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India, the world's most populous country, is the world's third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases (GHGs). Despite employing several energy sources, it still relies heavily on coal, its primary energy source. Given India's swiftly rising energy demand, this challenges meeting emission reduction targets. In recent years, India has significantly increased investments in renewables like solar and hydrogen. While commendable, these initiatives alone cannot meet the country's expanding energy demands. In the short term, India must rely on both domestic and imported fossil fuels, with natural gas being the most environmentally friendly option. In this context, this paper attempts to forecast energy consumption, natural gas production, and consumption in India until 2050, using both univariate and multivariate forecasting methods. For multivariate forecasting, we have assumed two alternative possibilities for GDP growth: the business-as-usual and the high-growth scenarios. Each of our forecasts indicates a notable shortfall in the projected production of natural gas compared to the expected demand, implying our results are robust. Our model predicts that nearly 30–50 percent of India's natural gas consumption will be met by imports, mainly in the form of LNG. Based on these findings, this paper recommends that Indian government policies emphasize increasing domestic natural gas production, importing LNG, and expanding renewable energy resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explored the relationship between egoistic, altruistic and biospheric values and pro-environmental attitudes, as well as their impact on the pro-environmental behaviours of Indian consumers. India is currently facing the burgeoning challenge of a rapidly increasing urban population, which is leading to waste segregation issues in households and the need for sustainable green products due to rising awareness among consumers. The goal of this research was to understand the effect of Indian consumers' values and pro-environmental attitudes on the following three specific behaviours: waste-sorting intention, green-consumption intention and social-activity intention. The authors found that values were positively related to pro-environmental attitudes, which in turn positively impacted the three pro-environmental behaviours. These findings suggest that, in order to strengthen individuals' perceptions of the individual benefits of a cleaner and better environment, marketers should promote responsible consumption in tandem with government policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Productivity is the new buzzword for economic growth in the era of globalization, as countries with higher productivity levels enjoy a comparative advantage over their competitors. Infrastructure is critical in this quest for higher productivity, growth, and development, and energy infrastructure is one of its crucial components. Longterm planning for ensuring that energy demands are met has become an integral part of policy-making, as energy infrastructure requires a huge lump sum investment and has a long gestation period. So, capacity augmentation and installing energy infrastructure in its physical form (refineries, power plants, pipelines, distribution lines, and so on) have to be planned and executed early. In this paper, we first narrate India’s energy demand/consumption trends over the last four decades and then try to forecast future energy demands and related energy infrastructure needs over the medium to long run period of 20 years from 2020 to 2040. Total Primary Energy Consumption is expected to be more than double the current level, and electricity demand to treble. As a result, coal production, oil refining, gas importing and distribution, electricity generation, and transmission & distribution capacities all have to grow substantially. Thus, we are looking at massive infrastructure requirements for the energy production sector. Finally, policy implications are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The world of work is neatly divided into two parts - that of men and women. While men are more into remunerative and recognised work, women shoulder the burden of unpaid and often unrecognised forms of work. Being out of paid formal labour market, they are not paid for their work and hence cannot claim a tangible, monetary contribution to the household. This weakens their bargaining power within the family and in society and prevents their empowerment in true and egalitarian sense. Thus improving Female LFPR and bringing more females into the labour market is a tool for women empowerment, improving GDI & HDI, and reducing GII. This would also raise aggregate work participation and boost the macroeconomic aggregates of the nation along with better health and social indicators. We argue that the impact of increased female employment, especially policy driven formal work, leads to further vacancies in the domestic care-economy space, most often filled up by female domestic worker. Thus a chain effect starts and creates a cascading multiplier impact that improves female work participation much more than the initial and documented rise. In this paper, this multiplier impact is sought to be quantified using primary survey data from four cities of India. Results indicate significant cascading effect is present and needs to be tapped to improve gender composition of the workforce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migration is a universal phenomenon. With increased development, as the push factors weaken, migration decreases. However, migration attributed to the pull factors, increases. One of the most important facets of the labour market is therefore, the profile of the migrant workers and the nature of their movements. In spite of extensive work on migration in the Indian context, recent studies on migration in India have focused mainly on rural-urban migration or on migration from/between specific regions. This paper explores the post-reform nature of migration in India with a special focus on migrant workers. It examines the types of movements, profiles of migrants vis-a-vis the natives, occupational distribution, and wages received by them. This has been contrasted with the pre-reform situation. The paper also examines whether the wage-setting process is different for migrants through an estimation of the wage function. The results suggest that migration among men is more of an 'assured' type rather than a 'search' type, in response to regular wage employment, where the better endowed/skilled/trained tend to move. The pull factors are definitely critical in this regard, though in the post-reform period, the push factors have gained strength. Though better-off states with lower incidence of poverty and higher per capita incomes have higher migration rates, the net out migration rates are considerably higher for the poorer states. This