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This paper investigates the hypothesis that there is an association between increased levels of trade liberalisation and economic growth through a comparative analysis of two giant emerging economies of the world - India and China. For this purpose the paper examines trends in GDP growth and various trade openness measures via empirical analysis of time-series data of the last 43 years, based on eight key indicators to compare the experiences of the two countries. These indicate that rapid and gradual trade liberalisation of both the countries, coupled with supporting economic, institutional, and infrastructural reforms, and advancement in technology led to the linking of these giants with the global markets, which has significantly contributed towards their economic growth, thereby supporting the phenomena that there is a significant positive relationship between liberalisation and economic growth. While China was seen to be experiencing growth, India was also on the right track. Indicators of both liberalisation and growth reveal that both the countries enhanced their economy significantly as they embraced international trade through trade reforms and economic liberalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the implications of son preference on birth spacing intervals in India. Sibling sex composition provides a credible source of exogenous variation in the Indian context for births on or before 1990, as sex screening became widespread only after the 1990 economic reforms. I use the sibling sex composition of the first two children to capture its impact on the third birth interval. My analysis shows that, on average, families with two sons face an 8% lower hazard of a third birth relative to families with two daughters. Moreover, I find three channels of heterogeneity: religion, mother's age, and state of residence. Respondents from diverse religious groups respond differently to the sibling composition of the first two births regarding their likelihood of riskier births for the third interval. Moreover, older mothers with at least one son are less likely to have a shorter third birth interval than younger cohorts of mothers. Finally, the respondent's state of residence also drives some heterogeneity, with mothers from non-southern states less likely to have a riskier third birth interval once they have had at least one son among the first two births. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing non‐performing assets (NPAs) and to meet the higher funding needs, India witnessed the biggest consolidation in public sector banks. In India the surging NPAs is long witnessed concern and major economic reforms were initiated in Indian banking to curb the issue. The recent merger has brought in a major policy concern with this consolidation which is availability of loans to smaller businesses. The paper analyses the impact of banks consolidation on Indian economy by considering both positive as well as negative aspects of banks mergers. The paper also presents the history of Indian banking and recommending a way forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic dualism is often a major impediment in social and economic reforms where rich and powerful dictate policies and subvert the end intended result of efforts made by the government. MGNREGA could not be successful to its potential due to opportunities being underutilized by the targeted rural workers. Relatively well-off derailed the employment generation scheme as they commanded who gets what and how much. This paper aims to analyze how the Farm Reform Bill is exposed to similar risk as rich states are in a position to dictate the Farm Bill at the expense of poor states. The paper makes global comparison of India's agriculture performance with other developing countries highlighting a dire need of reform to perform. This paper also highlights the criticality of Farm Bill and arrive at the conclusion that India needs to calm down her opposition to rural reform through dialogues with various stakeholders keeping in mind the already lagging performance of agricultural sector which urgently need a lifeline in the form of Land Reform Bill. The issue of resistance from farmers has to be met with logic and compassion beside political statecraft to sail through agrarian protests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India has failed to develop merchandise exports as China has. The Indian government is aware of this challenge and hence has created a specific plan for the industry called Plan 2025 to benchmark Chinese reforms. However, Plan 2025 fails to enhance the industry at this stage. This paper examines how some successful economic reforms in China did not have the desired impact in India. This paper shows that some key success factors of the Chinese experience have deliberately not been included in India (absence of agglomeration effect with emerging neighbours, rent capture behaviour at a political level, same focus on IT & service instead of manufacturing from the SEZs, absence of upgrade to the current Chinese reforms). Still more significantly, there were policy mistakes. The Indian willingness to focus on knowledge generation for the manufacturing sector (as it has always done for IT & services) instead of on knowledge exploitation as China did, prevented India from using the backwardness advantage to obtain technology transfer and spillover to the rest of the economy. Therefore, this paper makes some recommendations for Indian policy-makers on how to improve the current flaws detected in the application of some Chinese economic reforms. As there is a need for state level analysis, the methodology consisted in comparing the past economic history and trajectories of two Indian States (Gujarat & Karnataka) with two Chinese Deltas (Yangtze River and Pearl River) using the approaches of the regional innovation systems (RIS) and the regional entrepreneurial ecosystems (REE). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economic reforms of 1991, Liberalisation, Privatisation, and Globalisation (LPG) changed the composition and structure of the emerging Indian economy significantly, which reallocated factors of economic activities in India transversely. It is in this context that the present paper examines the emerging trends in labour productivity, structural changes, and economic growth in India at an aggregate as well as disaggregate level during the period 1980-81 to 2017-18. The study analyses the contribution of productivity growth and structural change to the overall economic growth at the country as well as the state level. The McMillan and Rodrik growth accounting approach was employed which decomposes labour productivity growth into 'within' sector and 'structural change' components. The progress is diverse across the state level in India, indicating that labour has not been exiting agriculture as fast as the share of value added by agriculture has been declining. The results also reveal that changing final demand is the most crucial factor in labour reallocation in India. Due to its existing structure, India is capable of leading global economic growth in the future. There is a great need for policies on human capital development, and outward-oriented, economic reform measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tourism activities contribute to changes in a region's social and economic fabric. The paper explores the mode of tourism planning by evaluating the socio-economic and tourism development over 70 years at a tourist destination. The article uses a case study methodology to track the socio-economic and tourism developments from 1947 to 2019. In-depth personal interviews with stakeholders were conducted to comprehend the changes at the destination. The analysis involves using the Tourism Area Life Cycle (TALC) model. The change in social structure, migration, urbanization, occupation and role of women, and economic reforms were noteworthy turning points in the development of the destination. The TALC stages for tourist arrivals and NSDP (net state domestic product) align and show a bidirectional relationship between tourism and socio-economic developments. The research highlights the adaptive planning approach of the government, wherein decisions are taken based on changes in the external environment. An integrative and inclusive planning approach is needed for the sustainable development of the destination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose -- The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between financial development and income inequality in India using annual data from 1982-2012. Design/methodology/approach -- Stationarity properties of the series are checked by using ADF, DF-GLS, KPSS and Ng-Perron unit root tests. The paper applied the auto regressive distributed lag (ARDL) bound testing approach to co-integration to examine the existence of long run relationship; and error correction mechanism for the short run dynamics. Findings -- The co-integration test confirms a long run relationship between financial development and income inequality for India. The ARDL test results suggest that financial development, economic growth, inflation aggravates the income inequality in both long run and short run. However, trade openness reduces the gap between rich and poor in India. Research limitations/implications -- The present recommend for appropriate economic and financial reforms focussing on financial inclusion to reduce income inequality in India. Originality/value -- Till date, there is hardly any study that makes a clear comparison between market-based indicator and bank based indicator of financial development in India and those examining the relationship between finance and income inequality nexus. Further there is hardly any study to include gini coefficient as a proxy for inequality for India and apply ARDL techniques of co-integration, using the basic principles of GJ hypothesis and provide short run and long run dynamics for India. So the contribution of the paper is to fill these research gaps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main objective of this paper is to analyze the recent trends and patterns of urbanization before and after the economic reforms in India. In addition, the paper explores the emerging patterns of urban growth and captures the changes through development indicators based on the available data from the Census of India and National Accounts Statistics. The study employs an exponential growth rate and a linear model for determining the pace of urbanization, which is then plotted on a scatter diagram. It is surprising to note that wherever urbanization was expected to accelerate, it has instead slowed down. Economic reforms have been not uniformly implemented because of the faulty national economic policy which has discouraged the growth of urban employment and is a cause for concern that requires political attention. The study concludes that economic reforms are necessary for accelerating urbanization, promoting small and medium-sized urban areas, human capital, socio-cultural mobility, and plans for eco-friendly green cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1991 India embarked on far-reaching economic, financial and regulatory reforms, which led to not only a surge in economic growth, but also spurred scholarly interest in Indian firms, their strategies, and their business environment. As it has been almost three decades since the reforms were initiated, we believe that it is an appropriate time to take stock of the research on strategic management in the Indian setting. Our scoping review finds three dominant themes in extant research: impact of environment (specifically liberalization) on firms, strategies of firms, and the different ownership structures of firms. We discuss the key findings within these domains and identify the theories and methods that scholars have used to address their research questions. We assert that the unique Indian context — a mix of public and private economy operating within a democratic system — provides a rich environment for not only testing existing theories in strategic management but also generating new theories. We conclude by identifying several important areas of research and urging strategy scholars to engage with the opportunities offered by the evolving Indian business environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India has now become one of the biggest sourcing countries for engineers and scientists. More than 25 per cent of all worldwide patent sourcing by the US companies has at least one inventor from India or China. This paper is a fresh attempt to discuss different aspects of measuring technological activities of Indian IT services industry with the help of detailed patent granted data, particularly first name inventor (FNI). The Indian IT industry has experienced several transformations. After the economic reforms of 1991, the presence of foreign MNCs in this industry started rising. Presently, the industry is dominated by foreign MNCs in terms of patent applications, the patent granted, and software exports. The study found that more than 50 per cent of patents granted to IT companies by the USPTO has at least one First Name Inventor from India. Results also show that the industry has become the world's largest sourcing destination for foreign MNCs. Today, almost all big foreign MNCs from all over the world, including IBM, Apple, Qualcomm, Samsung and Nokia have established their subsidiary in India. Bangalore has become the most desired destinations for foreign MNCs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main purpose of the paper is to investigate whether and to what extent the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), India is integrated with the major mature markets in the US, UK, Germany and Japan. The dataset has been divided into: post Asian Crisis but before Euro Emerged (July 1997-January 2002); after Euro but before US Subprime Crisis (February 2002-November 2007); from the US Subprime Crisis before Modi's emergence as national leader (December 2007-April 2014); and after Modi's emergence (May 2014-July 2016). The study uses unit root test, Johansen-Juselius test, GARCH(p, q) model estimation, and Granger causality test for the purpose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Indian government introduced the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code of India (IBC) in 2016 as reforms in insolvency and bankruptcy laws are crucial for improving the business environment and credit markets in India. The banking