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In the backdrop of rapid and continuous deterioration in the quality of air, water and land, pollution prevention strategies have become a critical business issue to the industrial sector throughout the world. The present study aims to explore pollution prevention initiatives and their actual implementation across five different polluting industries from a large developing country's perspective. Ten sample plants (two from each industry group) were chosen from five different polluting industry groups (iron and steel, cement, pulp and paper, leather and pharmaceuticals) of a large developing economy like India. This study reveals that environmental concerns have increasingly spread among the selected polluting industries. Addressing pollution prevention practices into their business functions these industries have become more responsive to modify production process and improve the quality of the environment. However, there is a huge potential to improve it further. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The scholarship and discussion on urbanization and urbanism are restricted to the exploration of a few metropolitans and global cities. In this way, especially in India, several cities and towns do not fit into the understanding of knowledge produced from metropolitan or large cities. Taking the case of Dharamshala a small town in the Western Himalayas, this paper discusses how debate and conceptualization of urban processes, level of urbanization and scale of economies bypass thousands of small towns not only in India but across the global South. The paper draws attention to the categorization of the urban into small and big, metropolitan and non-metropolitan, unable to provide a comprehensive theory or concept to conceptualize activities and processes that coexist in binaries. Employing an ethnographic approach it discusses the ambiguous statistical criteria, infrastructural facilities, social and cultural dynamics, informality and illegality of Dharamshala. Building on this, the paper asserts that small towns and big cities have a lot of similarities in processes and activities, they may be different from each other at the level of size and scale. Drawing any kind of hierarchy among cities and towns that have the foundation in size (population and geographical) and scale (economies) and positioning them in 'subaltern' positions does not produce a comprehensive framework nor contribute to Southern urban theory but position small towns in between position of metropolitan's cities and urban theories. Noting such debates and discussions, the contribution opens a fresh perspective to study small towns beyond their size and scale and focuses on the processes and activities that contribute to an understanding of Indian urban transition, thereby expanding Southern urban theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

All over the world, waste and its disposal are becoming a more prominent issue, as landfills swell up and growing evidence points to its contribution to climate change and environmental degradation. In the developing world, waste pickers sort through solid waste and sell it to vendors, who will recycle the product into something consumable. The work they do is vital to climate change mitigation, as well as urban cleanliness. In a way, waste pickers, especially in India, are vehicles of environmental justice, but they are often discriminated against and subjected to inhumane working conditions. In this environment, the pandemic hit, making waste pickers' already precarious life even worse. This paper attempts to fill the gap in the academic literature by compiling a systemized literature review of the impacts of COVID-19 on waste-pickers' lives using an environmental justice perspective. The review also uses a Feminist Political Ecology perspective to illuminate the double jeopardy that female waste pickers face in the era of COVID-19, which academia often ignores. Ultimately, this paper shows that COVID-19 exacerbated the preexisting injustices that the waste picker community face and created an immense burden on women. This paper will show that it is important to notice the differentiation between female and male waste picker challenges, especially at the crux of the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper has important policy implications as well as research considerations for both environmental justice and feminist political ecology scholars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regional disparities are prevalent in almost all nations globally irrespective of whether being developed, developing, or under-developed. With the recent shift of focus towards human development, the presence of inequalities in social development is one of the major issues faced by developing nations and hence becomes the underlying theme of this paper. It attempted to explore the spatial inequalities in the social development of a selected region within and representing Kerala state, India. This research attempted to address the following question: whether a state which has been performing socially well has inequalities present among its regions. A set of relevant variables were shortlisted from a holistic literature review and further screened using various criteria followed by an expert opinion survey. Subsequently, spatial analysis of regional disparities was conducted in two stages. Firstly, a composite index to measure the development of settlements was constructed by adopting the principal component analysis approach. Secondly, the settlements were grouped into three homogenous clusters by k-means cluster analysis and named accordingly. The results revealed that, in terms of reduced inequalities, the settlements performed well in social infrastructure development followed by road infrastructure. At the same time, the performance of the settlements in social characteristics was poor. Significant variations were also found in employment and housing infrastructure development. While the composite index helped compare the development status of settlements, the classification of settlements aided in identifying regions and sectors that were backward in terms of social development. Accordingly, solutions and strategies were proposed for balanced regional development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cadmium pollution turns out to be a global environmental problem. This study conducted a quantitative and qualitative bibliometric analysis based on 9188 research items from the Web of Science Core Collection published in the last 20 years (2000–2020), presenting an in-depth statistical investigation of global freshwater cadmium research progress and developing trend. Our results demonstrated that the researchers from China, the USA, and India contribute the most to this field. The primary sources of cadmium are mining, industry, wastewater, sedimentation, and agricultural activities. In developing countries, cadmium exposure occurs mainly through the air, freshwater, and food. Fish and vegetables are the main food sources of cadmium for humans because of their high accumulation capability. Source evaluation, detection, and remediation represent the main technologies used to clean up cadmium-contaminated sites. To mitigate the risk of cadmium contamination in freshwater, biomarker-based cadmium monitoring methods and integrated policies/strategies to reduce cadmium exposure merit further concern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate variability induced increased frequency of disasters has affected the livelihood of the people especially in developing countries. Rural communities are more affected and vulnerable towards these events due to limited livelihood alternatives. The exponentially increasing population, unsustainable use of natural resources and increasing disparities in social structure have posed threats to rural livelihoods. Climate variability and change have adversely affected agriculture and allied activities but more so in mountainous regions where the agriculture is still primarily rain-fed and is practised by smallholder farmers. Thus, livelihood vulnerability assessment is essential for suggesting suitable adaptation strategies and making policy decisions. This paper makes an attempt to examine livelihood vulnerability using composite vulnerability index. Evidence is given from blocks (administrative divisions of the district) of Dimapur district of Nagaland in India. We constructed livelihood vulnerability index (LVI) by incorporating site-specific indicators for its three components (exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity). The results revealed that all the blocks were greatly affected by climate variability and its induced drought. Niuland block was found the most vulnerable block followed by Kuhuboto, Dhansiripar and Medziphema blocks. Livelihood vulnerability in Niuland, Kuhuboto and Dhansiripar blocks is attributed to high sensitivity and low adaptive capacity. Sensitivity has predominantly increased livelihood vulnerability in Medziphema block. Thus, the study calls for policy implications to reduce the extent of livelihood vulnerability. LVI as a policy tool has proved to be effective in livelihood vulnerability assessment. Hence, it can successfully be utilised in other geographical regions for policy interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The deteriorating air quality has become a matter of concern throughout the world with significant seasonal variations on a regional and transboundary scale. The