Despite persecution, Muslims contribute more to social welfare in Delhi: Study

A recent study conducted in Delhi's slum communities challenges conventional theories on ethnic diversity and public goods provision by revealing that Muslims, as a persecuted minority, are more responsive to social accountability mechanisms than Hindus when it comes to contributing to community sanitation efforts.

The study, jointly conducted by Melani Cammett, Clarence Dillon Professor of International Affairs at Harvard University, Poulomi Chakrabarti, a visiting scholar at the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute, and David Romney, an assistant professor at Brigham Young University, provides new insights into how minorities navigate hostile sociopolitical environments.

It introduces the concept of “defensive cooperation,” where Muslims demonstrate a higher willingness to engage in collective action for public goods like sanitation. This occurs despite the numerous challenges they face in such environments.

The study, which covered 16 bastis (informal settlements) across five slum communities in Delhi, included 3,843 individuals and sought to understand how different social groups responded to social pressure aimed at encouraging contributions to a community sanitation initiative.

By focusing on drainage—a near-public good in these communities where municipal efforts fall short—the researchers explored the effectiveness of various social accountability mechanisms. The study was conducted in 2018, a time of relative peace before the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the communal riots in Delhi in 2020.

Even in the absence of overt violence, however, the study points out that discrimination against Muslims remains a persistent issue in Delhi, where segregation along religious lines is high, and Muslim representation in government is notably low.

The theoretical framework of the study was rooted in the extensive literature that links ethnic diversity to lower levels of public goods provision. Conventional wisdom suggests that homogeneous communities are better able to coordinate collective action, while ethnic diversity leads to fragmentation and undermines efforts to provide public goods.

However, the results of this study stand in stark contrast to these established theories. The study found that Muslims, when exposed to social accountability mechanisms such as the threat of public shaming or pressure from local elites, were more likely to contribute to the community sanitation initiative than Hindus, who showed little difference in willingness to contribute compared to those who did not experience any intervention.

Three distinct social accountability mechanisms were tested in the study. The first was the "black sheep effect," where participants were made aware of the underperformance of fellow group members in contributing to the collective good. The second mechanism was "horizontal accountability," which focused on the prospect of public shaming, such as gossip within the community, if someone failed to contribute. The third was "vertical accountability," which involved pressure from local elites, such as informal leaders, to encourage participation.

Surprisingly, the Muslim respondents reacted more positively to these mechanisms than their Hindu counterparts, defying the expectation that homogeneous communities would be more effective at coordinating collective action.

The study also found that neighbourhood diversity—measured through GPS data that calculated the proportion of Hindus and Muslims living within a 100-metre radius of each respondent—did not significantly affect the results. This suggests that the diversity-deficit hypothesis, which posits that diverse communities are less capable of working together for the common good, may not apply in all contexts. Instead, the study highlights the unique position of Muslims as a persecuted minority and how this status shapes their attitudes and behaviours towards collective action.

Muslims in India have historically faced significant persecution and discrimination, with their loyalty to the nation frequently questioned since partition. Unlike other marginalised groups that have made notable social and economic progress since Independence, Muslims have seen a decline in intergenerational mobility over time. They have also been the target of increasing hate crimes in recent years, a trend that has only exacerbated their marginalisation. While large-scale communal riots and incidents of lynching are relatively rare, everyday discrimination affects nearly every aspect of Muslim life, from housing to social interactions.

In this context, the study suggests that Muslims' greater willingness to contribute to community initiatives may be a form of defensive cooperation. Faced with the threat of violence and repression, members of persecuted minorities often adopt coping strategies to navigate their precarious social positions.

One such strategy is to contribute more to public goods as a way to avoid drawing negative attention or exacerbating tensions with the majority. Muslims, who already face significant discrimination in their daily lives, may see participating in community efforts as a way to maintain peace and stability, particularly in neighbourhoods with a history of intercommunal tensions.

This theory is supported by previous ethnographic research that has shown how Muslims in other Indian cities, such as Varanasi, have avoided public protests or confrontations over poor public services out of fear of worsening discrimination or religious tensions.

Instead, Muslim elites have often established their own welfare institutions to improve living conditions within their communities, sometimes even extending services to poorer Hindus in an effort to maintain peace. Similar dynamics were observed in the Delhi slums included in the study, where local Muslim leaders had set up “peace committees” to mobilise residents in the event of communal unrest, while also providing public services such as education, childcare, and healthcare.

The study's findings also highlight important variations within the Muslim community itself. Upper-caste Muslims and those with stronger in-group ties were more likely to contribute to the sanitation initiative, while lower-caste Muslims showed no difference in their behaviour compared to lower-caste Hindus.

This suggests that caste dynamics within the Muslim community may play a role in shaping attitudes toward collective action. In contrast, upper-caste Hindus responded negatively to the accountability interventions, further complicating the relationship between caste, religion, and public goods provision.

The study's authors argue that these findings add a new dimension to the understanding of how diversity and inequality affect public goods provision. For members of persecuted minorities like Muslims, social norms are shaped not only by in-group dynamics but also by inter-group relations and the broader context of exclusion and violence.

The shared history of discrimination and the fear of further marginalisation may drive minority group members to contribute more to collective efforts, either as a way to seek acceptance from the dominant group or to strengthen their own communities.