Dams mitigate the effect of rainfall shocks on Hindus-Muslims riots

Abstract

• Dams fully mitigate the effect of rainfall shocks on agricultural production and religious conflict between Hindus and Muslims in India. • We find that the link between rainfall and religious conflict works through the agricultural income channel. • We do not find supportive evidence for other channels linking rainfall shocks to religious conflict. • Dams may be a useful tool for mitigating the effects of climate change. Sarsons (2015) finds that, while agricultural income in India is less sensitive to rainfall in dam-fed districts, rainfall shocks have a larger (or equally large) effect on religious riots between Muslims and Hindus in dam-fed districts than in rain-fed districts. This is inconsistent with agricultural income being the sole channel through which rainfall affects religious conflict in India. In this comment, we show that this result originates from the use of state-specific time trends and interaction models. Once we replace state-specific time trends with state-year fixed effects (in slit sample regressions) and allow state-year fixed effects to be different between rain-fed and dam-fed districts (in interaction models), we find that while (fractional) rainfall shocks affect agricultural production and religious violence in rain-fed districts, they have no effect on agricultural production and religious violence in dam-fed districts. In other words, dams fully mitigate the effect of rainfall shocks on agricultural output and religious violence in the Indian context.