selection of control strategies is comparatively more challenging on a regional or transboundary scale owing to the lack of accurate assessment of the contribution of various pollution sources. The present paper attempts to review the application of regional air quality models for accurate prediction. The main focus of the review is to understand the operational challenges of carrying out WRF-Chem model simulation considering technical expertise, time and computational requirements. WRF-Chem is a regional-scale chemistry transport model, which has been used by researchers in the past to assess transboundary and regional ambient air quality and its impacting sources. The model generally takes input from global databases which are mostly dynamic variables and need to be updated with primary survey data. The high-resolution local information, including Land-Use-Land-Cover, local anthropogenic emissions and biomass emissions, is an important database for the model and must be updated at regular intervals. This regional scale chemistry transport model is computationally expensive and requires specialised knowledge, thus, challenging to be used by various air quality managing agencies operating at state and city levels. The review also discusses agencies involved in regional scale modelling in different countries with their roles and responsibilities. Considering this complexity, it is recommended to phase-wise develop a centre of excellence for regional air quality modelling in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the discussion in favor of simplicity of legal rules and against complex regulation is rooted in economically developed countries with strong state capacity. With economic development and state capacity comes the presumption that complex rules will be enforced. Therefore, analysis focuses on the administrative and error costs, and the unintended consequences of complex rules that are enforced. This paper argues that the Epsteinian insight is even more relevant to the developing world where countries often lack enough state capacity to even take on simple governance tasks. Developing countries often have less than 20 percent of the state capacity of developed countries. However, this does not mean they limit the regulatory structure to a fifth of the tasks. Under-enforcement or non-enforcement of complex rules imposes different costs and unintended consequences on society. Using examples from India, this paper highlights problems of enforcement swamping, deadweight loss, and corruption arising from the under-enforcement of complex rules. To avoid these problems, the paper concludes that a fortiori less developed countries should favor simple rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces the Government of India Initiative on linguistic data creation in Indian languages. The Linguistic Data Consortium for Indian Languages (LDC-IL) is a fully funded Government of India scheme established in 2007 to cater to the needs of linguistic resources required for the development of language technology in Indian languages. LDC-IL worked silently for more than a decade with a team of around regular fifty people and involving thousands of resource persons, covering twenty major languages of India. Part of the output of LDC-IL was launched in April 2019 by the Hon'ble Vice President of India. This paper, the first introductory paper in an academic journal, aims to give a brief of the works done by LDC-IL and how these works are crucial in the development of language technology for Indian languages. Within a short span of eight months of its release, the language resources released by LDC-IL have been procured and utilized by scores of industry and academic bodies and individual researchers, including major industry leaders like Microsoft, Google, Samsung etc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Justice and responsibility are central notions shaping the international climate negotiations. However, countries have different perspectives on how to translate these concepts into solutions for climate change. In this process, actors such as the European Union (EU) play a central role, by trying to persuade other large greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters to take on their (historical) responsibilities and by supporting developing countries. At the same time, China and India have become central actors in international climate negotiations. Due to their rapid economic growth and rising GHG emissions, their climate action is crucial for achieving global goals, while their historical emissions are very different from those of Western countries. To shed light on the EU's perspective on climate justice, and the particular role of China and India therein, this article analyses Members of European Parliament's (MEPs) narratives in plenary debates on foreign climate policy between 1996 and 2019. MEPs' views contribute to shaping the EU's position on the topic, but also provide useful insights into the political dynamics of the debate. The paper finds that climate justice is mentioned in less than half of the MEPs' speeches, but that its salience increased over time and became more diverse in terms of different dimensions of climate justice. We also uncover that MEPs' positions on China and India evolved with the rise in their emissions, becoming increasingly critical over time. However, there is a significant variance amongst political groups' positions, between those on the right and the left end of the political spectrum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is it in the interest of a developing country to promote strong local linkages for domestic industries or to participate in global value chains (GVCs) wherein linkages are globally dispersed? This paper informs this debate by empirically analyzing which one of these strategies would result in higher levels of domestic value added (DVA) and employment in India. Using a unique panel data on DVA and jobs tied to Indian exports from 112 sectors for the period 1999–2000 to 2012–2013, we show that greater backward GVC participation—use of imported inputs to produce for exports—leads to higher absolute levels of gross exports, DVA and employment. This result implies that labor abundant countries can reap dividends by adopting policies aimed at strengthening their backward participation in GVCs. Our findings are robust to various estimation techniques and instrumental variable approaches to address potential endogeneity concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nutrition-sensitive agriculture (NSA) has emerged as a major development paradigm that works to diversify crops and diets throughout the Global South in order to improve nutritional outcomes. Drawing on a conceptual framework from political ecologies of health that looks at political economic factors, social discourse, and embodied, material experiences of food, I analyze qualitative and ethnographic data from an integrated NSA intervention in Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand, India. The analysis shows that while embodied experiences of differing rice varieties (either indigenous or improved) were central to research participants' conceptions of bodily health, mainstream NSA metrics had trouble 'seeing' these relations in meaningful ways. Moreover, although material experiences of rice cultivation and consumption anchored participants' rice preferences, structural economic realities along with notions of social identity were always interwoven. Yet, while villagers expressed divergent perceptions around how the different rice cultivars shaped their bodily health, agricultural officers tended to view rice experiences as a product of culture, rather than as material and socio-ecological food-body interactions. In sum, this paper argues more deeply engaging with the political economic, socially symbolic, and embodied ways that communities relate to food production and consumption would allow NSA research to develop more grounded and inclusive understandings of agriculture-nutrition linkages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migration and remittances have always been an exciting arena of research for economists around the globe. Remittance flows have evolved as a significant economic variable over the past decade. In several developing countries, remittances exceed the other capital inflows and value of total exports. Thus, it is widely recognised as a potential funding source for economic development in emerging economies. The inflow of remittances to India has increased tremendously in the recent past making the country the highest recipient of remittances across the globe. Remittances are an essential component that contributes to narrowing the Current Account Deficit and has always been a stable constituent of the Balance of Payment. This paper is an attempt to explore the vital macroeconomic variables which determine the remittance flows to India. Notably, we enquire into the dominant motives of remittances in the Indian context. We employ an ARDL approach to cointegration to identify the macroeconomic determinants of remittances and find those crucial variables such as exchange rate, oil price, and domestic GDP substantially impact the flow of remittances. The results also indicate that the migrants are more vulnerable to the oil price shocks in host countries. The overall findings of our study are that (1) remittances are not countercyclical in the Indian context (2) remittances are subject to weak investment motive as opposed to the altruistic