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The paper explores the complex interplay between economic development and environmental sustainability in the context of India's pursuit of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It examines the inherent contradictions and trade-offs involved, particularly in agriculture, industrialisation, and infrastructure sectors. The paper highlights how economic growth, essential for improving living standards, often conflicts with environmental objectives. The paper underscores the importance of integrating economic, environmental, and social objectives to achieve a sustainable and inclusive future for India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper critically dissects the contemporary policy landscape and its ability to counter precarious work for construction workers in the Indian context. By focusing on the governance challenges faced by welfare institutions and the pre-existing fault lines exposed by the pandemic, the paper argues that social policies are languishing and inefficient to respond to the challenges of growing precarity. The paper uses Breman's conception of 'Footloose labour' to understand informality related to construction workers and Gilbert and Terrell's social policy analytical framework to understand the institutional response. The two major arguments that make the social policy languish are the inability of the policy to alter neoliberal employment relationships and the operational challenges that institutions face in implementing welfare schemes for many footloose labourers. Moreover, the situation is further exacerbated by inherent contradictions of the state which is entangled between promoting economic growth through neoliberal policies while consecutively ensuring labour welfare. If the Institutional challenges persist along with the persuasion of neoliberal reforms, footloose labour is only going to be further marginalized and pushed to limits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing studies have examined only the unidirectional impact of cultural diversity on the economic performance of countries, regions, and cities, not the other ways. They have assumed the diversity as given, while it may also grow, due to in-migration of workers and entrepreneurs, with economic growth and may be dependent on it. This paper models diversity and economic growth in a bi-directional causal frame and demonstrates that economic growth has a substantial impact on religious, language, and overall cultural diversities in the major states of India. However, the Granger causality between economic growth to language diversity and overall cultural diversity is found to be stronger and more widespread across the states than the causality from economic growth to religious diversity. The findings of this paper may have significant theoretical and empirical implications, as mainly the unidirectional way the impact of cultural diversity on economic growth has been advocated and the empirical studies have been modelled to date. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the economic policies adopted by the Indian government under different policy regimes, provides a political economy perspective of economic growth in the country during 1950–2020 and examines the inclusiveness of the rapid economic growth in recent decades. The growth performance of the economy improved as the economy moved from inward-looking policy regime to the regimes of pro-business and pro-market policies. India's political economy was supportive of the changes in policy regime. After growing at a sluggish rate during the first three decades after 1950–1951, the gross domestic product (GDP) growth accelerated significantly after the pro-business reforms in the 1980s, and there was further acceleration after the pro-market reforms since 1991–1992. It has, however, slowed down in recent years. Nevertheless, it has not been inclusive, as the benefits of growth have not reached all sections of the population and all regions of the country equally. On the contrary, disparities in income across regions and inequalities in income, wealth and consumption among individuals have exacerbated, and the problems of unemployment and poverty have been persisting in the economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The paper documents developments in Indian economic performance and the role of structural change in this performance. • Manufacturing is dominated by informal labor, which has a deleterious effect on overall manufacturing performance. • Productivity growth is driven by within sector growth, with positive contributions of formal and informal activities to this. • Labor reallocation to the informal segment of the manufacturing sector is growth reducing in the Indian manufacturing sector. • A shift to more productive informal activities across sub-sectors exists, but this doesn't offset the negative within effect. This paper examines the role of structural change in India's performance, and in particular the role of the informal segment in the stagnant growth of the Indian manufacturing sector. Using counterfactual analysis – including a modified shift-share approach – the paper considers to what extent the informal sector can help explain the poor performance of Indian manufacturing over the period 1980-2011. The results suggest that the informal segment of manufacturing has been a drag on overall manufacturing productivity growth, with the informal manufacturing segment unable to provide a productivity bonus when absorbing workers from the agricultural sector. Results from the shift-share analysis indicate that labor reallocation to the informal segment of the manufacturing sector is growth-reducing, with structural change being the main source of this reduction, an effect which in turn is driven by movements of employment within manufacturing sub-sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explains the potential implications of digital interventions for social accountability through the Smart Cities Mission (SCM) in India. The SCM represents India's transition to a new political economy based on rapid urbanization and wide-scale application of digital technology to reform public service delivery while simultaneously creating new markets for urban transformation. Within this wider context, the paper considers the future of democratic practices in urban governance. We argue that while citizen-led accountability practices were trialed by civil society organizations since 1990s, the SCM presented unique opportunity and challenge to institutionalize these tools within the framework of multi-scalar governance — between central-, state- and local-level institutions and between communities, private vendors and public bodies. Zooming into the four smart city projects — Indore, Kakinada, Panaji and Ranchi — we explain how each city engaged with citizen groups, communities and civil society and what their experiences tell us about the prospects and challenges of democratizing digital urban futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under what conditions do policy paradigms succeed in historically weak states? To answer these questions, this paper examines the subnational case of Bihar in India. The existing literature portrays Bihar as lacking capacity. Yet, between 2005 and 2010, astounding improvements have taken place in sectors of transparency and accountability and law & order. How do we explain this? This paper shows that ideas are consequential in initiating changes in policy paradigms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this