for the members of their specific caste helps the high castes to sustain collective action to support norms that benefit them collectively.<sup>9</sup> The difference between high and low castes in the willingness to sanction violations of cooperation norms, and the relative absence in the low castes of in-group concerns for the members of their caste, may have far-reaching implications. Experimental evidence (Fehr and Gächter 2000; Carpenter 2006; Herrmann, Gächter and Thöni 2008) as well as field evidence (Miguel and Gugerty 2005) indicates the importance of voluntary informal punishment for the provision of public goods. Thus, if high castes are better able to sanction free riders, they are in a better position to organize collective action and produce public goods compared to the low castes. This advantage may be one reason why Untouchability continues to be practiced in almost 80 percent of Indian villages despite the constitutional abolition of Untouchability (Shah _et al_ . 2006). Another consequence may be that the high castes are better able to enforce contracts and ensure their property rights, which advantages them with respect to trading opportunities and production incentives.

Taken together, these consequences may contribute to the persistence of poverty and inequalities between high and low castes. The lower willingness in the low caste communities to sanction violations of cooperation norms may also mean that conventional policies for improving governance through decentralization and community-based development projects may need to be reconsidered. These policies assume a broad-based capacity for norm enforcement in society, whereas in fact that capacity may be unevenly distributed across groups.<sup>10</sup> Finally, if future

> 9A British official in 1947 wrote that attempts by low caste individuals to exercise the right to use public wells, a right granted to them by law under British rule, was commonly met with “social boycotts” – collective punishments imposed by high castes who might refuse to trade with an entire low caste community, or might destroy their crops and dwellings. The official concluded that “No legislative or administrative action can restore to the depressed class people the right to use public wells” (cited in Galanter, 1972, p. 234). Social boycotts have also occurred in recent years. In a social boycott in 1998, high caste individuals who gave employment to low caste individuals were fined by the village council (Human Rights Watch, 1999, p. 30).

> 10 The lower willingness in the low caste communities to sanction violations of cooperation norms appears to reflect patterns of interaction in everyday life in Uttar Pradesh that have contributed to the failure of public sector interventions to help disadvantaged groups. The most detailed study is of the village of Palanpur, but the general picture that emerges from that study seems representative of the state. After reviewing all public services in the village of Palanpur, Drѐze, Lanjouw and Sharma (1998) conclude that predatory actors had derailed essentially _every_ public initiative to help disadvantaged groups. “With few exceptions, Jatabs [the main low caste in Palanpur] have remained outside the scope of constructive government intervention” (p. 220).  In one particularly egregious case, the intended low caste beneficiaries became “victims of merciless extortion” by the high caste managers of a cooperative lending society (p. 220). Because of examples like this one, Drѐze, Lanjouw and Sharma emphasize that “state

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