motive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current discourse on urbanization calls for new approaches to capture the peculiarities of growth in the global South. This paper takes the National Capital Territory of Delhi as a case study and adopts a mix of methods (field survey, ordinary least squares regression and geographically weighted regression) to highlight the emerging gradient of urbanization within official rural areas. The results show a certain catching-up effect in which the settlements with low population and employment rate grow faster than more urbanized settlements. Settlements with low basic infrastructure provision (such as schools and medical facilities), which are mainly census towns, tend to grow more slowly than villages with better infrastructure provision. Additionally, local characteristics of growth vary spatially depending on the distribution of socio-economic, demographic, and infrastructure variables. To avoid the unplanned transformation of villages into urban areas in Delhi and similar regions of the global South, this paper recommends moving from master planning towards strategic spatial planning, implementing integrated planning and governance of non-municipal peri-urban areas, and reforming spatial plans and development policies based on scientific methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the determinants of stated individual support towards environmental action. The analysis is realized by means of an original Partial Least Squares Path model of Environmental Awareness-Social Capital-Action and it is based on survey data provided in the fifth wave of the World Values Survey (2005–2009) regarding 34.612 individuals from 42 different countries. Besides the global estimates obtained on the whole set of countries, the paper proposes a subsample analysis for developed and developing countries, as well as country analyses for four major economies: China, India, Germany and the United States. We find that environmental awareness and trust in not-for-profit organizations are important determinants of individual action in support of environmentally friendly policies. In general, trust in science and technology does not crowd-out individual support towards the environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The studies on escalators have mainly reported the walking speeds of passengers or their passenger handling capacity. Theoretical capacity is reported as a constant value for a given escalator speed, but is never achieved in the field. This creates practitioners' dilemma regarding augmentation of the facility as some capacity will always remain available even under high passenger flows. This paper explores the issue and proposes a reference capacity for examining the effective utilisation of the escalator. The capacity is estimated with stand-only and stand-walk etiquette. The data available in the literature and from the video graphed information at metro stations in Delhi, India is used to examine the effect of step occupancy, walking speed of passengers and their proportion in the flow. It is observed that walking-factor and step occupancy is higher in developing countries. Walking factor is estimated as 0.70–0.74 and step occupancy as 0.80–1.70. The occupancy on walking side is estimated as one passenger per two steps as compared to the reported value of one per three steps. This indicates that the flow conditions on escalators in India are more restrictive as compared to other countries. The comparison of field capacity with reference capacity has indicated that the reference capacity can be used for the evaluation of actual flow condition on escalators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spectacular progress of lighting equipment in recent decades has resulted in an enormous increase in outdoor lights and night-sky brightness which is the most noticeable effects of light pollution has increased rapidly in many countries. Any pollution is a consequence of urbanization forces, which correspond to a significant threat to human health and the environment. Despite the increasing awareness and interest, there is a need for quantification of light pollution at a national and local scale. In developing nations like India, the supremacy of basic issues often undermines the new-found urban problems that have the potential of affecting the environment at a larger scale. Light pollution is one such predicament that needs a response. This study intends to mark the fundamental concept of light pollution, its impacts, and develop an atlas of the ten most populated Indian cities following the magnitude of their brightness computed using high-resolution satellite data. It also attempts to relate the degree of brightness of these cities with safety in cities, which is the primary purpose of lighting at night, also taking into account various factors that may impact the night time lighting and safety in urban areas. According to the study, street lights installed in a city exhibit a considerable correlation with the brightness levels of the cities, which may point towards a significant source of light pollution in cities. The paper concludes with a discussion of some best practices in the context of light pollution and the scope for further investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emerging-market multinational enterprises (EMNEs) are, on the one hand, investing in both developed and developing countries aggressively. On the other hand, they are facing greater pressures from their home and host countries to operate in a socially responsible manner. In this paper, combining institutional theory with strategic perspectives on corporate social responsibility (CSR), we argue that EMNEs spending on CSR more intensively in their domestic context are likely to have a greater scope of internationalisation. We also argue that this effect decreases for government-owned EMNEs and increases when EMNEs target developed host markets or institutionally stronger emerging markets. Our data used to test our hypotheses are based on a sample of 686 Indian firms. Our findings provide support for most of our arguments, and we contribute to a greater understanding of the relationship between CSR and internationalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In instances where the "youth bulge" in developing nations is aggravating the unemployment crisis and contributing to a detrimental cycle of events, inclusive growth (IG) has emerged as a cutting-edge development model. The academic interest in inclusive growth and unemployment-related research is plentiful, but the exclusive search into youth employment for inclusive growth is sparse. Based on a conceptual framework that offers an overview of the topic, this paper examines studies on youth unemployment concerning inclusive growth. It specifically explores the concept of inclusive growth, the financial and socio-psychological aspects of youth unemployment, and ways of tackling unemployment, such as youth entrepreneurship and skill development in pursuit of inclusive growth. By addressing these challenges, the assessment reveals ways to achieve SDGs such as SDG 8 (decent work and economic growth) and SDG 10 (reduced disparities). The relevant literature was extracted using qualitative content analysis and recursive content abstraction approaches. The study adds to the multidisciplinary literature on youth studies, entrepreneurship, and development economics. This study summarises the current level of knowledge on these topics, identifies research gaps, and offers interesting future research directions that will benefit academics and practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides large scale evidence on the determinants of international competitiveness of Indian manufacturing firms, focusing in particular on the role of technology, costs and imported intermediate inputs. Our evidence suggests that innovation, in particular R&D investment, is positively related to both firms' probability to export and firms' export volumes. We also find that imported intermediate inputs, incorporating foreign technology is strongly associated with expanding export activities of firms. Finally, and in contrast to much of previous evidence on developed economies, we find that higher productivity or lower unit labour costs are not systematically associated with the probability to enter export markets, but they are positively related to higher export volumes. Overall our results point to the existence of a pattern of involvement in international trade for firms in developing countries that is not relying as a main driver on cost competitiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ratio-based prevalence and absolute headcounts are the two most commonly accepted metrics to measure the burden of various socioeconomic phenomenon. However, ratio-based prevalence, calculated as the number of cases with certain conditions relative to the total population, is by far the most widely used to rank burden and consequently for targeting, across different populations, often defined in terms of geographical areas. In this regard, targeting areas exclusively based on prevalence-based metric poses certain fundamental difficulties with some serious policy implications. Drawing the data from the National Family Health Survey 2015–2016, and Census 2011, this paper takes four indicators of child undernutrition in India as an example to examine two contextual questions: first, does the choice of metric matter for targeting areas for reducing child undernutrition in India? and second; which metric should be used