introductory paper of the Special Issue, we explore how India's political economy is moving in a new direction by focusing on three key political economy issues: development, welfare, and governance. India has undergone a substantial political transformation in recent years, especially since Bharatiya Janata Party led by Narendra Modi formed the first majoritarian government in three decades in 2014. In this paper, we first demonstrate that this political transformation has a significant impact on the Indian political economy, given that the country is witnessing the rise of a new developmentalism, a new welfarism, and the new modes of governance. After that, we summarize the collections of articles of the Special Issue and situate them in relation to our central theme, new directions in the Indian political economy. This paper, and this Special Issue more broadly, seeks to contribute to the existing literature by introducing new analytical frameworks to understand recent changes in the Indian political economy and providing new empirical evidence on this topic drawing on content analysis and field research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic growth and development with least harm to the environment is one of the biggest challenges for the human. Mining which is considered to be the most inherently unsustainable industry, is at the same time, plays key role in the development process in India and across Globe. It occupy primary position in the supply chain, contributing to the foreign direct investment, exports, government taxes, GDP (National Income) and provide huge labour employment. This paper studies industrial elimination of women, prolong industrial patriarchy, impetuous production, rising demand pressure has added to the quadrupling problems of land degradation, disposal of over burden/waste discharge, deforestation, pollution(air, water, and noise), and damage to forest flora and fauna, occupational health hazards and extreme global environmental damage in a rapid, continuous manner. These continuous and multilayered problems are giving us reason to re-visioning steps, where we went wrong. Theoretical foundation of eco-feminism traces that negligence and suppression of women in general and in the mining industry, is one of the probable cause that hit environment fiercely. With this in mind, this paper suggests theory of eco-feminism into male centric mining industry as a perspective which is more likely to lead to industrial sustainability, making it more responsible and may provide pro-environmental solutions to the industry. This feminist concept extending it from individualistic level into mining organisations proposes as one of the alternative to combine ecology and commerce to envision sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociological scholarship, economic theory, and empirical studies all indicate that interpersonal relationships are valuable productive assets and deserve to be formally incorporated into the study of human development. This paper employs the India Human Development Survey to examine, using OLS and logistic regressions, the impact of different dimensions of social capital on multiple proxies for household welfare. Social capital in the form of memberships in local community organizations and social network connections has a statistically and economically significant association with household consumption expenditures, physical asset ownership, and the probability of a household living in poverty. Households that are members of any formal community organization are expected to have higher monthly per capita consumption expenditures than households without any memberships. Estimates of a similar magnitude are observed when modeling a household's stock of physical assets, a longer-term indicator of economic welfare. These indicators of social capital are also significantly associated with lower odds of a household living below the poverty line. Organizational memberships and social networks are also associated with considerably higher odds of a household assessing its own economic situation positively. Overall, social capital is a catalyst for increasing household welfare along multiple dimensions, and, therefore, a critical area of focus for economists, sociologists, development practitioners, and policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an attempt to analyze the trajectories of welfare policy in India since independence. Four overlapping phases are outlined, keeping in mind the transformations in the political and economic contexts. The corresponding welfare discourses are: Paternalistic, Clientelistic, Basic Needs and Responsive. These concepts indicate broad strategies of policy and are not analytical categories. However, one can easily discern a general trend, perhaps a snapshot, of the ideas which shaped welfare policies in India. We assume that the changes are incremental and cumulative. The policy makers' conceptualization of welfare during each time period, the interpretation of these policies in scholarly literature and a critical evaluation are presented. We have suggested that the responsive welfare policy in the recent times is a process of empowering citizens by converting their needs to demands. Democratic representation of the marginalized in the Indian state's policy space is gradually getting recognized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the relationship between financial development and access to electricity for rural and urban India by incorporating economic growth, trade, and foreign direct investment in energy production function. In doing so, we have applied autoregressive distributed lag bounds testing to examine long run cointegration between the variables by accommodating structural break(s) stemming in the series. Our empirical results indicate the presence of cointegration association between access to electricity and its determinants. We note that financial development enhances access to electricity in rural India but declines it in urban India. Economic growth has positive effect on access to electricity. Trade openness and foreign direct investment lower access to electricity in rural India. In urban India, trade openness and foreign direct investment increase access to electricity. The association between financial development and access to electricity is inverted-U shaped for rural and urban India. This paper would present new policy direction for Indian government to enhance access to electricity by using financial development as an economic tool. • Financial development and access to electricity have a strong linkage. • In India financial development enhances access to electricity in rural area but has adverse effect in urban area. • Rise in economic growth of India has increased the access to electricity. • Growth of Trade Openness and Foreign Direct investment increase access to electricity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Development assistance for health (DAH) is an important source of financing for health for many low-income and some middle-income countries. Most DAH has predominantly been contributed by high-income countries. However, in the context of economic progress and changing global priorities, DAH contributions from countries of the Global South such as India have gained importance. In this paper, we estimate DAH contributed by India between 2009 and 2020. Methods: We leveraged data from budgetary documents, databases, and financial reports of the Ministry of External Affairs and multilateral organizations to estimate DAH contributions. The proportions of development assistance that