sector of India has been marred for long by the problem of Non-performing-Assets (NPAs), and many of its largest companies are struggling under massive debts. The main objective of the new law was to facilitate insolvency resolution and liquidation in a timely manner and to improve India's ranking in the 'ease of doing business' index. This paper highlights the importance of insolvency reform in the economic policy of any country, while it examines the insolvency regime in India under the IBC with respect to its prospects and challenges and implications of the Code for the Indian corporate sector. Thus, the paper contributes to the policy debate relating to this subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper begins by surveying recent economic studies of the relationships between technology transfer, intellectual property, innovation and diffusion in emerging countries. It applies this literature to the Indian case. India has been experiencing rapid growth and has several high technology sectors staffed by an absolutely large and highly educated middle class. At the same time an even larger share of its very big population is still working in low productivity agriculture and many of these people are living in extreme poverty. Thus it needs to innovate and grow to employ its vast army of unskilled workers. The second part of the paper outlines how industry structure and innovative performance were progressing in India following the economic reforms of the early 1990s and the changes to intellectual property law occasioned by the TRIPS agreement. In the third section the focus turns to recent science, technology and innovation policy in India. A study of the country's potential for innovation by the World Bank in 2007 argued that India must proceed on two fronts. In addition to considering how India's growth prospects can be enhanced by world leading innovations, this volume placed great emphasis on inclusive innovation. This involves mainly the diffusion and absorption of existing knowledge, but is designed to improve the lot of the poor. The World Bank report proposed a number of new policy directions aimed at speeding up innovation and technology diffusion in India. We record what changes have been made to innovation policy, foreign direct investment policy and diffusion policy in India in recent years and assess whether these are likely to be effective in enhancing India's ability to innovate and achieve rapid growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globalisation can be summarised as opening-up of markets, leading to transfer of capital, technology and people. However, another important dimension of globalisation is multilateralism. The international economic reforms encourage multilateralism leads allocative efficiency. Multilateralism implies importing capital from a variety of sources as may be most efficient. India's FDI policy is in alignment with global FDI. In 1991, India had receiving FDI from 86 investing countries, which reached to 137 investing countries in 2013. This indicates global attractiveness and preferred investment destination. The paper examines FDI investing pattern of source countries in India. The period of study is 1991- 2013. The paper applies a set of new indices like Index of Rank Dominance (IRD) and Bodenhorn's measure of Mobility and Turnover. The most dominant country is USA. The RIRD (Relative Index of Rank Dominance) are top heavy. The first five countries are investing more than 60 percent FDI in India. Asian Tiger countries invested around 11 percent and BRICS countries have insignificant FDI in India. The competitive pattern of FDI has been declined among three different grouping countries. The global FDI in India has been declined 8 percent per annum in spite of favoured investment destination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the crisis in 1991, the Indian government introduced some changes in its Policy on trade, foreign investment, tariffs, and taxes under the name of 'New Economic Reforms'. The main focus of these reforms has been on liberalisation, openness, and export promotion activity. The paper focuses on the impact of development variables on export from India. Developmental variables include infrastructure, human resource, openness, production & market, research & development, resources, and taxation. Each development variable consists of a set of related variables. The paper has used principal component analysis (PCA), composite index and panel regression model. These help to know impact of individual developmental variable on India's export. The period of study is 1990 - 2013. The value of KMO is over 0.6 indicating the samples are adequate and the value of Bartlett's test is less than 0.05 ensure suitability of PCA. The overall growth rate Indian foreign trade is 3 percent during last more than two decades. Main macro-economic variables are infrastructure, resources, and taxation. The government should strengthen and incorporate these macro-economic variables while making foreign trade policy (i.e. EXIM policy) policy under the umbrella of WTO. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a theoretical framework to evaluate directed credit reforms in India. It formulates a post-Keynesian/structuralist macro model that incorporates key features of the Indian banking system. The model divides the economy into a demand constrained industrial sector and a credit constrained agricultural sector. The model shows that directed credit reforms tighten agricultural credit and output, erode real wages by increasing the agricultural price and reduce industrial demand. Inflation also picks up on account of real wage resistance. This paper, therefore, has a close affinity with existing accounts that warn against the stagflationary consequences of financial liberalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper gives an overview of key innovations for financial system reforms undertaken by successive governments in India since the 1990s. These are namely liberalisation, demonetisation, digitisation and implementation of GST. Out of these digitisation, demonetisation and implementation of GST demonetisation have been claimed as disruptive innovations by the experts. We examine the impact of innovations such as financial liberalisation, digitisation and demonetisation on some key macro-economic parameters of economic growth in India through available literature and secondary data. The analysis is done over a period of 1970-2014 to test whether innovations such as digitisation and demonetisation had a statistically significant impact on the economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose This paper aims to deal with a closer look into the nature and extent of consumer expenditure inequality in India to identify the major contributions those are embedded, particularly after the economic reforms. Relative contributions of major consumption items/sources to the overall expenditure inequality are quantitatively examined in terms of a decomposition exercise. Eventually, the paper investigates the relative marginal effects of expenditure components/sources on overall inequality.Design/methodology/approach Gini index is used to measure the degree of inequality in consumer expenditure. Contribution of each expenditure sources to overall inequality