This paper examines how shared religious identity between deposed indigenous rulers and local populations shaped literacy in Colonial India. Using within-district differences across religious groups, we show that Hindu literacy is lower where Hindu rulers were displaced, while Muslim literacy is lower where Muslim rulers were displaced. These patterns do not appear in Princely States, where indigenous rulers retained authority, and are reinforced by instrumental variable strategies. The effects are stronger where rulers had historical ties with local populations, suggesting that removing co-religionist rulers reduced demand for British-led education, highlighting how identity and political displacement shaped the adoption of colonial institutions.

Can civic infrastructure shape political competition? We study public parks in Delhi, combining electoral returns with novel data on the RSS, a Hindu nationalist organization closely associated with the BJP. Using predetermined recreational land allocations from the 1962 Master Plan as an instrument for park access, we find that a one-standard-deviation increase raises the BJP-led alliances (BJP+) vote share by 1.92 percentage points and increases RSS presence. Yet this advantage is not fixed: across four Delhi elections from 2008 to 2020, the relationship between park access and BJP+ vote share is positive in three but weakens sharply in 2013, when the park-related advantage shifts toward the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which emerged from an anti-corruption movement that mobilized through public spaces. The findings suggest that civic infrastructure lowers the spatial costs of political organization, benefiting actors able to mobilize through it.

Beyond fostering inclusion and connectivity, does investing in mass transit impact crimes against women? I study the impact of the expansion of the metro rail system in Delhi, India, on reported crimes against women. Preparing a new and novel data set of the universe of crime reports at the police station-day level, and leveraging the staggered opening of metro stations across these police jurisdictions between 2016 and 2019, I find a 29 percent decrease in reported incidents of sexual harassment against women in public spaces following the opening of the first metro station in the police jurisdiction. This reduction in reported sexual harassment is neither linked to an overall decrease in reported non-gender-specific crimes in public spaces, nor substituted by an increase in such crimes in metro stations or trains. Further analysis of crime reports from alterna- tive public transport networks, combined with area safety data from a crowd-sourced mobile application, suggests that this reduction is driven by the enhanced safety pro- vided by the metro network.