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The infrastructure sector is one of the major pillars for economic growth and development of a country. The responsibility to develop this crucial sector is shifting away from the public to the private sector. After the economic liberalization in 1991, India opened the infrastructure sector, among many others, to private domestic and foreign investment. The shortage of electricity, the poor state of roads, and limited telecom access necessitated a stream of persistent reforms, which were expected to play a significant role in the infrastructure sector's growth. Although some subsectors witnessed success, others continued to face hurdles. The paper highlights the role of infrastructure in socio‐economic development through global literature. It also presents a story of infrastructure development in India since the inception of economic liberalization. It highlights various challenges that discourage private sector investments, thus providing a rationale for policy initiatives by the government. The paper also presents critical issues highlighted by multiple government committees over nearly three decades and identifies residual issues that merit attention. The outcomes of the paper are relevant in the context of developing and emerging economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multicriteria mathematical modeling is an analytical framework for formally describing real‐life problems involving multiple and conflicting objectives. In the past decade, multicriteria decision‐making techniques have been applied in almost every area of the decision‐making including energy‐economic planning and sustainable development. Various mathematical and analytical models have been presented for the sustainable development planning and their assessment. In this paper, we discuss an approach related to multicriteria decision‐making and apply it for the assessment of the sustainable development goals of India by the year 2030. In the INDC report submitted to United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (2015, http://www..unfccc.int/submissions/INDC/Published%20Documents/India/1/INDIA%20INDC%20TO%20UNFCCC.pdf), India has identified many goals related to the sustainable development like energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, GVA growth, and an increase in the employment by the year 2030. This paper overcomes the energy resource allocation problem in related literature due to the lack of sectorial data for the same year by calculating the estimates for each sector for the year 2030. We presented a multicriteria decision‐making model which allocates public labor force in the key economic sectors of India. The presented model is validated with the data of the key economic sectors and their contribution in the identified goals. The paper provides a decision support for the better management of future sustainable policies by assessing the efficiencies of the current policies toward future sustainable goals. We evaluated the identified goals using the multicriteria decision‐making approaches so that the strategic planning can be implemented by the policy makers and to present a quantitative justification of planning strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eliminating poverty by 2030 is the main target of Sustainable Development Goal 1(SDG1). India had an ambitious target of cutting down its poverty rate to 10.95% from 21.92%, by 2030. This review has the objective to consolidate the literature related to SDG1 in India, since 2015 and to identify futuristic research niches. This research focuses on the research questions of identifying the public policy initiatives in India for achieving SDG1 and the performance of various indicators of SDG1 in India. Forty‐one peer‐reviewed articles related to SDG1 in India are selected from the sources of Web of Science and consolidated the findings of these works of literature by using the indicators of NITI Aayog as the themes; described the empirical papers by highlighting the key variables and findings. This research had identified the health insurance penetration; slum rehabilitation and rejuvenation of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) are the futuristic areas for research. This paper contributes to the existing body of knowledge and recommends the key areas to be focused on achieving SDG1 in India. This review can help readers in understanding better methods of poverty eradication. High spirits are recommended from the implementing authorities to meet the objectives of indicators of poverty, better housing, health insurance penetration to households, and for the generation of employment and consumption by the scheme of MGNREGA. Moreover, a realistic picture of poverty eradication in India may be possible by using more indicators covering all the targets of SDG1. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developments across the board require an educational backup which requires a robust educational system. The last 50 years have witnessed big leap transformation of applications supported by advancements in science and technology. Even today due to the fast advancement it is difficult to evaluate how usage shapes up in the near future. This requires an upgraded educational structure to cope with the challenges. India has over 1/sixth of the human force representation on the global map and it should contribute strongly to the global development in sync with the human force representation on earth. India responded slowly to the upgradation gap in the education policy and came up with a new one after a gap of 34 years. The new National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 of India provides a comprehensive framework from primary education to higher education, vocational & technical education and a new paradigm of internet‐based e‐leanings. Five founding pillars of this policy (i.e., Access, equity, affordability, accountability, and quality) have been considered to build the new education system of India to create a perfect harmony with the principles of United Nations (UN) 2030 agenda for sustainable development. However, the successful implementation of this policy requires a significant structural overhaul in the Indian education system. This paper provides insights into various contours of NEP 2020 and how it aligns with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2030 targets. This paper looks at how India should step up with caution to achieve the objectives. The paper presents some major loopholes and execution challenges that need to be addressed to truly foster "quality education for all" with the objective of providing value to the globe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economic crisis triggered by the COVID‐19 urgently required active policy interventions to enhance the revival strategies of the world economy. This paper examines the effectiveness of policy intervention of the State Government of