go towards health in major recipient countries were estimated and reported by recipient country and year. Results: Between 2009 and 2020, DAH contributed by India to bilateral and multilateral partners totaled $206.0 million. South Asian countries including Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar received the most DAH from India. DAH contributed relative to DAH received ranged from 1.42% in 2009 to 5.26% in 2018, the latest year with country-level data. Health focus areas prioritized by India included technical training and innovation, health care infrastructure support, and supply of medications and medical equipment. Conclusion: India is an important development partner to many countries–particularly to those in the South Asian region. India's DAH allocation strategy prioritizes contributions toward neighboring countries in the South Asia region in several health focus areas. Detailed project-level data are needed to estimate DAH contributions from India with greater precision and accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The quality of institutions indicates the level of economic development in the country. Institutions are a part of a system that is based on human interactions and that leads to the generation of incentives. These incentives can deal with uncertainties and foster economic, social, political growth, provided the human interactions are moderated well. This paper reflects on the strength of the interventionalist institutions like cooperatives in India and promotes institution building for a better future. The base of the paper focuses on the lessons learnt from dairy cooperatives in Gujarat state and discusses the current situation of the cooperatives and challenges faced by them. The cooperatives in India have been old institutions with a great history of success as also failures. Though there are various types of cooperatives in India, the dairy cooperatives have been able to gain more attention in the international market due to the Operation Floods I, II, and III. India has secured its position as one of the largest milk producers in the world. At present, India produces 20% of the total milk production in the world. This paper is a blend and analysis of theoretical perspectives and ground realities of the dairy cooperative sector in India. The paper follows theoretical perspectives from institutional theory to analyse the present scenario of dairy cooperatives in India. It addresses the gaps in the dairy cooperative development sector with an in‐depth analysis of ground realities and contributes to future policy formulation and interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the knowledge-practices used by rural activists to raise public concerns about the use of water and land resources by a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Uttar Pradesh, India, between 2004 and 2014. These knowledge-practices included the use of semiotics and carefully crafted discourses—such as slogans and protest songs—to produce knowledge about villagers' rights to rural subsistence and survival. An aim of this paper is to show the impressive ways in which the social movement persevered by building both public claims to a moral economy as well as village-level practices and institutions that helped to enact visions of what a moral economy could or should be. Of particular significance were activists' efforts to frame rural water extraction and water rights through a subsistence-focused morality of rural development. This moral economy underscores villager-articulated desires for beneficial forms of economic activity that support rural livelihoods rather than prioritising environmentally destructive corporate activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the strategies for achieving sustainable development goals is to close the gap between environmental vulnerability and economic progress (SDGs). The significance of renewable energy in harmonizing environmental and economic conditions is becoming a touchy subject in current debates. Against this backdrop, the major objective of this paper is to assess whether economic growth and environmental sustainability can promote renewable energy consumption in the Indian economy by using ARDL and Novel Dynamic ARDL estimation techniques. The results obtained from both the methodology shows that rising efficiency in the economic growth coupled with environmental sustainability leads to an increase in renewable energy consumption. We also find, from the frequency domain causality test, that there is a unidirectional causality between renewable energy consumption and economic growth & renewable energy consumption and environmental sustainability in both the short- and long run. The former causation validating the conservation hypothesis for the Indian economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: India accounts for 4.5% of industrial energy use worldwide. This share is projected to increase as the economy expands rapidly. The level of industrial energy efficiency in India varies widely. Certain sectors, such as cement, are relatively efficient, while others, such as pulp and paper, are relatively inefficient. Future energy efficiency efforts should focus on direct reduced iron, pulp and paper and small-scale cement kilns because the potentials for improvement are important in both percentage and absolute terms. Under business as usual, industrial energy use is projected to rise faster than total final energy use. A strong focus on energy efficiency can reduce this growth, but CO2 emissions will still rise substantially. If more substantial CO2 emissions reductions are to be achieved then energy efficiency will need to be combined with measures that reduce the carbon intensity of the industrial fuel mix. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Climate change issue has evolved as a central policy of the Government of India. The crux of the policy is centered on the economic development. Internationally, India has been consistently resisting the developed country's climate policy as the policy might threaten New Delhi's economic development prospect. However, the recent evidence of climate change threat to the economic development compelled political leaders to design the domestic climate policy—the National Action Plan on Climate Change—which is consistent with the country's economic development. Considering the global climate diplomacy, this paper examines the evolution of India's domestic climate change-development discourse and how climate change has been constructed as a major threat at the highest political level that securitises the country's economic development. The threat discourse is explained from the standpoint of the securitisation theory to explore three core constituents of India's domestic climate policy: the referent object, securitising actors and the audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews contemporary literature on theoretical modelling of fiscal policy in India, and highlights the inadequacy of studies focusing on fiscal issues through the lens of Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) modelling. Next, in order to stimulate further discussion, the paper proposes a 'primer' DSGE model calibrated for the Indian economy with focus on exploring fiscal policy transmission, and the economy-wide impact of shocks in various fiscal instruments is evaluated and compared. Finally, drawing from this primer model, the paper discusses areas of future research in context of recent developments in India's fiscal policy framework. This includes rethinking the modelling of the