Contrary to concerns that reservations may reduce the competitiveness of elections, our data suggest that reserved seats are no less competitive than unreserved ones (table 3 panel 2). In fact, with participation levels of 76% for reserved compared to 72% for unreserved seats, „reserved‟ pradhan elections (in states where pradhans are elected directly) appear to have attracted slightly higher levels of voter turnout.<sup>14</sup> The bottom panel highlights that there is no significant difference in size and structure of budgets between reserved and unreserved panchayats, not unsurprising in a setting where own revenues remain modest and some 90% of local budgets are from central transfers.

Table 4 reports descriptive statistics for individuals‟ assessment of the pradhan‟s leadership attributes, the quality of service delivery in key areas, and the ability to hold officials to account. Figures are reported for the full sample and male as well as female respondents separately for reserved and unreserved panchayats. That reservations impose an additional constraint emerges clearly from the fact that for all of the many areas considered, and irrespectively of respondents‟ gender, reserved pradhans‟ qualifications are always rated below or at most equal to those of unreserved ones. Males and females unanimously view those elected on reserved female tickets as having lower technical qualifications and lower ability to provide local public goods or select beneficiaries transparently. They also coincide in considering those on reserved seats as less honest and fair than those on non-reserved seats, possibly pointing to the fact that in some cases reservation results in females being put up as a front for husbands or relatives who continue to draw the strings behind the scene. Males think that reserved female pradhans are less knowledgeable of national affairs and worse at communicating village problems to higher government. The only area where reserved pradhans are put on par with non-reserved ones relates to the ability to solve local disputes.

Consistently for males and females, descriptive data suggest that reservation affects perceived quality of service delivery either negatively (for water, schools, health, and sanitation although, with some 53%, a majority of respondents saw things improve) or not at all, i.e. it does not lead to improvement (for roads where about 37% perceived an improvement and credit where 29% judged their situation better than in the previous period). Problems related to officials‟ absence from their duties are a notable exception; with some 25% in total who perceived things to have improved, the share of those who viewed improvements was significantly higher in reserved than in unreserved villages.

Gender differences are also striking regarding respondents‟ perceived ability to hold officials to account: While some 50% of men find it easy to hold officials to account, have them take care of local problems,

> 14 To simplify presentation, we use only currently reserved villages for the first set of data and villages that have been ever (or never) reserved for the rest. More disaggregated data are not substantively different and available on request. To facilitate interpretation, state level effects are controlled for throughout.

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