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The paper examines the linkage between oil price, climate variability and Food Inflation (FI) in India using linear ARDL model for the period January 2001 to December 2021. The study uses monthly time series data on CPI (general index, food price index, Money Supply (M3)), oil price and trade openness (volume of Export+Import to % GDP) and temperature change retrieved from the online data base of Reserve Bank of India, FAOSTAT, MOSPI and Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas. Since the variables are in different units, natural logarithm values are used in model estimation. The study found that a positive correlation between FI and study variables. The ARDL Model coefficient values show that Money Supply (MS) positively impacts FI, whereas lag MS negatively affects FI. Oil price has a positive impact on FI and trade openness coefficient is positive but not significant. Temperature Change (TC) has a negative impact on FI. The ARDL bound test result indicates that there is cointegration between FI and the study variables. The ARDL-VEC coefficient values indicate that oil price and TC have significant causal relationship with FI. To tackle high FI, there is a need of government and policymakers’ intervention for oil consumption diversification from crude oil to natural gas. The RBI should tighten the monetary policy and repo rate in order to lower FI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Being an important component of the Human Development Index, education plays a very important role in the economic progress of an economy. The right to education has been enshrined as a fundamental right in the Constitution of India, which states that: “the State shall provide free and compulsory education to all children aged six to fourteen years in such a manner as the state may, by law, determine.” Both the central and the state governments have been paying increased attention to the need to provide “education for all”. Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) is one of the flagship programmes of Government of India, which has been implemented in all the 30 districts of Odisha since 2001 in order to achieve universal elementary education. Availability of physical infrastructure is crucial for ensuring quality in elementary education. In this back drop an attempt has been made in the present study to construct a physical infrastructure index for government and private schools across the districts of Odisha, while assessing the role this plays in improving the enrolment (using secondary data collected from the report of DISE for the year 2014-15). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]