fiscal rule, and honing the estimation methodology. The paper proposes a small open economy New Keynesian DSGE framework, with the building blocs of households, producing, assembling, and investment firms, government and the central bank. The government has a number of fiscal instruments at its disposal - government consumption, government investment, transfers, public employment, consumption tax, and labor income tax - governed by a fiscal rule for fiscal deficit. The parameters are calibrated from data, past studies on the Indian economy, and formulation from steady state relationships and the model is simulated with the motivation of examining the impact of fiscal shocks. The study finds that while output and employment increases in response to positive spending shocks, the impact on consumption is mixed, while private investment stimuli uniquely leads to increase in private investment. The impact of tax stimuli differ - a negative consumption tax shock is disinflationary and positively impacts consumption, while the study observes asymmetric impact of negative shock in labor income tax cut, given its limited tax coverage. From the perspective of policy relevance, these results highlight the pros and cons of various forms of fiscal intervention based on the nuances of their policy transmission. Within spending shocks, public investment stimulus avoids crowding out of private investment, while a cut in consumption tax offers a more direct impact on household consumption. Finally, while the model herein offers an intuitive framework for assessing Indian fiscal policy transmission using DSGE modelling, the paper concludes by outlining areas of further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Decoupling of GDP from all energy sources under multiple principles are examined. • World economy achieved weak energy decoupling in most years during 2000–2011. • World economy coupled with coal use and tended to couple with cleaner energy use. • None of studied economies achieved long-term GDP-embodied energy decoupling. • Decoupling delusions occurred when only considering direct and total energy use. Decoupling indicators are widely used to understand links between economic growth and energy use. However, traditional decoupling analyses mostly focus on domestic energy consumption (i.e., the production-based principle) and neglect off-site energy use across global supply chains to satisfy an economy's final consumption (i.e., the consumption-based principle). Moreover, analyses for total primary energy conceal an economy's preference for different energy sources. Therefore, this paper evaluates decoupling states of GDP from all types of primary energy use under consumption-based principle, for world economy and eight typical economies during 2000–2011. Regarding total primary energy, world economy witnessed weak decoupling in most years, and most economies studied (e.g., USA, Japan and China) achieved decoupling initially but performed negative decoupling finally. For EU, USA, Japan, Russia and India, production-based decoupling performances were generally better than consumption-based ones. Decoupling phenomena detected under production-based principle even became coupling or negative decoupling under consumption-based principle in some cases. As for each energy source, world economy decoupled from oil use, but still coupled with coal use, and gradually showed a trend to couple with natural gas and renewables use. Different energy sources showed distinct decoupling degrees from GDP, affected by individual embodied energy requirement structure. This paper uncovers potential energy decoupling delusions to deepen the understanding of relationships between energy use and economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to major learning about the social and economic losses that an external shock to the system can cause. In this paper, we examine some sustainability issues focusing on three key focal points of sustainable development – economic growth, poverty and inequality in the context of climate change. We focus on the inter-relationship between economic growth, investment, labour force participation, energy consumption, poverty and inequality under alternative scenarios using the global framing of Shared Socio-Economic Pathways (SSPs). An econometric model is used for estimating the relationship between GDP and its determinants along with fitting a General Quadratic and/or Beta Lorenz curve using the World Bank's Povcal software for determining the relationship between income, poverty and inequality. Alternative GDP growth paths, redistribution assumptions and poverty lines are used for simulations which reveal the extent of sensitivity of the developmental targets to scenarios up to 2030. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The changing population age structure has a significant influence on the economy, society, and numerous other aspects of a country. This paper has innovatively applied the method of compositional data forecasting for the prediction of population age changes of the young (aged 0–14), the middle-aged (aged 15–64), and the elderly (aged older than 65) in China, India, and Vietnam by 2030 based on data from 1960 to 2016. To select the best-suited forecasting model, an array of data transformation approaches and forecasting models have been extensively employed, and a large number of comparisons have been made between the aforementioned methods. The best-suited model for each country is identified considering the root mean squared error and mean absolute percent error values from the compositional data. As noted in this study, first and foremost, it is predicted that by the year 2030, China will witness the disappearance of population dividend and get mired in an aging problem far more severe than that of India or Vietnam. Second, Vietnam’s trend of change in population age structure resembles that of China, but the country will sustain its good health as a whole. Finally, the working population of India demonstrates a strong rising trend, indicating that the age structure of the Indian population still remains relatively “young”. Meanwhile, the continuous rise in the proportion of elderly population and the gradual leveling off growth of the young population have nevertheless become serious problems in the world. The present paper attempts to offer crucial insights into the Asian population size, labor market and urbanization, and, moreover, provides suggestions for a sustainable global demographic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Addressing environmental concerns alongside economic development and energy transitions is a challenge for all countries and effective policy making requires approaches that can balance all these concerns. In this paper, combining a range of modeling methodologies is proposed as a way of addressing these questions in an integrated manner. The choice of models to be used would depend on the specific characteristics of the system and region being studied. One possible combination of models is discusses in this paper for the specific case of India. The Integrated Modeling Framework (IMF) proposed combines three modeling approaches – i) index decomposition to estimate impacts of structural changes in the economy, ii) constrained optimization to estimate least cost fuel options for the power sector, iii) input-output analysis to estimate economic impacts. The model results indicate that the mode of investment for climate change mitigation is a significant determinant of the impact on economic growth, incomes, and income distribution in India. In some scenarios, higher investments in green energy negatively affects low income households significantly more as compared to other households. The paper also demonstrates how the IMF can be used to determine the reasons for and therefore alleviate the negative impacts. Highlights • An Integrated Modeling Framework (IMF) combining three modeling methods is presented. • IMF built for India, but applicable for other developing countries also. • IMF useful to study balance between energy, environment, economy, and equity. • Negative trade-off between equity and renewable energy transition in some scenarios. • IMF useful for identifying ways to alleviate the negative trade-off. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India has embarked on an ambitious highway development program to significantly improve interstate road transport connectivity. Between 2000 and 2015, total length of India's national highway network has nearly doubled and 4 + lane share of the national highways has increased from 2 to 20%, along with associated improvements in safety and surface quality. National highway development is considered as a tool to promote employment growth by stimulating economic activities and attracting foreign investments. As India's central government continues to increase budget allocations for national highway projects in anticipation of generating more jobs, this study empirically investigates whether past investments can be linked to employment growth. I analyze changes in non-agricultural private sector employment over a 10-year period (2003–2012) across 25 states in response to changes in the density (lane-km per unit area) of national highways, controlling for other factors affecting employment. Using a series of static (pooled ordinary least squares, random-effects and fixed-effects) and dynamic (random- and fixed-effects with first-order autoregressive or AR(1) disturbances, and system GMM or generalized method of moments) panel regressions, I find that 10% increase in national highway density in India is associated with 1–6% (depending on model specification and estimation approach) increase in private sector employment, all else equal. This paper provides first empirical evidence suggesting that India's national highway development efforts have produced positive employment benefits in the past. In addition to contributing to transportation planning scholarship, the findings are expected to inform policy-makers in India as they develop future highway investment plans aimed, in part, at economic development. This paper will also be useful to decision-makers in other developing countries with comparable policy environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an increasing policy focus on India’s demographic potential and associated growth benefits. This paper provides empirical evidence regarding the net growth benefits derived from an increased share of working-age population in India. The analysis adopts decomposition and econometric methods, using data at the state and national level in India, to robustly test the nature and magnitude of the demographic dividend in India. We find that the Indian economy is drawing significant benefits from the ongoing process of demographic transition, with dividend effects estimated to be over one percentage point per annum during 1980-2010. However, to derive high growth from the demographic potential would require tackling some of the growth constraints. The paper discusses ways in which these constraints can be addressed to fully tap the potential of demographic dividend. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coal is the most abundant fossil fuel resource in India, and the country's industrial and economic heritage has been built upon indigenous coal. India is the world's 3rd largest energy consumer after China and USA. However, as the country goes through profound economic and societal transformations, such as economic and population growth, urbanization and industrialization, energy demand is expected to increase substantially. Looking into the significance of coal not only in the energy-mix but also in the economic development of India, the paper is aimed at an assessment of coal sector in India which shall also help contextualize the place of coal in India's contemporary energy, industrial and social sectors amidst a range of developments - both national and international - related to coal sector. The authors looked into various aspects of Indian coal sector from a policy perspective and suggested subsequent course of action so the same can be used by Indian coal mining stakeholders towards the larger goal of sustainable growth of coal sector including coal mining. The analysis produced important policy recommendations for coal industry stakeholders including the Indian Government, who is the sovereign owner of coal mine acreage in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to unavailability of consistent income data at the sub-state or district level in developing countries, it is difficult to generate consistent and reliable economic inequality estimates at the disaggregated level. To address this issue, this paper employs the association between night time lights and economic activities for India at the sub-state or district-level, and calculates regional income inequality using Gini coefficients. Additionally, we estimate the relationship between night time lights and socio-economic development for regions in India. We employ a newly available data on regional socio-economic development (Social Progress Index), as well as an index that represents institutional quality or governance. Robust to the choice of socio-economic development indicators, our findings indicate that regional inequality measured by night time lights follow the Kuznets curve pattern. This implies that starting from low levels of socio-economic development or quality of institutions, inequality rises as regional socio-economic factors or quality of institutions improve, and with subsequent progress in socio-economic factors or quality of institutions, regional inequality declines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper critically analyzes the problems and the hurdles for the financial inclusion for the economical growth and plans to call attention to the importance of Pradhan Mantri Yojana to bring Financial Inclusion a reality. A country can develop economically and socially if its weakest section can end up being financially independent. To achieve inclusive growth, the Government of India has introduced many schemes recently and steps have been taken that the benefits of policies reach the people. The schemes include Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Yojna, Pradhan Mantri Bima Suraksha Yojna and Pradhan Manti Atal Yojna that have already been launched. The unawareness of financial institutions in the rural, semi‐urban and hilly areas of India is worrisome. The study focuses on the secondary source of information obtained through the website of the Reserve Bank of India website and other published sources. Sustainable growth, economic development and progress of an economy can only be achieved if a country has a well‐equipped financial system. All the assets, funds and capital have to be properly channelized for attaining inclusive and sustainable development goals in the Indian economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper highlights the complex relationship between development and language and argues that poverty as a condition of underdevelopment is materialized in representation. Instead of limiting the scope of the topic to