is estimated by using source decomposition technique of Gini index contributed by Lerman and Yitzhaki.Findings The study observes that the inequality in consumer expenditure has increased in both the rural and the urban parts of India during the post-reform period. Non-food expenditure is more unevenly distributed, and it has been found to be more pro-rich in nature. Expenditure on cereals and pulses still exhibits higher inequality-reducing effect in rural and urban India. Education and health-care expenses have been inequality-increasing in the country. Contribution of expenditure on miscellaneous consumer services, durable goods, education and health care to the overall expenditure inequality is significantly higher.Originality/value The study identifies the capacity of different expenditure sources towards increasing or decreasing the overall inequality which is crucial for better redistributive policies to be adopted to enhance the well-being of the economy in real sense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the structure of employment in the most urbanized state in India during the period 1983-2010. The paper also analyses the determinants of growth of farm employment in urban areas in the state of Tamil Nadu.Design/methodology/approach The paper compares trends in employment in Tamil Nadu with that of the country as a whole. In order to see whether there is evidence of Lewisian labor transfer, the study examines labor transfer between sectors and percentage distribution of workers in the rural and urban areas.Findings The paper finds that employment in the entire non-agricultural sector slowed down in 2009-2010 compared to 2004-05 in Tamil Nadu. The share of employment in primary sector in urban areas increased more sharply, experiencing slow economic transformation in the post-reform years. The analysis reveals that rapid rural-urban transformation could be one reason for more people in the primary sector in urban areas.Research limitations/implications Studying the employment structure at the district level, for which analyzing the district-level data collected and published by state’s Bureau of Economics and Statistics is required, would be helpful to discern a deeper influence of urbanization on structure of employment.Practical implications The results suggest that the issue needs further examination with analysis of the district-level data. Policy reforms should, therefore, be suitably oriented toward tapping the employment potential of both unorganized and organized segments in manufacturing, trade and services sectors. It is also necessary to ensure robust economic growth that creates decent jobs for all young educated people in the state.Originality/value The study explains the domination of farm employment in urban Tamil Nadu. Tamil Nadu is considered to be the most urbanized state in India. The reason for an increase in the share of primary sector employment in urban areas of Tamil Nadu is due to high urbanization in the post-reform periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite nearly three decades of ostensibly pro‐employer economic reforms in India, trade union membership and density in India appear to have risen. Although similar trends have been reported and investigated in other emerging economies such as China and South Africa, the union revival thesis in India is yet to be fully explored. Using large‐scale official survey data from 1993–1994 to 2011–2012 and primary data collected through 56 interviews with key stakeholders, this paper investigates the patterns of union membership growth in India. Findings indicate varying degrees of growth in union membership across all industrial sectors and employment types. We draw upon theoretical insights from economic theories of union growth, comparative politics and social movement unionism to explain union membership growth in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the extent of gender wage gap and its determinants in urban labour market in India. The study finds that women's work is undervalued even in regular salaried jobs in India's urban labour market and female workers are getting substantially lower wages than their male counterpart in almost all sectors and occupations sub-categories despite controlling for differences in experience, education, geographical differences and other individual characteristics. When we disentangled the gender pay gap, we found that around two-thirds of the pay gap is attributed to pure labour market discrimination and only one-third is attributed to endowment difference. The extent of pay gap is higher at lower end of wage distribution which is primarily dominated by women from lower caste, Muslims and less skilled workers. The pay gap steadily declines towards higher end of wage distribution. This clearly indicates that there exists 'sticky floor' in India's urban labour market. Such persistent and high level of gender pay gap may pose a serious challenge on India's path to inclusive growth and achieving decent working conditions. Therefore, the paper calls for sustainable wage policy intervention to ensure fair treatment to workers, equal pay for work of equal value, social protection and social justice to workers and to promote decent work and inclusive growth in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of tax reform on the economic growth of India over the period 1975–2017. In order to measure the impact of tax reform on the economic growth, we have used various econometric tools like Maki and combined cointegration tests and the rolling-window causality test in this study. The study revealed that a stable long-run parameter stability relationship exists the series on tax reform but unable to obtain the short-run relationship. Results also revealed that growth-led taxation effects and tax-led-growth do not exist in India. Hence, India needs more policies which will help to remove inefficiencies created by the existing heterogeneous taxation system, revenue rate and inclusion of petroleum products, electricity, liquor and real estate and policymakers should adopt some policies for direct tax which reduce the imbalance in class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethiopia is witnessing new twists and turns both in its domestic and foreign policy domain of late with the incumbent government in power adopting political and economic reforms aimed at fostering changes to bring about development. This has invariably provided an opportunity for India to consolidate its relationship with Ethiopia further. The new domestic political and economic reforms and the friendly gestures that the present government under Abiy Ahmed has made with its neighbors has drawn the attention of the international community to the extent of awarding him with Nobel Peace Prize. Such reform measures of Ethiopia have given India with wide scope to engage itself constructively and extend political and economic support in areas where both countries stand to gain. India's active engagement with Africa in general and Ethiopia in particular is all the more important given the China factor that has been competing with other countries of the region. This paper describes the domestic political developments in Ethiopia during the post Cold War era and its struggle to maintain the intricate ethnic balance that has