Study indicates caste-based inequality in medical crowdfunding in India 

Representative image.
| Photo Credit: Murali Kumar K

A study conducted by the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB) titled ‘Caste inequality in medical crowdfunding in India’ has found that the medical crowdfunding campaigns initiated by individuals from dominant caste groups tend to garner higher funds when compared with the campaigns initiated by individuals from marginalised caste groups.

The study also found that persons from Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) initiate disproportionately fewer campaigns than those from dominant castes. The paper studied 8,721 campaigns initiated on Ketto, one of India’s leading crowdfunding platforms between February 2020 and December 2022.  

The study was conducted by Aprit Shah, faculty member at IIMB, and was published in the Journal of Development Studies in August 2024.  

Inferring caste identities

To infer the caste identities of those who benefited from the campaigns, the study considered the last names which are usually indicators of caste groups. ‘Outkast’ open-source package, which utilises data from the Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC), encompassing 140 million Indian names across 19 states, was employed to deduce the caste identity from the recipients’ last names. 

The study says that while last names like ‘Sharma’ and ‘Mehta’ are very likely to belong to dominant caste groups (termed as OTHERS in the paper), names like ‘Basumatary’ and ‘Boro’ are associated with ST groups and ‘Jatav’ and ‘Valmiki’ are associated with SC groups.  

The research indicated that during the two-year period, the top 1% of medical campaigns gathered 24% of all the funds raised while the lowest 16% accounted only for 0.02% of funding on the platform. Along with many other factors which could have contributed to the poor performance of most campaigns, the researcher says that caste also influences fundraising outcomes. 

While the campaigns initiated by SC and ST groups constituted only 10.2% of all campaigns on Ketto, these campaigns also accumulated only 8.4% of the funds raised. The campaigns initiated by OTHERS group typically raised 30% more funds than the average SC campaigns and 10% more than the average ST campaigns.  

“This inequality persists despite considering various textual and visual factors related to the campaign and controlling for the time of the campaign launch and the recipient’s State. Our findings also highlight that lower average donations contribute to decreased fundraising for SC and ST groups. Overall, our findings contribute to the literature on inequality in crowdfunding, primarily concentrated on Western countries,” the study says.  

Limitations of the study

The author also notes that the study has its limitations including the considering just one crowdfunding platform, lacking self-reported caste information and reflecting only the segment of society which has the ability to start online crowdfunding campaigns.

Published – September 27, 2024 09:42 pm IST

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