the rhetorical aspects of development thought, it is proposed that development language produces a specific reality of poverty while writing about it. Using a post-structuralist framework and drawing from various Planning Commission reports on poverty lines, the paper goes on to implicate these reports in the production of authoritative knowledge and the elision of the poor. Through the identification of the cut-off line, which distinguishes the poor from the non-poor, these reports control our ways of knowing and suspend our ability to imagine poverty in any non-institutional manner. Such representation not only omits poor’s everyday experience and converts poverty as experience to poverty as knowledge, but also predicates its objectivity on such elision. The paper also highlights the slippages and contradictions in these reports, and shows how in the seeming inevitability of poverty knowledge, people find innovative ways to appropriate and disrupt it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to estimate the relationship between the current account (CA) and fiscal deficit (FD), and the real exchange rate for India, for the managed float period 1996 Q2 to 2015 Q4, after controlling for output growth and oil shocks. It also examines the cyclicality of the CA, the size of each shock, and assesses whether aggregate demand, forward-looking smoothing, or supply shocks dominate outcomes.Design/methodology/approach The authors use several variants of structural vector autoregression (SVAR), implemented with quarterly Indian data, to control for effects of oil prices, and the output cycle, and then see how FD shocks affect the current account deficit (CAD) and the real exchange rate. For robustness, the authors tried different identifications, changed variable definitions, added new variables, or substituted with other variables. The cyclicality issue is addressed by examining the effect of growth shocks. The relative size of each shock is assessed through co-movement decompositions of the forecast errors. Responses to shocks help identify dominant influences on India’s CAD.Findings The CAD is found to be countercyclical. A FD shock raises the CAD, but high impact growth shocks and large variance oil shocks lead to overall divergence of the deficits. There is some support for the aggregate demand channel, but it is moderated by supply shocks and compositional effects. Consumption is sticky rather than forward-looking.Originality/value The paper contributes to the literature by including supply shocks, compositional effects, cyclicality, real interest and exchange rate in a theoretically and empirically consistent way for the analysis of twin deficits. The large empirical literature on twin deficits in EMs has not yet done this. There is no study using quarterly data in an SVAR allowing the dynamic relationship between the variables to be explored. The extensions bring in the supply side and compositional effects qualify the working of both the channels, with empirical exercises supporting theoretical predictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Green logistics is an important aspect of production system in today’s world. It combines various efforts to quantify and control the environmental effect of production activities in an enterprise. This research is intended to emphasize upon the ways by which organizations can accomplish positive ecological effects simply by modifying their logistics practices. This paper presents a case study of an Indian automobile company by analyzing alternatives for green practices along with organizational objectives. It is imperative to focus on the green practices in context of Indian automobile sector as the volume of vehicles in India has increased considerably during last few decades. Accordingly, this paper attempts to improve the performance for sustainable adaptation of green practices of an Indian company by selecting the best alternative obtained from the use of Analytical Hierarchy Process to analyze alternatives for green practices in the assembly and packaging processes. Alternatives have been evaluated on the basis of three criteria i.e. green efficiency, factor of safety and ease of operation. The study revealed that clinch joint is the most appropriate alternative for assembly operation while carbon positive packaging material is the best alternative for packaging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the recent rise in economic development the family sizes in developing countries have become small. This phenomenon demands several policy considerations. Is India ready for it? In this perspective, the paper investigates the impact of a higher level of economic development on average household size in India from 1991 to 2011. Variables such as a higher level of education, health outcomes, the extent of inequality, and urbanization have a negative effect on the average household size. The lower level of poverty is associated with lower level family size in the long run, whereas, infrastructure has a mixed effect. Results show that different religious and social groups have an effect on the family size in India. The results are consistent in state and household level analysis and conclude that a higher level of economic development reduces the family size. Smaller family size faces several problems such as child-rearing, higher divorce rates due to marital conflicts, degradation of children's mental health, land and property disputes, and a low transfer of financial support from children to elderly parents. Therefore, not only the government needs to take cognizance and solve these problems, but also needs to find an appropriate balance between work and family, which is missing currently. This lesson can be useful for many other developing countries to cope up with the reduction in family sizes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the backdrop of India's jobless economic growth since the macroeconomic reforms of the 1990's, this study goes into the inter-relations among growth of productivity, employment and trade. Most of the studies on productivity in Indian manufacturing indicate a surge in the post reforms period though the individual manufacturing groups achieve varying growth. In the recent period, TFP growth in the sector is attributed to technology-based intermediate imports. Changing patterns of trade, especially export composition, have contributed to low employment generation. Growth in productivity and lack of growth in employment are thus explained by changing composition of trade. This paper starts by defining alternative measures of labor productivity growth, namely 'industry' labor productivity and 'system' labor productivity drawing on World Input-Output Database (WIOD). KLEMS database for India is also used for employment data. The time period for the study is from 1995 to 2014. Trend growth rates are estimated for alternative productivity measures, employment and output. The growth estimates show rapid productivity growth while the rates vary according to the labor intensity in production. It is found that productivity growth, particularly in labor intensive sectors, has been slow. India's share in world trade has been low and rising slowly. Additionally, the share in world trade of leather and textiles is very small. The composition of trade in India is biased towards the manufacturing sector as a whole while the labor-intensive sectors are neglected. Another emerging pattern of India's trade is escalating import of intermediate inputs. To establish the nexus between trade and productivity growth, a vertical specialization index has