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Women entrepreneurship literature is blooming and largely indicate the challenges faced by women entrepreneurs in setting up and scaling businesses. Much of the research on women's entrepreneurship revolves around entrepreneurial activities in the formal sector. Women entrepreneurship in the informal sector is still less explored. In this study, we explore the enablers and benefits of digitalisation among women entrepreneurs in the informal sector in the Indian context. We employ a qualitative study to unravel the experiences of women entrepreneurs (n = 30). Data were collected through interviews, and analysis was carried out through Voyant tools and Atlas.ti. Findings revealed that respondents attempted to bricolage with existing resources to run and manage their businesses. Family support, social influence, and willingness to learn emerged as key enablers of digitalisation. Digitalisation benefitted women entrepreneurs in several ways including ease of transaction, getting feedback, selling and promoting their offerings, and business collaborations. Based on the findings, a model of enabler, purpose, and benefits of digitalisation is proposed. Findings are discussed in the light of existing literature and future research agenda is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indian healthcare system is dominated by private sector; its importance is growing with implementation of 'Ayushman Bharat', flagship programme of Indian government. Though 62% and 75% of inpatient and outpatient cases in India are treated in private sector, the information about the economy of private healthcare providers is very limited. To the author's best knowledge, this is the first attempt to address the issue with empirical evidence for the private healthcare providers from a nationally representative survey data for India. Private healthcare sector is estimated to provide employment to 2.34 million persons annually and generate gross value added (GVA) of ₹473.3 billion. Treatment cost on an average is much high in private sector as compared to the public sector. But supply-side data show that average annual receipt per annum is six times higher than average operating cost per annum for unincorporated private healthcare providers in India, indicating underlying profit motive. Analysis of factor payments shows that 55% of GVA of unincorporated private hospitals is gross operating surplus (or profit), followed by emoluments paid to employees and workers (42%). These factors potentially cause over-charging in private sector. Context-specific and appropriate regulatory mechanisms are very much needed to ensure quality of services and control medical inflation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I demonstrate, through the use of the life course perspective, how informal work in the form of verbal wage contracts might lead to dignity and autonomy amongst the rural poor. The article draws attention to a broader comparative context of how indigenous autonomies are produced. In that they have the relative freedom to engage in a range of informal work as discussed, the Gonds' autonomy in a neoliberal sense consists of self-governance, which draws attention to the indigenous community's conception of the self as an economic and autonomous entity that is sustained by a range of social networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A dominant strand of orthodoxy argues that the problem of the informal sector could be mitigated through the capitalistic growth process. But our observations on India are different—with an expansion of the capitalistic formal sector, as the economy grows, there is a proliferation of fissured informality. Using a structuralist macro-model, we provide certain explanations for this phenomenon, which are also tested empirically using Indian subnational-state and firm-level data. Thus, we explore both the short- and long-run effects of the expansion of the formal sector on the heterogeneous informal economy. While a section of the population is pulled into the advanced informal activities, a vast segment is pushed to petty production. Accordingly, the orthodox transition narrative is questioned and alternative policy and political possibilities are introduced. JEL Classification: O11, O13, O17, P48 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]