Abstract
India has a large and comprehensive system of caste-based affirmative action in its public colleges and universities. Affirmative action in India’s higher education is meant to address historical inequities that resulted from centuries of caste-based oppression. The system has resulted in a large number of beneficiaries (students from “lower-caste” backgrounds) and non-beneficiaries (students from “upper-caste” backgrounds). Upper-caste students—who are the non-beneficiaries—might have beliefs about and preferences for affirmative action and other redistributive policies which are shaped, in part, by their misperceptions about caste. In this study, I propose an online survey experiment to capture these biases and misperceptions and conduct interventions to address them. I randomly assign 1600 college students in India to one of three arms: a 10-minute online intervention that provides students with facts and research evidence about caste; 10 minute online intervention where students read a letter by an anonymous lower-caste student of the SAME gender and write a letter to a friend explaining what they learned from the letter (saying-is-believing, same gender); 10 minute online intervention where students read a letter by an anonymous lower-caste student of the OPPOSITE gender and write a letter to a friend explaining what they learned from the letter (saying-is-believing, opposite) gender; and a 10-minute online intervention that provides students information unrelated to caste. The results of this study are critical to understanding caste-related biases and misperceptions among college students in India, and, more broadly, for designing interventions that promote diversity and inclusion at higher education institutions around the world.