to facilitate comparisons and targeting across variable populations? Our findings suggest a moderate correlation between prevalence estimates and absolute headcounts implying that choice of metric does matter when targeting child undernutrition. Huge variations were observed between prevalence-based and absolute count-based ranking of the districts. In fact, in various cases, districts with the highest absolute number of undernourished children were ranked as relatively lower-burden districts based on prevalence. A simple comparison between the two approaches—when applied to targeting undernourished children in India—indicates that prevalence-based prioritization may miss high-burden areas where substantially higher number of undernourished children are concentrated. For developing populous countries like India, which is already grappling with high levels of maternal and child malnutrition and poor health infrastructure along with intrinsic socioeconomic inequalities, it is critical to adopt an appropriate metric for effective targeting and prioritization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hundred years from the Bolshevik Revolution that shook the world, workers around the globe are facing new challenges. Throughout a long stretch of the global South, job creation is sluggish, real wages are stagnant, and working conditions are getting harsher and there is a growing disjoint between work and wealth. Against this backdrop, in this paper we flag the employment challenges facing India at present. Using a novel 4-quadrant compartmentalisation, we observe that the three major challenges are—absolute lack of employment opportunities; chronic unemployment and intermittent employment; and substantial underemployment and loss of person days. Two further related challenges are low returns from work and skill mismatch. All these markers have worsened in the last decade which also witnessed massive job loss for casual workers. This is perhaps a natural sequel to the economic boom built on mass casualisation of workforce over the previous two decades. At first sight of slowdown, the axe has fallen on these casual workers. Mismatch between sectoral shares in output and employment also causes wage disparity and aggravates inequality. With production increasingly set to become machine and AI driven, labour redundancy and skill mismatch is expected to worsen in coming years. We must press for a separate employment–incomes policy rather than continue with the false hope that economic growth will solve the employment conundrum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

(Global) value chains have contributed to agricultural technology adoption in transition countries and food export commodities in developing countries through various forms of vertical coordination, often associated with FDI. Adoption of modern technologies in agriculture is crucial for improving the productivity and welfare of poor farmers. Much less is known about how (global) value chains do (not) affect technology transfer and/or adoption in staple food chains in developing countries, and the role that FDI plays. Our paper analyses the role of value chains and FDI in farm-level technology adoption with the use of panel data from representative farm surveys in 2008 and 2015 (a period of rapid growth) in the dairy sector in India (Punjab). We find important increases in the adoption of some technologies among traditional and poor dairy farms. However, the role of vertical coordination in value chains in stimulating technology adoption among these traditional dairy farmers seems to be minor, both for domestic and for FDI companies. At the same time a sub-sector of dynamic modern dairy farms has emerged. These farms are much larger, use only modern technology, and are fully integrated in vertically coordinated value chains that support these modern farms' management and investments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Freight logistics sustainability is a prime concern of supply chain actors and policymakers. Many of the countries promoted a multimodal freight transportation system for enhancing transport sustainability. The development and promotion of multimodal services in developing nations are lacking and face many sustainability challenges. These challenges are linked to the CO2 emission, traffic congestion, longer travel time, poor transport infrastructure, and transport mode inequality. To address these challenges, this paper is to analyse the multimodal freight transport practices in India and propose adequate policy measures to uplift the freight modal imbalance and transport sustainability. In this paper, situation–actor–process (SAP) and learning, action, performance (LAP) framework is used to analyse the research problem. Further, the interrelationship among the various elements of SAP–LAP is analysed thorough cross-interaction matrices and their dominance profile. The efficient interpretive ranking process is used for prioritization of the actors with respect to processes and actions with respect to performance. The research findings show that Government policymakers and Indian railways are the most influential actor for improving the share of multimodal services. Likewise, the operationalization of a dedicated freight corridor and the use of multimodal services for long hauling are top actions recommended for improving the sustainability performance of freight transportation. The dominance profile of actors and actions is presented. This paper also elucidates the managerial implications of the research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is paramount that solutions to questions of energy security for a developing nation be addressed through its internal resources. India, endowed with 23.8 billion tons of deep un-minable lignite, faces the challenge of economically sustainable extraction. This study presents a comprehensive assessment of lignite's suitability for underground coal gasification (UCG) compared to bituminous coal. Employing a multi-dimensional approach, combining single-step and distributed activation energy model of pyrolysis kinetic modeling with extensive physicochemical analysis (proximate and ultimate analyses, FTIR, SEM–EDX, XRD), revealed that lignite has a lower activation energy making it suitable for UCG. This finding, highlighted by kinetic modeling, is substantiated by the lignite's structural properties as identified in physicochemical analysis. This study leverages machine learning for higher heating value prediction, finding long short-term memory as the most effective model compared to five other models based on the R2 score and error values. Additionally, an XGBoost algorithm-based model predicts syngas heating value and yield while showcasing the application of machine learning in enhancing energy prediction accuracy. The economic analysis, applied for a 50 MW power plant framework, determines the unit costs for syngas and electricity production to be 7.49 and 6.71 $/GJ and 53.68 and 59.93 $/MWh for the samples of lignite and bituminous coal, respectively. The sensitivity analysis revealed that the energy content in syngas is the most significant parameter. These comprehensive findings validate lignite's potential for energy production in India, offering insights for similar resource optimization in other developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historical experience suggests that a sustained rise in per capita incomes and improvement in employment conditions is not attainable without a structural transformation that moves surplus labour from agriculture and other informal economic activities to higher productivity activities in the non-farm economy. In this paper, I analyse India's performance from a cross-country comparative perspective, estimating the growth semi-elasticity of structural change. Using a cross-country panel regression, I estimate the effectiveness of growth in moving workers away from agricultural and informal activities as compared to other developing countries at similar levels of per capita income. I show that the performance in pulling workers out of agriculture is as expected given its level and growth of GDP per capita, but the same is not true for pulling workers out of the informal sector. I also propose the following five indicators that need to be kept track of when evaluating the growth process: the growth elasticity of employment, the growth semi-elasticity of structural change, the growth of labour productivity in the subsistence sector, the share of the organised sector in total employment and the workforce participation rate. Comparing these indicators across periods, states, regions or countries, allows us to understand which sets of policies have worked better than others to effective improvements in employment conditions. And taken together the indicators allow us to set structural change targets as well as to say whether the current pattern of growth is going to be sufficient to meet those targets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Food delivery platforms are designed to match on-demand workers with jobs and then manage, monitor, and assess their performance. These platforms provide workers with a digital representation of delivery work. Once a worker accepts a delivery job they need to deal with the complexities of an unsettled urban landscape with varied infrastructures, traffic, and regulations. In particular, the Global South presents a demanding context for this type of work, given less clearly mapped addresses alongside other socio-cultural intricacies. In