characterized its nation-building process by tracing it from the days of King Haile Selassie I. It further analyzes the steps taken by the government to remove obstacles to peace and development through adopting economic liberalization measures and foreign policy changes. These are discussed in a chronological manner starting with a conceptual framework and using predominantly secondary sources and relying on personal observations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an attempt to assess India's performance in generating the required quantity and quality of employment for its growing population since independence in 1947. But the exercise is set in a longer period that covers India's population growth since the turn of the twentieth century (1901) in relation to its ability to generate employment. The half-a-century preceding independence, despite a slow population growth, was a disaster in generating employment and any signs of structural change. Detailed analysis of the issue since independence shows that there was indeed a demographic burden more than the world average as well as its comparator Asian countries such as China and Indonesia. While employment generation with reference to growth—employment elasticity—was quite impressive during the first four decades of independence, it almost collapsed ever since the adoption of neoliberal economic reforms in 1991, thus entering a phase of 'jobless growth', a phenomenon that is shared by China in a more vigorous form. This has led to what may be called an exclusion of working age people from not just employment but from labour force indicating the emergence of 'discouraged workers' in a larger set that we called underutilized labour. But what about those who are included in the workforce? Does it ensure an escape from poverty for those at the bottom? Our estimates show that the pace of reduction in the incidence of poverty is so slow that a significant share of households is still below the international definition of extreme poverty. We attribute this to the quality of employment characterized by a high incidence of informal sector employment as well as low wages measured by the share of workers not receiving a recommended subsistence wage. The absence of any kind of social security to an overwhelming share of workers adds to this situation of absolute poverty. Finally we examine the question of poverty from the point of manifold inequalities by dividing the households in the economy in terms of their employment, educational, rural–urban, and social group statuses for estimating predicted probability of being poor. The results bring into sharp focus the huge variation in predicted probability that shows households with low education, disadvantaged social group status, casual nature of employment, and living in rural areas at the bottom end of the scale. These results bring out the imperative for creating more employment with better quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been an ongoing debate amongst economists about whether or not the economic reforms of the early 1990s induced a spurt in the growth of the Services sector in India. The focus of this paper is thus to analytically re-examine the nature and magnitude of the structural breaks in the growth of the share of the Services sector in the gross domestic product over 1950-1951 to 2013-2014 with an intention to further probe this issue. The results of this exercise show that the structural break in the growth of the share of the Services sector in gross domestic product occurred in the early 1980s, much before the economic reforms set in, coinciding with the hypothesis that the early 80s marked the structural break in India's economic growth. The increases in per capita incomes over 30 years since independence seemed to have led to the structural break in this sector in the early 1980s, plausibly because the demand for services is highly income elastic. There is no denying though that economic reforms in the 1990s helped in maintaining and propagating the growth of the Services sector triggered in the early 1980s. The sub-period analysis has also hinted at the slowdown in the growth of the Services sector, which could have serious economic implications in coming times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A significant boom occurred in the Indian financial market and growth in the post-liberalization era. This motivates us to analyze the impact of stock market and credit market (two components of financial market) for the growth of financial market. This paper attempts to show the linkage between stock and credit markets and their impact on the Indian economy taking the period after post-liberalization. The period of analysis is from 1994 to 2010; we identify the three variables as stationary and find a relationship between the financial market and gross domestic product (GDP) and a long-run effect of lagged differences in credit market on GDP. It has been inferred that stock market development has larger and more significant long-run mutual effects on economic growth than credit market development in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research aims to evaluate the impact of economic and financial markets' growth on mergers and acquisitions (M&As) during the last decade in India, i.e., from Q-1 of the calendar year 2011 until Q-1 of the calendar year 2021. In recent years, the M&A space has witnessed considerable activity, owing to economic reforms and preference of M&A route by promoters of Indian companies for expansion or bailout. External data (secondary research) with respect to the growth of financial markets, economy and M&A deals in India has been collected from Bloomberg, IMAA, and NSE. Statistical tools, like the t-test will be used to analyse the impact of independent variables (growth of financial markets and economy) on the dependent variable, viz. M&A deals, over the last decade. Results of the study are expected to validate the positive correlation between economy/financial markets and M&A deals. The results would also help in developing a better understanding of the M&A scenario in India, and how certain changes in the economic and market environment influence it. The paper attempts to determine the degree of impact of GDP growth and financial markets on M&A deals. It would also seek to organise the theoretical context clearly, recognising any new patterns, while essentially being based on the existing important academic theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to examine the causal relationship between industrial growth and financial development during the post economic reforms in India (1991-2014). The long run relationship between financial development and industrial growth is tested by using ARDL (Auto Regressive Distributed Lag) model while causal relationship has been investigated with the help of Granger Causality Test. The empirical results of ARDL model found strong evidence in the long run between financial development and industrial growth and Granger Causality test indicate the bi-directional causality exists between industrial growth and financial development in India. The results of the present study support the significant role of financial development in the industrial growth. Easy licensing policy, credit availability, tax structure, skill