indicates that the condition of the source region may be most influential in migration decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to quantify the incidence of various forms of unpaid work of women in the Indian context and explore some of its correlates. The study is based on the Employment-Unemployment Schedule of the 68th round survey of the National Sample Survey Office for the year 2011-12 that provides us with number of persons engaged in domestic duties only, those who attend domestic duties as well as are engaged in free collection of goods, tailoring, weaving, etc., for household use (extra-domestic work), and persons engaged as unpaid family labour in household enterprises. We consider all these three as components of unpaid work and seek to estimate the proportion of women engaged in unpaid work - inside and outside their households - and examine the spatial and social group variation in its incidence. Reference to wage discrimination against women is also made. Substantial regional difference is observed as domestic work burden is much higher in the northern and eastern states compared to southern states. Possible underlying reasons behind regional/social variation in extent of unpaid female labour are also explored. Results suggest that better education, faster economic growth and higher market wages lead to lower proportion of unpaid work. There is thus a potential to create a virtuous cycle of education, inclusion in wage work, better wages and faster growth leading to a more even and gender neutral human development situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discrimination against specific ethnic groups transcends the boundary of current generation and perpetuates across future generations as well. This is manifested as low Intergenerational Mobility in terms of both Education and Occupation in the developing countries, in general, and among specific ethnic groups within those countries, in particular. The present paper examines the extent of intergenerational mobility in both educational and occupational attainments for diverse ethnic groups in India to understand the inertia of the prevalent discrimination. The results indicate strong intergenerational stickiness in both educational achievement and occupational distribution among the Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs), who have been discriminated against historically. Occupational mobility is lower than educational mobility, indicating that educational progress is not being transformed into occupational improvement and brings up the possibility of discrimination in the labour market. This also brings to the fore the fact that historical discrimination and social exclusion have had a long run effect and that the inertia is quite strong. The regional pattern suggests that mobility levels, in general, are lower in many of the lagging states and that the mobility of the excluded groups is lower than that of the advanced classes in most of the regions. Initiating targeted action to improve the educational situation among the excluded classes and encouraging occupational diversification among them seem to be important policy suggestions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent times knowledge has been recognised as a major source of efficiency, competitiveness, and economic growth and the resulting 'Knowledge Society' is supposed to be more egalitarian. Whether this happens depends on the level of penetration of the 'Knowledge Economy' (KE), its linkage with other sectors, the nature of the jobs created, and whether different stratum of society benefit from it equally. This paper uses the Indian experience to shed light on these issues. While huge potential for transition to a Knowledge Society exists in India, it would have to be preceded and accompanied by enabling policies such as investment in scientific research, standardisation of working conditions, and the building up of physical and social infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tertiarisation of the labour market has been associated globally with economic progress. In developing countries, labour market deformities may push people into the service economy out of distress. This paper examines the tertiarisation process in the Indian labour market to identify the reasons behind such trends and the likely impact of such movements. It is observed that the employment growth in the tertiary sector had been dynamic and growth-induced during the 1980s, but in recent times has become distress-driven. Sub-sectors within the tertiary sector are behaving differently, indicating the heterogeneity of this sector. Policymakers should note these issues and take appropriate steps not only to boost high-end jobs but also to improve productivity and returns in low-end jobs. Only then will a tertiary sector revolution in India be beneficial to the workers en masse and be sustainable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

OBJECTIVE The authors report the use of urinary biomarkers as a novel, noninvasive technique to detect juvenile pilocytic astrocytomas (JPAs), capable of distinguishing JPAs from other CNS diseases, including other brain tumors. Preliminary screening of an array of tumors implicated proteases (including matrix metalloproteinases [MMPs]) and their inhibitors (tissue inhibitors of metalloproteinase [TIMPs]) as well as growth factors (including basic fibroblast growth factor [bFGF]) as candidate biomarkers. These data led the authors to hypothesize that tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinase 3 (TIMP3) and bFGF would represent high-probability candidates as JPA-specific biomarkers. METHODS Urine was collected from 107 patients, which included children with JPA (n = 21), medulloblastoma (n = 17), glioblastoma (n = 9), arteriovenous malformations (n = 25), moyamoya (n = 14), and age- and sex-matched controls (n = 21). Biomarker levels were quantified with enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, tumor tissue expression was confirmed with immunohistochemical analysis, and longitudinal biomarker expression was correlated with imaging. Results were subjected to univariate and multivariate statistical analyses. RESULTS Using optimal urinary cutoff values of bFGF > 1.0 pg/μg and TIMP3 > 3.5 pg/μg, multiplexing bFGF and TIMP3 predicts JPA presence with 98% accuracy. Multiplexing bFGF and MMP13 distinguishes JPA from other brain tumor subtypes with up to 98% accuracy. Urinary biomarker expression correlated with both tumor immunohistochemistry and in vitro tumor levels. Urinary bFGF and TIMP3 decrease following successful tumor treatment and correlate with changes in tumor size. CONCLUSIONS This study identifies 2 urinary biomarkers-bFGF and TIMP3-that successfully detect one of the most common pediatric brain tumors with high accuracy. These data highlight potential benefits of urinary biomarkers and support their utility as diagnostic tools in the treatment of children with JPA.