order to understand how food delivery workers bridge gaps and mismatches between the demands of the app and the realities encountered in situ, for this paper we shadowed six delivery workers over the course of their working day delivering food in Pune, India. The six workers included a complete novice and more experienced riders. We used helmet mounted cameras to record the delivery work, and how our participants managed the extra demands of food delivery work during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our moment-by-moment analysis of the video data is informed by the methodological traditions of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis. While the food delivery platform imposes a detailed workflow expected to be performed alone by the worker, our detailed video analysis reveals the collaborative nature of delivery work. We highlight how workers draw upon their ability to participate in ‘fleeting alliances’ and produce ‘frugal collaboration’ with co-located others, such as other delivery workers or security guards. This allows them to resolve everyday troubles, often learning or imparting ‘the tricks of the trade’ in the process. While gig platforms have commonly been presented as disruptive technologies for coordinating, regulating, and assessing gig workers individually and independently, our findings highlight collaboration as a critically important aspect of food delivery work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Green Revolution is often seen as epitomising the dawn of scientific and technological advancement and modernity in the agricultural sector across developing countries, a process that unfolded from the 1940s through to the 1980s. Despite the time that has elapsed, this episode of the past continues to resonate today, and still shapes the institutions and practices of agricultural science and technology. In Brazil, China, and India, narratives of science-led agricultural transformations portray that period in glorifying terms—entailing pressing national imperatives, unprecedented achievements, and heroic individuals or organizations. These "epic narratives" draw on the past to produce meaning and empower the actors that deploy them. Epic narratives are reproduced over time and perpetuate a conviction about the heroic power of science and technology in agricultural development. By crafting history and cultivating a sense of scientific nationalism, exceptionalism, and heritage, these epic narratives sustain power-knowledge relations in agricultural science and technology, which are underpinned by a hegemonic modernization paradigm. Unravelling the processes of assemblage and reproduction of epic narratives helps us make sense of how science and technology actors draw on their subjective representations of the past to assert their position in the field at present. This includes making claims about their credentials to envision and deliver sustainable solutions for agriculture into the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the critical factors driving the adoption and integration of blockchain technology in accounting education. Employing a moderated model based on the technology acceptance model (TAM), the study investigates what motivates faculty members to adopt and integrate blockchain. Organizational support serves as a key moderating factor in this study. The study employed a quantitative approach, analyzing data from 191 faculty members at Indian universities and colleges using SmartPLS 4 software. The findings emphasize the significance of organizational support in shaping behavioral intentions, with notable effects on perceived usefulness and attitudes toward blockchain adoption. Additionally, perceived ease of use indirectly affects behavioral intentions through its impact on perceived usefulness and attitude. The moderated model explained 64% of the variance in behavioral intentions toward blockchain integration in accounting education. These results offer valuable implications for educational policy, not only in India but also in similar developing nations. By comprehending the relationship between organizational support and faculty members' perceptions, policymakers can formulate strategies to effectively integrate blockchain technology into accounting education, encouraging innovation in university practices for the digital era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emerging economies face a plethora of social, economic and environmental issues. On the one hand, these have adverse effects that negatively impact the overall development of such economies; and on the other, they offer challenges which when addressed, help these economies to chart a course of integrated and inclusive growth, thus providing them with an opportunity for national development. India is no different. It has rural Bharat on one side that is steeped in illiteracy, poverty on the one hand and, a literate, rich, glitzy, corporate, urban India on the other; thereby fortifying the predicaments of an emerging nation. This paper, through an analysis of the socio-economic dilemmas and challenges of an emerging nation like that of India and scrutinizing the roles and responsibilities of Corporations to combat such a quandary through CSR, introduces the 'Chatterjee Model,' that urges, from a policy-maker's point of view, that CSR should contribute to the national agenda of a country, helping it to accelerate its transition from an emerging to a developed nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heritage conservation in urban areas involves complex systems often faced with the dilemmas of maintaining the built form's historical character, improving infrastructure, and managing development through stakeholder cooperation. At present, the performance of any conservation project is solely vested in conserving the built fabric. Evaluation tools for urban heritage conservation projects do not have provisions for measuring the subjective value of stakeholders who are part of the heritage setting. This study tries to identify and prioritise the factors that need to be considered when developing a conservation project performance assessment model for an urban heritage conservation project from the perspective of experts that can be further evaluated from the perspective of stakeholders. As these complex systems can be better viewed in the context of developing countries, the case of India is adopted. From a literature review, factors that contribute to the outcome of an urban heritage conservation project were identified and categorised into six aspects: the physical, social, economic, cultural, political, and continuity aspects. Through an expert survey, the factors that constituted each aspect were filtered using the feature selection method of correlation to avoid factors that may seem related. The factors under each aspect were ranked using a weighted average ranking method to identify the most prioritised factors determining the outcome of an urban heritage conservation project. The priority weights of the aspects were calculated using Saaty's analytic hierarchy process. The results show that the cultural aspect was the most important aspect, followed by the continuity aspect. The social and physical aspects were prioritised similarly, followed by the economic and political aspects. This study is distinctive because it identifies the influential factors that can help develop a conservation project performance assessment model for an urban heritage conservation project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Up to one third of the food that is purposely grown for human sustenance is wasted and never consumed, with adverse consequences for the environment and socio-economic aspects. In India, managing food waste is a significant environmental concern. Food waste output is increasing in Indian cities and towns as a result of the country's urban expansion, modernization, and population growth. Poor management of food waste can have negative consequences for the environment and pose a risk to the public's health issues. This review focuses on the current challenges, management strategies, and future perspectives of food waste management in India. The efficient management of food waste involves a comprehensive study regarding the characterization of food waste and improved waste management methods. In addition, the government policies and rules for managing food waste that is in effect in India are covered in this review. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite its massive market share, urban India's private informal residential rented sector has received scant policy or academic attention. Literature tells us about the discriminatory practices and differential experiences of tenants in these markets through a lens of social relations between tenants and their landlords. Little is said about landlordism, its linkages to the built form produced or the theories of land rent. We aim to address this gap by focusing on the renting behaviour of landlords in terms of their motivation to rent out, to whom they rent out, and the kind of social relations they expect with their tenants, all moderated through a lens of the built form they produce. This inquiry into the production and supply of rental housing in private informal markets in Bengaluru and Coimbatore (two industrialised South Indian cities) reveals that landlords can be on a spectrum between intentional and opportunistic. These concepts lead to two distinct but sometimes overlapping patterns of social relations and built form: one with more involved and often indulgent relations with tenants in extensive land rent scenarios and another with more transactional relations, even tending toward exacting behaviour with tenants in density land rent scenarios. We posit the idea of a social absolute rent to identify deep-seated and resonant discriminatory practices. We further argue that an interdisciplinary research approach can better articulate the workings of the informal private rental markets in the Global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India passed the Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration & Protection) Act, 1999 in compliance with the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) Agreement under the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Agreements which concluded in 1995. Article 22 of the TRIPs Agreement defines Geographical Indication as 'the indications which identify a good as originating in the territory of a Member, or a region or locality in that territory, where a given quality, reputation or other characteristic of the good is essentially attributable to its geographical origin'. Many developing countries like India has enacted legislation for greater and stronger protection of GI in order to uplift the economic condition of the poor people those who contribute to many key products of export. Since the Act has been passed 15 years back and India registered its first GI, Darjeeling tea in 2004, the total registrations now have reached to 227 in number. The present paper re-examines the challenges ahead in implementation of the Act and to suggest further amendments to the Act for better protection to Indian indigenous knowledge and reputation of products originating from India. It also tries to identify what is further required to reap the benefits of registration and problematic areas like who can be a right applicant of a GI application, Part-B registration of beneficiaries, marketing of GI products, maintaining quality of the product and counterfeiting and enforcement mechanism. It is argued that India requires a coordinated effort of Central and State Governments, proprietors of GI and beneficiaries to protect and promote Indian GIs in future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proportion of the world's population living in urban areas is increasing rapidly, with the vast majority of this growth in developing countries. As growing populations in urban areas demand greater food supplies, coupled with a rise in rural to urban migration and the need to create livelihood options, there has been an increase in urban agriculture worldwide. Urban agriculture is commonly discussed as a sustainable solution for dealing with gaps in the local food system, and proponents often highlight the many social, environmental, and economic benefits. We argue that the sustainability of urban agriculture should not be assumed. There is a need for research to take a bottom-up approach, exploring the influence that city-level conditions have on livelihood decisions by farmers and how this shapes the practice of urban agriculture. This paper uses a case study for an in-depth look at urban agriculture in Delhi, India to understand from the farmers' perspective how urban agriculture is practiced and what factors influence farmers' livelihood decisions. Using a team-based, multi-method Rapid Assessment Process, data were collected through preliminary key informant interviews, field observations, semi-structured interviews with urban farmers, and geographic information systems mapping. This research provides an in-depth description of market-oriented urban agriculture in a developing country, explores how farmers' livelihood decisions are embedded in the urban context, and discusses the potential of urban agriculture as a sustainable city-system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The language and practice of Marine spatial planning (MSP) is typically associated with state-led multi-sectoral planning efforts. Yet in countries like India, where the government is not yet promoting MSP, ocean space has already been divided using principles and practices that are characteristic of MSP elsewhere in the world. Instead of being initiated by the state, these MSP-like processes are initiated by international agencies when industries seek large-scale development of India's marine ecosystems. Although intended as an inclusive, holistic process to plan industrial development, this assemblage of MSP technologies, processes, and practices mandated by international corporations produces a particular power relation through its rejection of local knowledge and insistence on data, for instance, in the form of discrete, geo-coded polygons. This paper argues that this form of MSP produces an ontological politics, despite emerging from seemingly rational, post-political, and technocratic processes. Engaging with such politics is increasingly possible with access to geographical information systems, and this, therefore, provides a novel space in which to engage in political struggle. The case of externally mandated MSP in India demonstrates that non-state actors can initiate MSP, and therefore, opens the possibility for fishing communities, as non-state actors, to directly engage with the assemblage of practices that produce MSP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The livelihood of indigenous people, residing in the forest fringe area of developing countries like India, are primarily dependent on the forest. These forest fringe communities represent the country's poorest people and are the most vulnerable due to their high dependency on natural resources, lack of energy, unemployment, poor quality of life and poor socio-economic conditions. Additionally, climate change and lesser adaptive capacity have further exacerbated their struggle to meet their livelihoods. Thus, alleviating poverty, strengthening adaptive capacity to climate change and improving energy access are interlinked and complementary to each other, forming an energy–poverty–climate nexus. The study attempted to understand and analyse the nexus between poverty, energy access and climate vulnerability of the most impoverished villages of India. The study was conducted in 29 forest fringe villages, spread in Mandla and Hoshangabad districts of the state of Madhya Pradesh, India. The state has the distinction of having the highest forest cover and tribal population in the country. A detailed household survey was conducted to assess poverty, climate vulnerability and energy access of 325 households by using progress out of poverty index (PPI), climate change vulnerability index (CCVI) and energy access index (EAI), respectively. The data were collected through interview sessions with the respondents in the regional language. After computing scores of all indices, correlation, regression and chi-square were applied to test the integration of these three variables to understand the energy–poverty–climate nexus. The study found a nexus between energy access, poverty and climate vulnerability and also identified 14 indicators, which significantly influenced the nexus. These indicators were related to agriculture, energy, income and infrastructure, and education and awareness that together help to form an institutional framework for sustainable development. The framework suggests the formation of a block-level committee for monitoring and evaluation, a district-level committee for mobilizing funds, and a state-level inter-departmental committee for planning and implementation. Furthermore, the analysis on scores of different indices revealed that parameters like economic class, type of livelihood options/occupation and education level of a household may be the appropriate indicators for the selection of households to prioritize the target beneficiaries of programmes and policies related to poverty, energy and climate change in the forest fringe villages of India. Based on this, a site-specific framework was designed to act and prioritize programme implementation to achieve sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the effect of educational levels on wages across different occupational groups. The existing literature relating to this topic concludes that returns to surplus schooling are less than that of ideal level of schooling required for a job. This observation is not in accordance with the theory of human capital. Many authors observe that workers who are over-educated for a job are paid less than their counterparts (with ideal education level) who are in a job for which they are adequately educated. However, such observations are limited to developed countries and have not been empirically validated in the case of developing countries. Thus, this is an attempt towards analysing the effect of education, especially over-education as regards its bearing on wages in the Indian labour market. This study delves deeper into unfolding the education-wage nexus within each of the seven occupational groups defined for this study. Realised Matches method is used for calculating the over and under-educated for each occupational group. It is found that there is an agreement with human capital theory among all occupational categories in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to examine the formation of young consumers' food waste reduction behaviour in a developing nation. The extended theory of planned behaviour model is used as a theoretical framework to establish the hypothesized relationships between the constructs in the given context. Data were collected from young consumers of India