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The pandemic has raised an issue of survival for most of the micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) because of their vulnerability in terms of size, limited financial resources, and inefficiency to deal with unpredicted situations. Therefore, the present study has adopted the contingency theory in times of change and uncertainties caused by COVID-19 on MSMEs and found out the ways to enhance its resilience and sustained the growth of this sector. This study has applied descriptive statistics and probit regression analysis to estimate the resilience and sustained growth of the firms through a change in the variables like turnover, labour employed, investment, and age of the firm. Based on the survey of 225 firms, the study observed that around 90 percent of surveyed firms realized a decline in their turnover with a 25 percent reduction in employment that mostly occur in the informal category. Interestingly, there was some increase in formal employment in around 50 percent of firms because of the business commitment of firms, shortage of informal workers, and availability of workers at lower wages. Smaller and younger firms in terms of employment and investment have a higher possibility to be affected by the external shocks indicating that the firm agility increases with firm age and size. Support measures by the government during the pandemic were found to be insufficient and have limited relevance to the MSME sector in its revival. For enhancing the resilience and sustainability of MSMEs, the study suggests small firms should be encouraged to financial planning against business uncertainties and proposes financial security measures viz. Uncertainty Corpus Fund for Small Businesses and Small Business Insurance.

This article aims to understand the drivers of foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows and its nexus with its determinants such as economic growth, inflation rate, labour productivity, infrastructure development, market size, openness of the economy, political stability and corporate tax for South Asian Association for Regional Corporation (SAARC) countries. The article is based on secondary data from the World Bank and International Labour Organization (ILO) for 19 years from 2001 to 2018 for 6 SAARC countries, viz. Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The findings indicate that there exists long-run, short-run and joint causal relationship among infrastructure development, market size, openness of the economy, political stability and corporate tax and FDI inflows. Among these variables, the corporate tax is the most important one because it shows bidirectional causality with FDI inflows in the long run as well as short run along with joint strong causality. However, only the coefficients of infrastructure development and corporate tax were found to be positively and negatively significant, respectively. Therefore, better infrastructure development and decrease in corporate tax may enhance FDI inflows in SAARC countries. This infers that with the decrease in corporate tax, more FDI inflows may take place, and higher FDI inflows may decrease in corporate tax further. Therefore, this article suggests that SAARC countries should accelerate the process of integration of their economy with the rest of the world along with political stability, enhance the infrastructure facility and reduce the corporate tax to get the higher FDI inflows. JEL: F21, F02, C22

From the last few decades, the issue of sustainability of the growth process has become the prime objective for most economies. The quality of the environment contributes significantly to achieving the objective of sustainability of the growth process. Therefore, in recent years, the policy of world economies increases its emphasis on growth, prosperity, and opportunities for all with a clean environment. Keeping in this mind, in the present paper, we examined the impact of income, technological innovation, income inequality, and industrialization on the environment quality in Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) during the period 1996-2016. The results display cross-sectional dependency within the panel of BRICS nations. Westerlund's cointegration test verifies a long-run relationship between the concerned variables. The dynamic ordinary least square method (DOLS) exhibits that technological innovation has negative while industrialization has a positive impact on the degradation of environmental quality. The results support the existence of the environment Kuznets curve (EKC) to per capita gross domestic product (GDP). Additionally, the paper evaluates the causal link between the variables by using the Dumitrescu-Hurlin panel causality test, and the outcomes support the existence of feedback hypothesis between environmental quality and GDP per capita, and between environmental quality and income inequality. Based on the findings, innovation-driven industrialization and development with equitable distribution of income can help these economies to attain the objective of sustainability of the growth process.

Residual stresses are those types of stresses that are preserved in the material even after the applied force has been removed. These stresses have a direct influence in characteristics of superalloy along with the exterior finish of the same which plays a very pivot role in industrial applications especially aerospace. In this paper, the consequence of the residual stress has been given importance alongside the knowledge of machined part finish, tool wear, machining force, the heat generated and chip morphology. Superalloy commonly used aeronautical material Titanium (Ti6Al4V) workpiece has been taken and machined using CNC turning lathe with the help of titanium nitride (TiN) coated insert and multilayer-coated insert. The residual stress is obtained through the use of XRD technique. On the opposite side material removal rate, surface roughness and chip thickness have been also determined using defined machines and compared with various machining constraints like machining speed, depth of cut and feed rate. The tool wear was also interpreted and analysed. The machining parameters has been designated through the use of Taguchi Technique where L4 array have used to define the cutting constraints. Grey relational analysis has also been done to get optimal metal removal constraints and to get the optimal result. ANNOVA analysis is also used in this paper to acknowledge the best optimum result.

The present paper addresses the issue of causal relationships between energy consumption and gross domestic product (GDP) in BRICS (Brazil, Russia, China, India, and South Africa) countries by employing panel data for 19 years from 1998 to 2016. The result indicates the existence of a long-run equilibrium relationship between unemployment rate, economic growth, and information and communication technology (ICT). Further, the study shows a bidirectional long-run causality between economic growth and ICT in BRICS countries. The study also indicates the presence of unidirectional causality in long-run as well as in short-run, which runs from ICT and unemployment rate to economic growth. The finding supports the thesis of the causal cyclical relationship between economic growth, ICT, and unemployment rate; therefore, the policy of development of ICT to accelerate growth and address the issue of unemployment rate may be implemented in BRICS countries.

The rapid proliferation of fashion consciousness in India, and augmented internet usage facilitated online shopping trend, led to increase acceptance of fashion portals. The present research was focused on the online shopping determinants and adoption of fashion portals among Indian consumers. Plethora of researches indicates that now fashion consumers have online interface, quality services, varied and relevant information to assist them in shopping. The scale constructs relate to product assortment, shopping assistance, shopping efficiency, order fulfilment, order fulfilment reliability, perceived risk and trust. A primary research was conducted on Indian consumers frequently using the fashion portals for purchases. The study determines that the fashion customers are influenced by the service convenience paradigms of fashion portals. Conversely, the consumers stress less importance to perceived risk, and trust attributes of fashion portals. The quality of services convenience offered by fashion portals is improved along with relevant information display, the customers may get attracted to visit the portals, encourage revisiting and using them for online shopping. The present research is an initial attempt to assess the level of satisfaction with using the fashion portals.