centres and digitalization of market structure can enhanced the industrial growth in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India took a definitive step towards market reforms in 1991 by dismantling the License-Permit Quota (LPQ) Raj. This brought in significant spurt in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rates, exports, Foreign Exchange (FE) reserves and reduced percentage people Below Poverty Line (BPL) considerably. However, the human development story, in terms of Infant Mortality Rate (IMR), Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR), malnutrition of children, mean year of schooling have been quite dismal. The picture on containing income inequality is also quite disappointing in the urban segment as it shows an upward trajectory. The paper makes a strong case for opting for balanced growth where right priority is accorded to merit goods like quality primary education and health as public remit. A balanced growth strategy between economic infrastructure and social overheads would be the right cocktail for India's policy makers. The recommendations include introducing General Anti-Avoidance Rule (GAAR) at the earliest to pre-empt illegal parking of funds in tax havens, privatisation of Public Sector Banks (PSB) to promote better financial intermediation. It also supports strongly the case for introducing a Universal Basic Income (UBI) scheme, in lieu of plethora of subsidies to guarantee a minimum standard of living for every Indian citizen. It draws comparison with China, whose growth and development story have walked hand, in hand after liberalization in the 1980s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Compared to the extensive literature on measurement of poverty, the question of how the poor are distributed regionally has received less attention. This paper fills the gap in the literature by providing a conceptual framework to measure inequality in the distribution of the poor. A poverty segregation curve is used to compare a region’s share of the poor population with its share in the overall population. A unique contribution of the paper is formulating a generalized version of the poverty segregation curve. Unlike the segregation curve, the generalized segregation curve also takes average poverty rates into account while ranking distributions. Thus the generalized segregation curve may rank a distribution with substantially lower poverty rates above a distribution with higher poverty rates, when differences between their segregation curves are relatively small. The segregation curves are used to analyze changes in the distribution of the poor in India since the economic reforms in the early 1990s. Poverty rates and shares among all states, territories, and districts in India are estimated using data from the National Sample Survey Organization in 1994, 2004, and 2010. In the decades following the reforms India witnessed high growth rates and declining poverty rates. Despite the reduction in poverty, our analysis is the first to reveal that there was a significant rise in segregation of the poor over time. Some states had disproportionately high share of the poor compared to their share in the total population. Within states, the extent of segregation was lower among some of the poorest states and higher in less poor states. The generalized segregation curves show that the substantial decline in poverty rates since the reforms was not adequate to compensate the rise in segregation of the poor. Increase in segregation was also evident when the poor are identified as those who lacked education, health, and access to basic services. Reducing the segregation of the poor is important if India is to attain regionally balanced economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The agriculture sector plays a very important role in the generation of income, output and employment in any developing economy including India. In India, the share of agriculture GDP has depicted a declining trend over a long period of time particularly after the year 1991. During the post-economic reform period, the share of agriculture sector in the country's GDP declined from 28.5 per cent in 1991 to 17.8 per cent in 2020. Moreover, India's agriculture sector's annual average growth rate was only 3.17 per cent during the post-economic reform period. In the given scenario, this paper investigates the major factors determining the sector's performance based on Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach. The ARDL based Bound test revealed the existence of a long-run relationship among selected variables in the model. Moreover, the error correction term's coefficient indicates that the short-run shocks could be adjusted towards their long-run equilibrium at a faster rate: 83 per cent per annum. The estimated results of the study demonstrated that certified seeds, fertilizer consumption, net irrigated area, and pesticide use have significantly and positively affected the Agricultural GDP in the long run. However, in the short run only two variables viz. certified seeds and pesticide have significantly affected the agricultural GDP. Statistical diagnosis represents stability in the model, and there is no serial correlation as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since embarking on economic reform in 1991, India has experienced three decades of rapid economic development. Recently, however, there has been significant uncertainty about the growth outlook of the Indian economy in the mid-term perspective. In this paper we use standard regression techniques to project the path of the Indian economy over the next 4 years. The analysis, which abstracts from the pandemic period, mainly serves as support to forecasting the global economy. After the pandemic, GDP growth is projected to rebound this year and then slide to-wards 6 - 7% in the medium term. The analysis broadly agrees with the recent projections of India's mid-term growth rate by other institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1980s and 1990s, there has been growing global recognition and endorsement of women as economic actors whose income-earning activities contribute to the survival and livelihood security of impoverished households and communities in many parts of the developing world. Women's economic contribution is considered particularly valuable when population groups living below the income-poverty line have struggled to cope with the adverse social effects of neo-liberal economic reforms. Given this backdrop, the aim of this study is to examine closely women's experience of laboring in the lower end of the informal labor sector, their workspace negotiations and conditions of labor, and to assess the significance of women's work to the survival and well-being of their households. The paper focuses on a case study of home and neighbourhoodbased food production units in order to show how women's labor in these units is shaped by the intersecting dynamics of household patriarchies on the one hand and the profit maximizing ends of private capital, on the other. Primary data was gathered through interviews and focus group discussions with women workers and owners of these units located in the working class and industrial belt of North Chennai, Tamil Nadu. The paper argues that there has been an excessive