through a questionnaire-based survey. Covariance-based structural equation modelling was used to test the proposed hypotheses. The findings of the study indicate the usefulness of extended theory of planned behaviour in predicting food waste reduction behaviour among young consumers in a developing country like India. The findings' implications will help formulate and implant public policies for reducing food waste at the household level in developing countries to ensure food security and achieve sustainable development goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Majority of global biodiversity databases lack sufficient coverage from the developing world and thus severely limiting their worldwide applicability. Bridging these knowledge gaps in global databases merits urgent research priority in biodiversity science. Here, we present Trees of India (ToI), Version-I, a comprehensive database assembled from an extensive literature synthesis of 313 studies published from 1872 to 2022. Based on the ToI database, we aimed to investigate the patterns of diversity, distribution, endemic and threat status of the tree flora of India. We recorded 3708 tree species across India, which raises the number by more than one-third (1199 species) previously reported for this mega-biodiverse country in GlobalTreeSearch (GTS). We found 93 species erroneously included for India as tree lifeform in the GTS. The distribution of the tree flora considerably varied across the states in India, with southern and eastern parts harbouring the highest tree diversity. We found evidence of distance decay in compositional similarity among the states in India. Our results reveal that 609 tree species are endemic to the country and 347 species are currently threatened. We also found a linear positive correlation between the endemic and threatened tree species pool of the country. Our data synthesis on the trees of India has huge policy and management implications in guiding biodiversity conservation, ecosystem restoration and climate change mitigation in this most populous country of the world. Looking ahead, our study showcases a model with learnings for other countries/regions/taxa to bridge the existing knowledge gaps in global biodiversity databases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International trade affects CO2 emissions by redistributing production activities to places where the emission intensities are different from the place of consumption. This study focuses on the net emission change as the result of the narrowing gap in emission intensities between the exporter and importer. Here we show that the relocation of production activities from the global North (developed countries) to the global South (developing countries) in the early 2000s leads to an increase in global emissions due to the higher emission intensities in China and India. The related net emissions are about one-third of the total emissions embodied in the South-North trade. However, the narrowing emission intensities between South-North and the changing trade patterns results in declining net emissions in trade in the past decade. The convergence of emission intensities in the global South alleviates concerns that increasing South-South trade would lead to increased carbon leakage and carbon emissions. The mitigation opportunity to green the supply chain lies in sectors such as electricity, mineral products and chemical products, but calls for a universal assessment of emission intensities and concerted effort. International trade redistributes production activities to regions with varying emission intensities. This study finds that the convergence of emission intensities between the global South - North and changes in trade patterns have resulted in declining net emissions in trade in the past decade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rising instances of prolonged inundation due to climate-aggravated high tide flooding are economically burdensome for resource-crunched developing nations that bear enormous damage due to loss of built infrastructure (housing in this case). Regardless of the loss, coastal flood impact on buildings is rarely given precedence. The mud building typology in India captures 34% of existing housing demand primarily within ruralIndia; for instance, 75% of the housing in Sagar Island uses mud as the dominant construction material, making it an ideal case for the proposed research. The multivariate nature of damage and empirical data constraint associated with mud buildings propels the development of two unconventional damage assessment approaches using multivariate-probabilistic technique. The proposed literature-based approach uses logical reasoning based on the available scientific evidence whereas the lab-based approach uses the insights from structural analysis of scaled model. The damage matrix created from both the approaches are used to analyse a common flood data (depth & duration) generated using 1000 Montecarlo simulations. The resultant Damage Stage values confirm the versatility of either approach over spatial (local to regional)—temporal (flood character and intensity) dimensions. The lab-based approach proved to be a better alternative considering the availability of continuous records on damage behaviour and precise information on the flood threshold of dominant building material, a crucial component of the multivariate damage assessment process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing nations aim to industrialize and grow sustainably often ignoring the environmental consequences. However, few empirical studies have looked at the influence of industrialization-driven economic transition on carbon footprint in developing nations using a non-parametric approach. In this milieu, on the ground of Kaya's identity and the novel multivariate quantile-on-quantile regression (QQR) (extension of Sim and Zhou's (2015) bivariate QQR model), the present research studies the impact of industrial value-added (IGVA), population, energy intensity, and carbon intensity on CO2 emissions in India. This study is one of the first in the literature to evaluate the industrialization-carbonization nexus in the context of Kaya's identity for the Indian economy utilizing an innovative multivariate QQR approach, which makes a methodological and empirical addition to the literature. The outcomes of the multivariate QQR technique demonstrate that economic and environmental development requires continual long-run strategies. The empirical findings revealed that there is no authentication that India's carbon emissions increased due to its industrialization, which exhibited that IGVA has a negative and significant connection with CO2 emissions. In some quantiles, population size positively impacts CO2 emissions. On the other hand, carbonization in the Indian economy is asymmetrically affected by GDP per capita and energy and carbon intensity. The quantile Granger causality study further supported the aforementioned results. The current analysis also offers policy suggestions for environmentally friendly sustainable economic growth and to achieve the sustainable development goals (SDGs) of India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Green Revolution (GR) enhances crop yields significantly that contributes greatly to the social and economic development of many less developed countries. However, the increasing crop yields might rise crop residue biomass burning, leading to adverse environmental and health consequences. We assess the impact of crop residue burning associated with the GR-induced growing crop yields on benzo[a]pyrene (BaP) pollution, a congener of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons with strong carcinogenicity. We find a significant increasing trend of BaP emission and contamination from crop residue biomass burning from the mid-1960s to 2010s in India, coinciding with the growing crop yields occurring during the GR. Our results reveal that agricultural BaP emission driven lifetime lung cancer risk (ILCR) in India increased 2.6 times from the onset of GR in the mid-1960s to 2014 and the 57% population in India was exposed to the BaP level higher than the India national standard (1 ng m−3). We show that the reduction of open crop residue burning during the rice and wheat residue burning period would be a very effective measure to reduce BaP environmental contamination and health risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rapid urbanisation in India is a key contributor to the overstressed public infrastructure. The urban public transport system is one of the important infrastructure systems. An effective public transportation network helps the city improve its accessibility, lower carbon footprint, and enhances economic growth and societal equity. India is a relatively poor country with limited public resources. Therefore, investing in an effective urban public transport system needs a tailored approach. Such an approach would entail using public transport to guide urban development. In this context, the first step would be to measure the accessibility levels of the existing public transport network and then use the accessibility mapping outputs to better inform the urban planning process. This study explores the Public Transport Accessibility Level (PTAL) tool that measures the accessibility of the public transport system and provides a spatial visualisation using Geographic Information System. PTAL is implemented taking Hubli-Dharwad as a case study for the base year (2020) superimposed with population and employment density, and