences (DiD) methodology, the study compares Muslim women's socio-economic outcomes before and after the riots, in Gujarat and in other states with similar demographic characteristics. It aims to understand whether these changes were temporary survival strategies or led to lasting empowerment. The findings contribute to discussions on resilience, gender dynamics, and the broader socio-political consequences of communal violence.
Racial Match in One-Shot State Encounters: Evidence from Traffic Stops
This paper studies how racial match between police officers and drivers affects enforcement outcomes during traffic stops. Traffic stops are brief, anonymous, one-shot interactions with substantial discretion and no expectation of repeated contact, making them uniquely informative for distinguishing between competing theories of discrimination. Using administrative stop records with officer identifiers, we exploit within-officer variation to estimate the causal effect of officer--driver racial match on warnings, citations, searches, and arrests.
We find that racial match systematically alters enforcement severity, with effects concentrated in discretionary margins. The pattern of results is consistent with ingroup favoritism in low-severity contexts and a ``black sheep'' effect in high-severity or norm-salient contexts. We further show that racial match does not improve predictive accuracy (e.g., hit rates), helping rule out statistical discrimination as the primary channel. Our findings highlight that interpersonal identity dynamics can shape state enforcement decisions even in one-shot encounters.
When Home Becomes History: Forced Migration and the Aftermath of the Gujarat Riots (2002)
Communal violence often triggers forced migration, leading to significant demographic shifts and long-term economic consequences. This study investigates how displacement following the Gujarat riots affected employment, education, and economic integration among affected communities, with a particular focus on Muslim families who were forced to flee their homes.
By leveraging census data and large-scale household surveys, the research examines disparities between displaced and non-displaced communities in terms of employment outcomes, educational attainment, and household income. Additionally, it analyzes whether government rehabilitation efforts were effective in supporting resettlement. The findings provide insight into the socio-economic costs of communal violence and the long-term impact of forced migration.