There is a common perception that politicians in India mobilize electoral support through fairly stable clientelistic relationships. We revisit this question by examining how politicians allocate funds under a scheme called MPLADS (Member of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme). Using cross-sectional village-level voting data from about 250.000 villages in 206 Parliamentary Constituencies across 6 Indian states in the 2009 elections, we show that MPs indeed channeled more funds to villages that voted for them, though the effect is not as strong as most theories would predict. To further test whether this is a result of clientelism or electoral strategizing we use a natural experiment created by the implementation of a new delimitation of electoral boundaries in 2008. We observe that areas that were moved into a new electoral constituency were much less likely to receive funds, suggesting that spending is driven more by electoral incentives than stable clientelistic relationships.