been estimated by using Hummel's formulation. The estimated result from panel regression with fixed effects establishes positive nexus between vertical specialization and productivity growth. It is argued that India needs to circumvent jobless growth by a balanced approach to job creation and productivity growth. A conscious policy of vertical specialization in products that draw on the country's vast reserve of un-skilled and semiskilled labor can go a long way in this direction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a well-established literature that finds a strong causal association between remittance flows and economic growth and poverty. Owing to the poverty-alleviating and income-generating effects of remittances, it may theoretically reduce crime by increasing the opportunity cost of committing crime. This paper studies the effects of remittance receipts on crime outcomes in India. The identification strategy, exploits the variation in rainfall as an instrument for remittance receipts. The results suggest that remittance receipts have a negative effect on violent crimes and a positive effect on nonviolent crimes. Since remittance flows mean that more economic resources are available, remittances provide an incentive for certain crimes that thrive in the presence of economic resources. Therefore, an important implication of this result is that as remittance receipts increase income and welfare, there is a diverse effect on the costs and benefits of different types of crimes. It may result in unfavorable outcomes in the form of increases in certain nonviolent crimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The South Asian countries formed the regional trade bloc namely South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) with the aim to promote regional economic cooperation through multilateral engagements. India which comes to be the largest economy in the SAARC has posted impressive economic growth in the last decades. As of now India stands major contributor to the exports and imports to/from South Asia, having trade surplus with all other countries from the region. In this backdrop, this paper presents the facts on India's role in the economic development of South Asia region while testing the potential spillovers of India's trade and economic growth. We utilize Autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bound test procedure for short and long run causal relations during the period 1990–2016, hence raising the quality of statistical inference. The results highlight that the economic growth and regional trade of India are found significant short and long run spillovers on the economic growth of Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan. The results are highly insightful for policy implication which raises the attention towards the greater degree of trade openness for balanced economic development in the region. India can act as engine of growth, and thus requires to play key role in pushing forward the SAARC objectives through political and diplomatic engagements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can the postcolonial thought bring to light the development of International Political Thinking in India? In this article we argue that the development of the Indian thinking about foreign affairs was limited not only by the British colonial administration but also by the sense of nationhood created by the liberation movement – especially under Nehru. Most of the literature addressing Indian international thought focuses on how Nehru centred the thinking of postcolonial Indian foreign affairs. Using Bhabha's ideas, we explore this essential part of India's nation-building, mapping out the origins of Indian IR through a postcolonial. The paper contributes to knowledge on post-Western IR and postcolonial literature, while reconceptualising ideas of nationhood as they have been applied to the development of Indian international thought. Beyond the thinking about the international, our contribution has broad relevance for understanding how colonialism has affected the political, economic and intellectual development of former colonial states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the population transition in China and India during 1950-2015 by decomposing population growth into the growth attributed to the changes in fertility and mortality (intrinsic growth), and the growth attributed to the change in population age composition (momentum growth). The analysis reveals similarities and differences in the population transition path followed by the two countries and suggests that India lags behind China by about 30 years in terms of population transition. The population transition in China has been rapid and inconsistent, while India’s population transition has been slow and consistent. The momentum for growth intrinsic to respective populations has been the main contributor to population growth in both countries. The demographic dividend resulting from population transition in India has been substantially smaller than that in China because of differences in population transition paths. Unlike in China, population transition appears to have contributed only marginally to economic growth in India. This paper emphasises the importance of focussing population policy on the relative contribution of different demographic drivers to population growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the historic growth and development of the design sector in India, and evaluates the potential of the industry to contribute to innovation performance as the country’s manufacturing sector continues its expansion via a comparative analysis of design policies in advanced economies and those in India, and an evaluation of the performance of design promotional initiatives, the paper identifies lessons that might be incorporated sensitively into the future elaboration of Indian design policy. The paper concludes that design inputs can contribute to both social and economic development (and to innovation performance in both traditional craft and hi-tech manufacturing). However, it also argues that policy to support intelligent growth, diffusion and take-up of design must be attuned to both qualitative issues of culture, diversity and tradition, and to ‘harder’ issues of location, infrastructure, skills, investment and demand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spices are one of the most traded agricultural commodities across the globe. India, as the world's leading producer and exporter of spices is a significant stakeholder in spices export trade. The paper reviews the studies conducted on the spices export sector with special focus on India and the policy issues applicable to this sector. The review focuses on the history, trade competitiveness and issues related to regional trade agreements, trade barriers and food safety in the export trade of spices. Research gaps on issues like linkages between economic development and spice export are identified. The review concludes with suggestions for promoting growth and development of the spice export sector in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the causality between energy consumption, carbon emissions and economic growth is helpful for policymakers to formulate energy, environmental and economic policies. For the first time, based on nonlinear dynamics, this paper employs multispatial convergent cross mapping (CCM) to revisit the energy-carbon-economy causation for China, India and the G7 countries using both aggregate data and per capita data. The findings indicate that there are significant