Sriya Iyer,The Economics of Religion in India

Readers of this journal will normally think of the practice and practices of religion as being about a person’s or people’s interaction with a transcendent being. Not so in this book. Iyer emphasizes the economics of religion – religion in a marketplace of ideas (and services). What practices might meet prospective adherents’ needs and might make the religion more attractive or facilitate retention in such a market? India has had a terrible history of religious conflict, dating back before partition, and so this study of the economics of religion, casting light through a different lens, can help inform policies that promote religious harmony.

Iyer is not the first to write about the economics of religion – and scattered throughout the book there are reviews of previous contributions to this literature dating back to Adam Smith – but her focus is on India, and she draws out several unique aspects of the economics of religion in that country. The book is based on the author’s own research, including surveys of religious organizations, although the results of the surveys could have been enhanced by the inclusion of statistical tests. And it could have been better positioned for a general readership: it is frustratingly written for Indian insiders, assuming that the reader is familiar with Indian topography and nomenclature (lakh = 100,000).

Competition for adherents, of course, is not the only motivator for service provision. As Iyer points out:

What is striking about the responses is that providing services because it is a virtuous thing to do was important. But there was some sense that competition matters: the organizations – especially Hindu and Muslim ones – were candid enough to admit that both responding to other organizations’ provision of services and meeting requirements of the area were also important as well. (p. 88)

Although one is comforted by the acknowledgement of a higher motivating factor, the singling out of Hindus and Muslims here is not supported by the detailed table of results. The percentage of respondents who answered that provision was ‘in reaction to provision by other organizations’ was little different between Hindu, Muslim and Christian (18.6 per cent, 18.6 per cent and 17.4 per cent respectively), although there were differences for ‘meeting requirements of the area’ (21 per cent, 25 per cent and 22 per cent respectively).

What is important for a wider readership is that Iyer is writing about a contest between three approaches to God and the transcendent: Hindu, Muslim and Christian. The challenges of education provided by Muslim schools is discussed: should they emphasize the same subjects, to the same depth, as state schools? And is a separate school system potentially a driver of inequality? In brief, the answer to the latter question appears to be yes, but the response should be to strengthen the separate school system, not destroy it.

Economics, and the marketplace of ideas, also come to the fore in looking at why religious groups might differentiate – into fundamentalist or liberal, for example – and the importance of these different positionings. Although the focus of this book is India, it makes a wider contribution to the economics of religion, especially in developing countries. A reader without a background in economics of religion will find the book accessible, with many pointers to previous contributions to the discourse.