Kerala in India in mitigating the risks caused by the pandemic. The policy effectiveness is evaluated by analyzing the data collected from a sample of 300 beneficiaries with the help of descriptive statistics, ordered probit (OP) model, and semi nonparametric extended OP (SNEOP) model. Our results are assertive with the fact that state policies are effective in reviving the crisis‐hit economy as they have primarily helped low‐income groups and other marginalized communities. The majority of BPL families, self‐help group members, and social security beneficiaries rated government policies as highly or fairly effective. Though the policies are found to be highly effective among those who have suffered income loss, the study does not find sufficient evidence to believe that the government interventions are effective in helping those who have lost their jobs. The level of effectiveness is inversely related to age, education, and family size. Our results suggest that an extensive fiscal package is required to help people recover from the crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transgender community/communities (Henceforth, referred to as TGC) has been facing numerous hardships and challenges, which subsequently acts as a deterrent in their social, cultural and economic development. Education, which acts as an emancipation for all social evils is also quite very low for these communities. In this context, the paper seeks to understand the educational rights for the TGC in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main objective of this study is to evaluate the impact of new agricultural export policy implemented by the government of India in 2018. Firstly, this paper critically evaluates the different programs undertaken by the Ministry of Commerce under Agricultural Export Policy, 2018 to doubling farmers income by 2022. Further, this article evaluates the impact of new agricultural export policy on enhancing the productivity and profitability on Indian Agriculture. Overall results of the article suggest that new agriculture export policy will set the foundation to make Indian agriculture globally competitive. Ease of doing agricultural business index will encourage health competition between the states. Transport and marketing assistance scheme will help Indian agricultural exporters to more competitive in global market and mitigates the hindrance of a higher cost of transportation. Agricultural Export Cluster will enhance the involvement of small and marginal farmers in the export bracket. Finally, this article discussed that productivity of Indian Agriculture is lower but with the help of new agricultural policy India could enhance the productivity of most of the agriculture goods in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the CSR movement in India from the perspective of institutional theory and social movement theory. The paper draws important theoretical framework in the field of CSR in emerging economies. The study takes entirely new theoretical perspective of social movement theory and combines it with institutionalization to give important insights to the adoption of CSR as a law in India. Propositions are developed by drawing on the role of organizational actors and their interactions with institutional forces; and also on the interaction among the different forces. First, these interactions are examined in dyadic form and then the overall effects of these interactions are proposed. It is examined how different actors interact differently with the institutional forces, and how the dominant or competing forces interact with each other to in turn influence the actors. Another set of propositions examine how the organizational strategies shaped the CSR movement in India and how they have been or are likely to be shaped by the CSR movement in India. Implications for public affairs and policy making are drawn for CSR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regional disparities are an alarming issue in India, and it has been widening in spite of various policy initiatives by the government to develop backward areas. The fruit of high growth have not been distributed fairly across India's different regions and have given rise to the threat of regional inequality. Disparities in social and economic development, employment, and infrastructure amenities across the regions and within regions have been a major challenge to policy makers and economists. This paper is an attempt to understand the recent picture of regional imbalance in India across its states. The paper tries to analyze the existing regional disparity in India in terms of macroeconomic aggregates, social and economic infrastructure, and human development. The paper also examines the various policy initiatives taken by the government of India to achieve the regional balance in development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the key decisions lobbies make are which political players to lobby, at what stage or stages to intervene in the policy process and which strategies and tactics to use. This paper addresses the lack of sources of knowledge beyond the United States for understanding these key decisions. It argues that the manner in which the design of legislative institutions establishes the balance of power between political parties and individual politicians has a significant influence on all three choices of the target of lobbying, the stage of the policymaking process in which to lobby and the strategies and tactics used by lobbies. Data to support the arguments are presented from a survey of groups in India and China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indian energy sector has undergone a tremendous transformation with consistent government policy interventions since 2000. Against this backdrop, we examine the extent to which energy poverty has decreased due to the expansion of energy services and the significant determinants of energy poverty in select six states in India. Overall, results reveal that absolute multidimensional energy poverty has substantially decreased across all states examined in the study as well as across all income and social groups between 2015 and 2018. Specifically, acute multidimensional energy poverty has reduced by an average of 30% between 2015 and 2018 in six states. At the same time, dependency on biomass remains more or less the same between 2015 and 2018. Results also show that inequality in the access to energy across income and social groups exists, and education is negatively related to energy poverty. Energy poverty has declined by a similar percentage among most employment groups, except for people practicing cattle rearing. Finally, culture is a significant determinant of energy poverty as households with the elderly and more land owned have higher energy poverty, probably due to the easy access to biomass and preference of such households to use it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments around the world