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849 items in total found

Journal Articles | 2024

Millets for sustainable development in India: A social cost benefit analysis from a policy perspective

Sukhpal Singh, K V Ramani, Rasananda Panda

Sustainable development goals (SDGs) like zero hunger, no poverty, good health and well-being, reduced inequalities, climate action, and responsible consumption and production also figure in the agenda of G20 which is about poverty alleviation and food security through combatting global hunger and malnutrition, and cooperation in research on climate-resilient and nutritious crops such as millets. During the International Year of millets (2023), India, which had declared 2018 as the ‘National Year of Millets’, has taken many initiatives to promote millets, as a part of the G20 presidency. In the context of climate change, millets have gained substantial attention for their unique adaptability in harsh conditions like semi-arid lands and drought-prone environments. Millets, also called nutri-cereals in India, mainly comprise pearl millet (bajra), sorghum (jowar) and finger millet (ragi), and contribute about 5% to India’s cereals production. India is the largest producer of millets globally, accounting for 41% of global and 80% of Asian production. Millets have been a part of daily diets in many regions of India prior to the Green Revolution, but many farmers lost interest in millet crop following the Green Revolution, possibly due to higher yield and profitability of rice. However, the literature examining the value chains and social cost–benefit analysis of millets vis-à-vis conventional crops is scanty. This paper examines the value chain economics of the three major millets (pearl millet, sorghum and finger millet) which account for 85% of the total production of millets in India from a social cost–benefit analysis (SCBA) perspective and examines if millets can be recommended as a nutritional supplement to rice. It examines the major millets on macro- and micronutrient aspects of nutrition. The paper argues for policy support for expand millet production, strengthen its value chain, create public awareness about the health benefits of millets and to undertake activities to promote millets as nutritional supplement to rice in India.

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Journal Articles | 2024

Tests to determine employer-employee relationships in India: Looking towards the future?

M P Ram Mohan Sai Muralidhar K

The employer-employee relationship forms the foundation from which a host of social security benefits and labour rights emerge. Workers are traditionally classified as employees hired under a contract of service or independent contractors hired under a contract for service. Over the years, Indian courts have relied on the control, integration, and multi-factor tests to determine the correct nature of employment contracts. This article explores the evolution of these tests and examines whether the burden of proof in determining the existence of employer-employee relationships requires modification. It then dissects the efficacy of the current multi-factor test in emerging platforms and gig economies by looking at the standard form contract signed by a popular food delivery platform with its delivery partners in India. Finally, the article explores the ability of the newly enacted labour codes, particularly the Code on Social Security 2020, to address the classification conundrum and its consistency with precedents.

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Journal Articles | 2024

Structural mean models for instrumented difference-in-differences

Tat-Thang Vo, Ting Ye, Ashkan Ertefaie, Samrat Roy, James Flory, Sean Hennessy, Stijn Vansteelandt, Dylan S Small

In the standard difference-in-differences research design, the parallel trend assumption can be violated when the effect of some unmeasured confounders on the outcome trend is different between the treated and untreated populations. Progress can be made if there is an exogenous variable that (i) does not directly influence the change in outcome (i.e. the outcome trend) except through influencing the change in exposure (i.e. the exposure trend), and (ii) is not related to the unmeasured exposure - outcome confounders on the trend scale. Such exogenous variable is called an instrument for difference-in-differences. For continuous outcomes that lend themselves to linear modelling, so-called instrumented difference-in-differences methods have been proposed. In this paper, we will suggest novel multiplicative structural mean models for instrumented difference-in-differences, which allow one to identify and estimate the average treatment effect that is stable over time on the multiplicative scale, in the whole population or among the treated, when (i) a valid instrument for difference-in-differences is available and (ii) there is no carry-over effect across periods. We discuss the identifiability of these models, then develop efficient semi-parametric estimation approaches that allow the use of flexible, data-adaptive or machine learning methods to estimate the nuisance parameters. We apply our proposal on health care data to investigate the risk of moderate to severe weight gain under sulfonylurea treatment compared to metformin treatment, among new users of antihyperglycemic drugs.

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Journal Articles | 2024

Stochastic vehicle routing with delivery choice

Prahalad Venkateshan, Kamlesh Mathur

We consider the problem of designing delivery routes for vehicles where the vendor has the choice of how much of the demand from a customer to fulfill. The customer demand is known a priori only as a probability distribution. Exact customer demand is known only after visiting the customer. Different customers are able to negotiate different prices for each unit of product with the vendor. Given a route, the objective is to decide at each customer location, how much demand to satisfy so as to maximize expected profit taking into account a linear penalty cost for unfulfilled demand and the vehicle routing costs. In this article, we develop several new structural results for this problem. We illustrate how these structural results can be embedded in different heuristic frameworks commonly used for deterministic vehicle routing problems. This helps develop efficient routes for a single vehicle as well as a multiple vehicle scenario for this stochastic variant. For small-sized problems that allow for exhaustive enumeration, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the illustrated heuristic. For larger problem instances, based on structural results, we develop methods that allow the heuristic to run more efficiently than otherwise. Results are reported on instances based on benchmark instances drawn from literature for upward of 100 customers and vehicle capacity up to 600 units. Computational times needed to heuristically solve such problems are within 1 100 s.