responsibilizing of the women who work long hours in unregulated workspaces and feed and care for their families, often in the face of male disengagement from supporting the household. While aid agencies and national governments valorize women for their efficiency in 'managing' household poverty and sustaining fragile livelihoods with skill and ingenuity, this study foregrounds the gender-unjust implications of vesting poor women with the prime responsibility for alleviating global poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the onset of globalization, India has progressively adopted liberalized investment policies to facilitate the growth of foreign direct investment (FDI).The initial policy stimulus to FDI in India came in July 1991 when the New Industrial Policy provided, inter alia, automatic approval for projects with foreign equity participation up to 51 per cent in high priority areas. Ever since, the government has kept the momentum of reforms going with measures being announced from time to time to further facilitate and broaden the base of FDI in India. This paper analyses the FDI policy for some strategic sectors of the Indian economy, viz.,agriculture, manufacturing, defence and financial services, and examines the role of sectoral policy on FDI prospects of the economy. Realizing the importance of various strategic sectors in building a robust economy, the government has progressively put more sectors and sub-sectors on the automatic route for speedy execution of FDI proposals. Further, the FDI ceiling for many of these sectors has also been raised to generate greater interest in investing high-end technology and know-how. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In India, banking sector reforms have been made keeping in mind the upliftment of the underprivileged and backward segments of society. Whether it was the nationalization of banks, formation of NABARD, regional rural banks, lead bank schemes, cooperative credit societies or formulation of priority sector norms, all these were done to financially support those sections which had been neglected and had not received adequate financial support from formal lending institutions. In the present day scenario, Jan-Dhan Yojana and other financial inclusion initiatives are also aimed at serving our rural and economically weaker population. Under priority sector advances, adequate and timely financial assistance is most relevant for the less served people for us to achieve an all-inclusive growth. In this direction, priority sector norms though amended on a regular basis, still need further relook. This paper is an attempt to understand the nuances behind the norms stipulated for priority sector lending and changes, if any, required in them. For the purpose of this study, data has been collected from 255 Probationary Officers of Public sector banks. All the categories - agriculture, MSME, export, education, housing, weaker sections under priority sector have been analyzed. The study infers that despite relaxing the targets and sub targets for these categories, there is further scope of liberalization to achieve inclusive and sustained growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reflects on an emergent brand of feminist activism in India that responds to everyday sexual violence against women in public. I focus specifically on the efforts of middle class women who organize through online media to conduct interventions in urban Indian public spaces. I review these recent feminist interventions and locate them within a historical review of the women's movement in India to suggest that contemporary feminist organizing embodies and reflects India's turn to neoliberalism in the 1990s. While neoliberal reforms have been analyzed within the terms of political economy, this paper extends existing research to consider how neoliberal subjectivities shape a new feminism. The contemporary feminist interventions under review draw from individual testimonials to form the basis for activism, affirm the agency of participants to transform their urban environments, and foreground desire and consumption as central gendered rights. In sum, this feminism shifts its attention from legal redress and state intervention to cultivate entrepreneurial activists who adopt responsibility for their experiences of urban space as agentive actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic reforms explicitly took place in India as a result of the opening up of the economy with a view to integrate the country with the global economy. With advancements in technology, there have been changes in the methodology of business transactions. India, being a rapid adaptor of technology, and in case of IT being an important base of technology application is a pace with the current scenario of electronic data exchanges that has taken to e-commerce. In the backdrop of this scenario, this paper presents a snapshot of the evolution of e-commerce business, characterisation of e-commerce business and the impact of e-business on the economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The major motive of introducing measures in financial markets in early 1990s was the transformation of banks and other financial institutions into productive and operationally efficient service industry; which was essential to make their reach throughout the country by working in the flexible and autonomous environment. In spite of all the efforts and reforms made in the Indian financial sector, still the financial markets are lacking a lot especially in rural areas. Rural financial markets are the pre requisites for the growth and development of the rural areas. The issue of development of rural financial system deserves more importance for countries like India as more than 70% people are living in rural areas and they are living their life based upon agriculture and related activities. The development of rural financial markets is indispensable to fulfil the India's dream of financial inclusion. There are still large numbers of intrinsic shortcoming in rural financial sector although reform process is going on since last two decades. In this context, this paper provides an assessment of various dynamics related to reforms and organisational setup of India's rural financial sector and its effectiveness to ensure financial inclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indian banking industry has experienced sudden, pervasive & massive changes after economic reform in 1991. Unfortunately economic reform has not been able to produce results as expected. Indian banking sector has witnessed rise of technologically advanced new private sector banks. These banks are blessed with sound capital & professional promoters. Policy makers, researchers & media have expressed their confidence on the capability of new private sector banks. Old private sector banks did not get any respect from the professional world. This paper attempts to compare profitability of old & new private sector banks during 2001-02-2010-11. The result derived is astonishingly exciting & hopefully it would be able to satisfy the academic appetite of researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Development economists generally concur that the implications of economic reform for employment are influenced by an economy's institutional