India's rural roads contracts: How lawmakers bent rules to favour own caste

Roads built by politically connected contractors 10% more expensive to construct, or, worse, not constructed at all

Between 2001 and 2013, state lawmakers unfairly awarded rural road building contracts worth Rs 3,592 crore ($540 million) to contractors from their own caste, a new study by Princeton University, USA, published in the Journal of Development Economics, has shown.

The contracts amounted to 4% of the total spending on the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY). Unfairly awarded contracts often resulted in more expensive road construction, the study found. Hundreds of these roads appear to have never been built, based on the 2011 census records, keeping