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Journal Articles | 2024

A field experiment on marketplace literacy and self-help group membership in subsistence marketplaces

Madhu Viswanathan, Arun Sreekumar, Saravana Jaikumar, Shantanu Dutta

We conducted a field experiment to gain marketing insights into low-income, subsistence consumers in emerging markets. We examined two phenomena– marketplace literacy which is knowledge and skills about the marketplace to overcome challenges with low income and relatively lower literacy, and membership in self-help groups that has empowered women around the world. We studied how these factors influence strategies for managing product quantities essential for day-to-day survival in contexts with resource constraints. In a prospective design, low-income women were randomly assigned to self-help groups and marketplace literacy education, with pre- and post-measurement. Our findings suggest that, whereas self-help group membership and marketplace literacy help women in low-income households improve their strategies to manage product quantities, the interaction of these two variables leads to counterintuitive outcomes. Our findings provide a nuanced understanding of how consumer and marketing insights can empower consumers in resource-constrained settings to become more effective.

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Journal Articles | 2024

Mutation of the Trademark Doctrine: Analysing actionable use to reconcile brand identities with constitutional safeguards

"M P Ram Mohan Aditya Gupta"

With continuous and consistent use, trademarks can come to signify opulence, luxury, and dependability; and become cultural icons. The modern trademark doctrine must accommodate these realities of the marketplace while, at the same time, accommodating the flourishing exchange of expressive uses through unauthorised use of trademarks. This push-and-pull has resulted in the complete obliteration of what were already obscure boundaries between the expressive and marketing spheres of trademark law. The present study examines the normative foundations of the modern trademark doctrine, drawing from American, English, and European trademark jurisprudence. These foundations are then extrapolated to Indian trademark law to create a workable limitation of the mutating trademark doctrine through recalibrating the actionable use requirement. The authors attempt to discern the normative foundations of the individual cause of actions in the infringement liability and argue that such foundations should serve to delimit the scope of protection offered therein. Given the relevance of expressive uses in trademark law, the present study also examines the relevance of constitutional and policy-based arguments in determining trademark infringement liability. We find that within Indian judicial discourse, there is an alarming disconnect between the normative foundations of infringement liability and their interpretation. This affects the interpretation of the limitations offered by the trademark statute and can potentially push trademark law in troubling directions.

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Journal Articles | 2024

Unraveling prosumption behavior for online reviews during environmental uncertainty: A stimulus-response perspective

Manisha Rathi, Adrija Majumdar, Sawan Rathi

Online reviews are effective information-sharing tools due to their word-of-mouth characteristics. The extant literature has considered reviews as independent variables that influence business performance, while the environmental factors shaping these reviews remain under-explored. We examine the impact of COVID-19-related environmental uncertainties on changes in review prosumption (production and consumption) behavior. Based on the stimulus-response theory, with COVID-19 as the stimulus and prosumption as the response, we examined the changes in the characteristics of online reviews. Using the difference-in-differences methodology, we analyze online reviews of restaurants in two US cities that experienced different levels of COVID-19 impact. On the production side, we find an increased use of contextual terms and negative sentiments. On the consumption side, we find an increase in review usefulness and a decline in funniness. The results are robust, supported by coarsened exact matching and falsification tests. We conclude with a discussion of the study’s implications and contributions.

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Journal Articles | 2024

Punjab's Draft Farm Policy: Missing markets for the cooperative model

Sukhpal Singh

A policy for Punjab agriculture has been long overdue given that it has been facing an agrarian crisis for the last 30 years. Many attempts were made in the past which did not fructify into a policy. In early 2023, a committee was formed to formulate a policy for the agricultural sector, without any terms of reference. The report submitted in October 2023 was made public only in September 2024. This article examines the major recommandations of the draft policy on issues faced by the state’s farm sector and their weaknesses. 

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Journal Articles | 2024

Digital technologies exacerbating mission drift in microfinance institutions: Evidence from India

Nidhi S. Bisht, Ernesto Noronha, Arun Kumar Tripathy

Digital technologies (DTs) are increasingly recognized as crucial in addressing social issues related to inequality and enhancing the well-being and agency of socially marginalized groups. We however, provide evidence that, instead of alleviating social inequalities, use of DTs (re)produced and exacerbated these inequalities in disparate forms, for an already marginalized population. Based on a qualitative study of employees from five microfinance institutions (MFIs) in India that offer uncollateralized group loans to poor rural women, our findings demonstrate how the pursuit of financial gains through DTs in providing microfinance exacerbated mission drift in MFIs, leading to reduced quality and depth of outreach. The use of DTs undermined social and human capital development — both crucial for alleviating poverty — and widened exclusion rather than bridging the gap. We explicate the quality of outreach (i.e., quality of services provided) as an additional dimension of social outreach, alongside the depth of outreach (i.e., reaching poorer borrowers) for understanding mission drift. Our findings call for consideration of existing intersectional social inequalities when leveraging DTs for social causes.

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Journal Articles | 2024

Salience of social identities in explaining homeownership patterns in India

Ashish Gupta, Prashant Das, Abhiman Das

Indian society presents heterogeneity across two identities – that is, religion and caste – that lead to heterogenous economic outcomes, but affirmative action is mostly applicable to caste. Our empirical models affirm that economically less secure households have a higher homeownership propensity in India. Minority religions and backward castes also have a significantly higher propensity to own homes. This is in sharp contrast to findings in the US where minority households are associated with lower homeownership rates. Further, religious and caste-based identities in India lead to different household behaviours in differing demographic mixes. Religious identity in India is more salient than caste identity in explaining differing homeownership patterns.

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