differences between developing countries and developed countries. A bidirectional nexus between energy consumption, carbon emissions and economic growth is found in China and India, but various causal relationships are identified in the G7 countries, including bidirectional, unidirectional and neutral nexus. The results confirm that the decoupling phenomenon is common in most G7 countries. By leveraging a variety of samples and a new approach, this study provides new evidence for policy authorities to formulate country-specific policies to obtain better environmental quality while achieving sustainable economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of income inequality and income mobility has been central to understanding India's recent economic development. This paper, based on the first two waves of the India Human Development survey data, addresses three questions namely; (a) examining recent trends and sources of income inequality and their sources in rural and urban India, (b) whether households belonging to different socio-occupational groups have grown together and thereby factors relating to dynamic income distribution and finally (c) provides an analytical framework within which changes in income inequality over time are related to the extent to which income growth is pro-poor and to the extent of income reranking or mobility. Our results show the equalizing effect of progressive income growth was more than offset by the disequalising effect of reranking in India during the study period resulting in income inequality both in the rural and urban area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The small and medium enterprises are the pillars of economic development in India. With over 30 million units of SME units in India, they are contributing to 45% in country's GDP. The importance of SMEs in manufacturing is mainly due to the volume of units that exist in this category. Recently government has taken several steps in boosting the manufacturing in India, "Make in India" is one such initiative and National Manufacturing policy has been announced to revamp the sector. One of the major hindrances in expansion is lack of timely and sufficient funds. Today the total gap of SME funding is estimated to be approximately $126 billion. Out of which the debt gap is approximately $84 billion (Ravij Janjanan, 2014). Research is undertaken to know the determinants of credit in Mumbai city which is the financial capital of India. Present paper studied the determining factors of credit in SME sector in Mumbai by applying Binary logit regression model. Data was collected from supply side through administered questionnaire. Factors were identified through focus group interviews and later tested for validity and reliability.Net worth and Age of the owner found to be most impacting factors loan officers are considering while granting credit to SMEs in Mumbai. Study also found that age of the owner is very important determinant along with net worth and financial feasibility. Odds ratio for age of the owner (0.70) of respondents indicate that whose loans are approved belongs to lower age groups than the respondents whose loans are disapproved. Odds ratio for Net worth (1.36) of respondents indicate that one-unit change in the Net worth is going to increase the loan acceptance by 1.36 times. Managerial implications of this study would be Banks can focus on more startup loans and can tap young entrepreneurs who have creative and prospective ideas on business. SME owners should focus more on innovation, clarity of thought expressed in project proposal and approach for loan sanctions at young age to improve the credit flow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

MSMEs have a crucial role in Indian manufacturing sector and have become engine of economic growth in India. Today, small and medium industry occupies a position of strategic importance in the Indian economic structure due to its significant contribution in terms of output, exports and employment. The small scale industry accounts for 40% f gross industrial value addition and 50% of total manufacturing exports. The present paper is a modest attempt to understand concept of SMEs, their formation and significance in overall growth in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract In this paper, we investigate the relationship between energy poverty and economic development in India and its trend over a decade. For this purpose, we estimate a Multidimensional Energy Poverty Index (MEPI) and an index of development at the district level using household level data. Empirical results show that energy poverty is quite extensive in India with substantial variations across the states and districts. Over the years, energy poverty shows a declining trend at all-India level, but with the exception of few bigger and less developed states. Further, the study records a negative relationship between economic development and energy poverty, the strength of relationship has increased during the study period. Among the components of economic development, education has a greater impact on reducing energy poverty compared with income. The study observes that energy poverty and socio-economic backwardness in India are highly correlated; Dalits and Adivasis have higher energy poverty and a lower rate in the reduction of energy poverty in comparison with the national average. Energy poverty is lower in urban India in comparison with rural India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • India's emissions and intensity are driven by private consumption, followed by investment and exports. • India's emission increase comes from final demand and production structure changes. • India's increase of household indirect emissions mainly comes from per capita income increase. • India's aggregate embodied intensity by final demand category all increased. • India's aggregate embodied intensity changes mainly determine by production structure changes. Abstract India is the second largest developing country and fourth largest carbon emitter in the world. It has registered the rapid economic growth (7–9%) in the last decade. However, both its total carbon emissions and emission intensity (CO 2 emissions per GDP) kept increasing during period 2007–2013. There are few studies using input-output (I-O) analysis for India's energy/emissions in the literature. This paper tries to fill in the gap by using I-O framework to study India's total emissions and intensity changes and its driving forces with the latest data available and newly proposed techniques. The results show that India's carbon emission were mainly driven by private consumption (50–55%), followed by investment (25–26%) and exports (14–19%). During period 2007/08–2013/14, India's total emissions increased by 56.6%, where total final demand change resulted in emissions increasing and the shift of demand from raw material industry to high-value added manufacturing industry helped to reduce the emissions. When measuring India's relative emission efficiency, its aggregate embodied intensity (AEI) indicator in aggregate was mainly determined by private consumption (47–49%), followed by investment (23–24%) and exports (15–18%). From 2007/08 to 2013/14, the AEI values in aggregate and by final demand category all increased except the AEI of inventory change, mainly caused by production structure change. The emission efficiency improvements helped to reduce India's total emissions and carbon intensity, but the contributions were small. The policy implications of our findings are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]