Communitas, the student body of the Department of Political Science at the School of Social Sciences, University of Hyderabad, organized a talk titled “Does Bureaucratic Resistance Affect Women’s Ability to Govern?” delivered by Dr. Bhumi Purohit, an Assistant Professor of Public Policy at Georgetown University’s McCourt School, which was attended by students and faculty of the department.
Dr. Purohit presented her work on bureaucratic resistance and women panchayat leaders in Telangana. Her research focuses on how women sarpanches face resistance from their District Magistrates by investigating how the gender of a politician influences their ability to coordinate with the bureaucracy.
Dr. Purohit argues that bureaucrats perceive women as having low political capital, which makes them less likely to help female politicians. She contends that bureaucrats are driven by career incentives related to promotions and transfers, which depend on their relationships with principals or their work on policy implementation. To obtain such transfers or promotions, bureaucrats may either exercise discretion or exhibit resistance towards their principals. Here, she explains that the identity of the principal, or what she refers to as identity-based heuristics, plays a significant role in determining whether the bureaucrat will exercise discretion or resistance.
While discussing her work on behavioural and institutional barriers to women’s political representation, Dr. Purohit engaged with issues of question formation and the background of the research. The discussion focused on the need to ask big questions without being fearful of asking the wrong ones. Dr. Purohit explained that formulating a research question isn’t a linear process but rather requires several rounds of trial and error. Furthermore, the talk discussed the process of selecting a unit of analysis and the nuances of survey research. In this process, she also presented the initial findings from her fieldwork in multiple districts of Telangana.
The audience engaged in not only questions of gender bias influencing public service delivery and governance outcomes but also in questions regarding how research is carried out in the social sciences, with a special focus on quantitative analysis. The session was chaired by Dr. Sneha Benarjee, Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science.
Contributed by Satyaki Barua, Communitas, Department of Political Science