future year (2031). The outcome of the research facilitates the city planning process by guiding transportation and land-use zoning integrations, direct public transport investments, demarcation of transit-oriented development zones, parking policies, and identifying locations of affordable and low-cost housing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2015, the United Nations sustainable development goals (SDGs) agenda 2030 has been designed with 17 goals, 169 targets, and 232 unique indicators to help address environmental, development, and sustainability issues globally. India, like other developing nations, desired to achieve its vision 2030 targets. Several authors studied India's SDGs with different approaches. However, none of the studies explores the concept of neutrosophic programming (NP). It is against this drawback; this study presents an optimization model for India's socio-economic and environmental goals based on the NP concept. The NP model is capable of handling indeterminacy in optimization-related problems for which other techniques do not. The formulated models simultaneously optimized the gross domestic product (GDP) growth, electricity consumption, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The solutions revealed that the degree of satisfaction for the goals related to GDP, electricity consumption, and GHG emissions could be achieved partially. Also, it suggested the required optimal number of employment for each economic sector to achieve India's vision 2030. The SDGs model was further solved with the goal programming (GP) technique and compared with the NP results to validate the proposed concept. It has been found that the proposed model gives a better compromise solution than the GP model. The study can help and guide policymakers in working toward vision 2030 attaintment. Other interested researchers can use the concept in other countries to help decision-makers understand managerial policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cement is a fundamental building and construction material for societies around the world. However, its manufacturing process is exceptionally energy intensive and has a substantial contribution to the man-made global warming potential which calls for immediate reduction. In this context, the implementation of green production practices and technologies in the Indian cement sector is of particular interest and global impact given that the country is the second biggest producer worldwide. Furthermore, the literature reveals that although the implementation of green practices in the cement manufacturing sector faces barriers across a variety of aspects, there is only limited research focussing on developing countries. This research covers this gap by concentrating on the barriers encountered by the cement sector of India and proposes strategies for their alleviation based on input from five experts and the use of the multi-criteria decision making method (MCDM) best–worst method (BWM). The results show that the lack of conducive corporate environment is the most important barrier, inadequate skills and attitudes are the second, while capital-related limitations come third. The experts highlight the need for mechanisms promoting cost effective environmental research and training as well as appropriate funding instruments and procurement rules from the government. Furthermore, a clear vision and plan from the management's part are fundamental for the effective incorporation of green practices in the organisational identity and the required employee engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In India, Atomic Minerals Directorate for Exploration and Research (AMD), the oldest unit under the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) is mandated with the exploration and augmentation of atomic mineral(s) resources of the country to support the Nuclear Power Programme (NPP) of India. AMD, till date have established four (04) generations of uranium metallogeny in India, distributed in 46 deposits and several other occurrences, major share of which are contributed by the globally unique, stratabound carbonate hosted, syn-diagenetic Tummalapalle Group of deposit (∼59%), metamorphite type deposits along the Singhbhum Shear Zone (∼21%), unconformity related deposits in northern part of Cuddapah Basin (∼5%) and sandstone type deposits in Cretaceous Mahadek Basin (∼6%). Besides these, metasomatite type deposits along the North Delhi Fold Belt (4%) and granite related-structurally controlled, high grade deposits in Bhima Basin (2%) along with some small hydrothermal/metamorphite/migmatite type deposits in Aravalli, Kotri-Dongargarh, Higher Himalaya belts and Chhotanagpur Granite Gneiss Complex contribute to the national inventory which stands at 3,76,000 tonne uranium oxide. AMD have stockpiled substantial quantities of Nb-Ta, Be and Li minerals needed for the NPP of India from prospective pegmatite belts in the country. AMD have established immense potential for REE mineralization in carbonatite complexes of Ambadungar in Gujarat and per-alkaline granite-rhyolite of Siwana Ring Complex, Barmer district, Rajasthan. Exploration along the coastal and riverine placers of the country has established 130 heavy mineral placer deposits with substantial thorium and REE resources. The progressive advancements by AMD through adaptation of integrated multidisciplinary exploration techniques coupled with major thrust in airborne/ground geophysics and expansion of state-of-the-art analytical facilities have facilitated systematic planning for future augmentation of atomic mineral(s) resources. Exploration inputs are envisaged to be intensified in the brownfield target areas for resource augmentation while R&D and phase-wise exploration inputs will be focused for developing the identified greenfield areas following a planned roadmap to ensure self-sufficiency in atomic mineral resources for sustained growth of the NPP to reach the target of net zero carbon emissions by 2070. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A huge increase in engineering graduates from the BRIC countries in recent decades potentially threatens the competitiveness of developed countries in producing high value-added products and services, while also holding great promise for substantially increasing the level of global basic and applied innovation. The key question is whether the quality of these new BRIC engineers will be high enough to actualize this potential. The objective of our study is to assess the evolving capacity of BRIC higher education systems to produce qualified engineering graduates. To meet this objective, we compare developments in the quality of undergraduate engineering programs across elite and non-elite higher education tiers within and across each BRIC country. To assess and compare the quality of engineering education across the BRIC countries, we use multiple sources of primary and secondary data gathered from each BRIC country from 2008 to 2011. In combination with this, we utilize a production function approach that focuses on key input-, process- and outcome-based indicators associated with the quality of education programs. Our analysis suggests that in all four countries, a minority of engineering students receives high quality training in elite institutions while the majority of students receive low quality training in non-elite institutions. Our analysis also shows how the BRIC countries vary in their capacity to improve the quality of engineering education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The urbanisation process moves quickly in emerging nations like India and Bangladesh, transforming natural landscapes into unsustainable landscapes. Consequently, growing development has had a significant impact on agricultural land as a natural environment. Moreover, there is a scarcity of research on fragmentation probability modelling in the extant literature. Thus, by combining random forest (RF) and bagging with the datasets which are multi-temporal in a GIS framework, the probability of fragmentation of LULC at Jangipur subdivision in India and Bangladesh can be modelled. Parallelepiped, Mohalnobis distance, support vector machines (SVM), spectral angle mapper (SAM), and artificial neural networks (ANN) classifiers were used for LULC classification, where SVM (Kappa coefficient: 0.87) surpassed other classifiers. The LULC maps for 1990, 2000, 2010, and 2020 were created using the best classifier (SVM). During this time, the built-up area grew from 23.769 to 158.125 km2. Then, using an ANN-based cellular automata model, the future LULC map for 2030 was predicted (CA-ANN). In 2030, the built-up area would be 201.58 km2. Then the matrices of class and landscape were taken out of the LULC maps utilising FRAGSTAT software and included the patch number (NP), largest patch index (LPI), edge density (ED), contagion index (percentage) (CONTAG), perimeter and area (P/A), aggregation index (AI), landscape percentage (PLAND), the area of class (CA), patch density (PD), edge in total (TE), total core area (TCA), and largest shape index (LSI). The validation results revealed that bagging (0.915 = AUC) and RF (0.874 = AUC) are capable of assessing fragmentation probability, with the bagging model having the greatest precision level of the two. Almost 20% of the total LULC was in a high and very high zone of fragmentation vulnerability, necessitating the use of direct measures to safeguard it. As a result, adequate LULC management is required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]