framework. This paper examines the extent to which differences in regional labour market flexibility shaped the impact of unanticipated economic reforms on employment in formal manufacturing firms in India in the 1990s, using pooled cross-sectional firm survey data. It employs a difference-in-differences strategy for this analysis and finds that, on average and ceteris paribus in the 1990–1997 period, declines in input tariffs were associated with increased employment in formal firms across all Indian states, while FDI reform was associated with increased (reduced) formal firm employment in states with flexible (inflexible) labour markets. Supporting analysis indicates that these results were underpinned, at least in part, by product market competition within the formal sector. As policy makers in developing economies increasingly emphasise increases in formal employment as a key policy objective, these findings are of general interest. They underline the relevance of market structure and geographical variation in institutional characteristics to a study of the effects of economic reform. Furthermore, this paper highlights the continuing relevance of formal sector analysis, notwithstanding the persistent primacy of informal enterprises in developing economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarly writings on the politics of economic reforms in India have neglected the exponential spike in private wealth and plutonomic tendencies in the post-reform period. This article maps the political economy of the staggering rise and growth of superrich in India. It traces the roots of the state-capital relationship in the colonial period and provides the main contrast between the political economy of the pre-reform and post-reform periods. It does so by analyzing key variables that have facilitated, or continue to facilitate, the flow of private wealth in India. It also examines three major drivers of superrich wealth in India–rent-seeking, entrepreneurship, and inheritance. The article makes two arguments. Firstly, the state's dramatic turn in support of private capital/wealth accumulation began quite earlier but assumed formal and dynamic forms only after the implementation of economic reforms in 1991. Secondly, the rise of India's superrich has not simply been a function of merit and entrepreneurial skills as is popularly believed. It is a peculiar combination of other factors that are leading to enormous resources and capacity concentrated in the hands of the superrich and their ability to exert considerable influence on India's domestic and global policies. Above all, the indispensability of the state's support has been one of the key factors explaining why some people become and continue to grow rich in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India's external sector has grown significantly through economic liberalisation reforms, resulting in increased trade and capital flow linkages with the world. The Inter-Departmental Group (IDG) of the Reserve Bank of India was formed to discuss the internationalisation of INR. The group submitted its report in October 2222, which was released by the RBI on July 5, 2023. The report suggested time-bound steps to accelerate the progress towards INR internationalisation. The process of internationalisation involves capital account convertibility, with robust financial markets being crucial for success. Positive steps have been taken towards promoting the use of INR in international trade transactions, and past initiatives should be built upon to achieve further success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarly writings on the politics of economic reforms in India have neglected the exponential spike in private wealth and plutonomic tendencies in the post-reform period. This article maps the political economy of the staggering rise and growth of superrich in India. It traces the roots of the state-capital relationship in the colonial period and provides the main contrast between the political economy of the pre-reform and post-reform periods. It does so by analyzing key variables that have facilitated, or continue to facilitate, the flow of private wealth in India. It also examines three major drivers of superrich wealth in India–rent-seeking, entrepreneurship, and inheritance. The article makes two arguments. Firstly, the state's dramatic turn in support of private capital/wealth accumulation began quite earlier but assumed formal and dynamic forms only after the implementation of economic reforms in 1991. Secondly, the rise of India's superrich has not simply been a function of merit and entrepreneurial skills as is popularly believed. It is a peculiar combination of other factors that are leading to enormous resources and capacity concentrated in the hands of the superrich and their ability to exert considerable influence on India's domestic and global policies. Above all, the indispensability of the state's support has been one of the key factors explaining why some people become and continue to grow rich in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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An ongoing debate in employment policy is whether promoting small and medium enterprises creates jobs. We use the elimination of small-scale industry (SSI) promotion in India to address this question. For 60 years, SSI promotion in India focused on reserving certain products for manufacture by small and medium enterprises. We identify the consequences for employment growth, investment, output, productivity, and wages of dismantling India's SSI reservations. We exploit variation in the timing of de-reservation across products and also measure the long-run impact of national SSI policy changes using variation in pretreatment exposure at the district level. Districts more exposed to de-reservation experienced higher employment and output growth. Entrants into the de-reserved product spaces and incumbents that were previously constrained by the size restrictions drove the increase in growth. The results suggest that dismantling India's SSI policies encouraged overall employment growth. (JEL E24, L25, L53, L60, O14, O25) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1990s, corporate governance in India has gained significant attention from practitioners, academicians, and policymakers due to various economic reforms, specifically liberalization. However, the field is heterogeneous and fragmented. Therefore, the study intends to review the literature on corporate governance in India comprehensively through a systematic literature review and bibliometric analysis. A systematic literature review helps to broaden and improve the rigor of reviewing the literature. Simultaneously, the bibliometric analysis aims to study and analyze divergent views and examine the growth trajectory and productivity of the field. This study will provide an integrated and comprehensive picture of corporate governance practices in the Indian context. The study lists the most significant keywords, prominent authors, evolution, and citations of the articles. Further, it analyzes the literature with reference to theory, context, characteristics, and methodology. The study also lists future research directions in the area of Indian corporate governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]