are utilizing their digital ecosystems to respond to the COVID‐19 pandemic. To increase awareness among the beneficiaries about privacy risks, they must proactively publish the data handling practices for their digital initiatives through appropriate privacy policies. This study analyzes the privacy policies of public COVID‐support mobile applications (apps) in the context of India. We found a total of 63 government initiated COVID‐support apps in India out of which 38% were found to have an app‐specific privacy policy. These policies were analyzed further to assess their coverage of key principles, such as "Purpose," "Data Categories," and "Data Retention," derived from legal requirements. We also analyzed the extent of the specificity of policies with a high coverage. In India, only one nation‐wide app stood out to have both considerable coverage of key principles as well as a high level of specificity. Other national/regional apps fail to display the desired levels of coverage and/or specificity. The broader policy recommendations of this study are that the government should better address privacy concerns regarding its existing and future disaster management apps as well as its other digital initiatives by (a) establishing and enforcing a comprehensive legislative framework for data protection and (b) increasing privacy awareness among the beneficiaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investments in Indian Medical Tourism (MT) have been growing at a greater rate than the global standards. However, unfortunately, Indian legislations have not managed to keep pace with this phenomenal growth, and have thereby been lacking in forming specific amendments, coupled with both preventive and compensative decrees. Moreover, safety and security have emerged as an aggregated inter‐web of complex multi‐dimensional components, encompassing aspects such as "public and personal data safety," "legal protection of tourists," "consumers" "protection," and so on. The internet has affected "data integration," "storage," "exchange" exposing thereby the possibilities of security breaches. All of these, in amalgamation, call for elevating the overall hygiene of India's growing medical tourism industry. Based upon this backdrop, this study looks into the theories of security, privacy, and consumerism, and the need for preventive cybercrime laws in India's medical tourism sector, especially considering several technical vulnerabilities that do exist. In this endeavor, I reviewed and analyzed journals and government policies, and have looked to identify some of the fallacies and gaps. Additionally, I also attempted to identify some of the needs that exist in MT's cybersecurity space, both within the Indian and international contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The second goal of the United Nations Development Programme's Sustainable Development Goals emphasizes food security, which is no hunger by 2030. India has a significant role to play in achieving this goal, as nearly 200 million of its inhabitants live in hunger. This accounts for almost a quarter of global hunger. The public distribution system (PDS) is the policy initiative by the Government of India to provide food security to needy citizens. The scheme is considered one of the world's largest food security programs. The 2013 National Food Security Act covers 75% and 50% of the rural and urban population, respectively, and provides 35 kg of grain for each needy family. Despite these efforts, India still faces food insecurity. There are certain exclusion and inclusion errors in the implementation of the PDS. Each state (federal unit) in India has followed its implementation strategy by leveraging Information and Communication Technologies with differing levels of success. Many studies found that Chhattisgarh, a state in the Hindi belt of the country, is implementing the scheme effectively through centralized online real‐time electronic PDS (CORE‐PDS). The present article uses network governance as a theoretical framework to understand the success story of Chhattisgarh's CORE‐PDS and to identify its key success factors by analyzing the role of state and nonstate actors in the implementation of the PDS. The network governance approach is emerging as a crucial theoretical framework in the governance and public policy fields for identifying the challenges and problems in the policy domain and building networks among state actors, markets, civil society, and citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study attempts to empirically examine the importance of market share reallocation and average productivity improvements in driving aggregate productivity growth. By using Olley and Pakes, Econometrica, 1996, 64(6), 1263–1297 decomposition method, we show that aggregate productivity growth has mainly been driven by improvements in average productivity (with‐in firm productivity improvement) and not reallocation during the post liberalization phase (1999–2010) for the manufacturing sector in India. We also show that for many industries (sub‐sectors of manufacturing) the reallocation effect is negative and was driving the aggregate productivity down, compared to average productivity, which has driven the aggregate productivity up. The findings from the study confirms the important role of with‐in firm productivity improvement in aggregate productivity growth. Hence, the study emphasizes the need for positive policy interventions by the government that could enhance with‐in firm productivity growth through internal restructuring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present the case of an awareness campaign, strategically crafted by a local student political leader, based on a national level policy for urban poor and marginalized, in the city of Ahmedabad in India. The campaign, designed in the form of a foot‐march, was aimed at mobilizing the urban poor, but with a clear ambition of gaining visibility for political mileage. This study reinforces that the mediation role taken up by local leaders transcends the traditional policymaking, in democracies with blurred boundaries between the state and citizens. Further, in local governance structures, with weak participatory spaces for the poor, foot‐marches have the potential to become an extended invited participatory space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing levels of external commercial borrowings (ECBs) among the emerging and developing economies have raised the fears that ECBs would lead to widespread crisis and threaten financial stability in India. Against this backdrop, the current study seeks to examine the trends and critically evaluate the policy pertaining to ECBs. In order to immune the economy from potential exchange rate shocks, we suggest to having specific policy focus on the domestic bond market, hedging mechanisms, and appropriate decisions on the cap and level of ECBs by the regulator. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]