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The study scrutinises caste and gender disparity in shaping employment outcomes and academic performances across 1406 students from a prestigious engineering college in Kerala, India, employing logistic regression of campus recruitment data. The study reveals that students from marginalised social groups experience significantly lower placement rates and exhibit substantially lower academic performance. Even after accounting for academic differences, marginalised community students are less likely to be employed, signalling labour market bias. Males within this marginalised group face even lower placement chances. When employed, marginalised group students are less likely to be employed in high-paying jobs. Interestingly, while females are preferred over males, especially in high-paying jobs, they are underrepresented in the engineering domain, particularly in the branches that are traditionally male-dominated. The study is among the first to comprehensively examine the interplay of multiple factors – employment disparity, wage levels, academic performances, caste and gender in campus recruitment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This work aims to examine the access and disparity of institutional agricultural credit for small and marginal farmers across various social groups from three Indian states. Design/methodology/approach: Field data on socio economic variables were collected using multi-stage stratified random sampling and purposive sampling through a structured questionnaire by interviewing about 400 cross sectional small and marginal farmers belonging to various social groups such as general caste, other backward caste, scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. Disparity of agricultural credit across different social groups is assessed using measures such as credit access, credit adequacy ratio, credit gap and newly constructed Agriculture Credit Disparity Index (ACDI). Findings: The credit access, credit access ratio and newly constructed ACDI suggest that, by and large, farmers belonging to socially advantaged groups have better access to institutional agricultural assistance than farmers belonging to socially disadvantaged groups. Practical implications: The agricultural credit policy of the government needs to incorporate measures to eliminate credit disparity primarily by correcting the poor socio-economic profile (especially lower asset ownership and higher illiteracy) of socially disadvantaged farmers compared to the farmers' counterparts. Originality/value: This study contributes to the existing work by providing fresh evidence from the field across social groups for both kharif and rabi crops using recent survey data from small and marginal farmers which have important policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study examines the nature and direction of causality between long-term investment and short-term investment on one hand and long-term investment and different sources of finance for a panel of non-government non-financial public limited firms comprising of 16 industries in manufacturing, processing and construction sector for the period 1979-80 to 2005-06 at aggregate and dis-aggregate level. For the purpose, first, the existence of cointegration in panel series using Johansen-Fisher combined panel cointegration test was applied. Second, the panel Granger test was conducted on VAR (8) model using the Wald test of coefficients. The industry-wise as well as the aggregate sample panel cointegration test results confirm the existence of cointegration among the selected panel series. The panel Granger causality tests indicate that there exists a feedback relationship between long-term investments and short-term investments as well as between different sources of finance. However, results remain industry specific. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Childhood cancer often involves a long-term engagement of children and their parents with health services. During this journey, communications between professionals, parents and young people can be stressful for all the stakeholders. This study explores the communication preferences in paediatric oncology. Objectives: The objective of the present exploratory qualitative study was to understand the views of professionals regarding information exchange during cancer treatment of children and complement these findings with clinic-based ethnographic observation of real-life consultations. Methods: Using qualitative methods, in-depth interviews were conducted with paediatric oncology professionals. The interviews had been audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Alongside in-depth interviews, real-life interactions between parents, professionals and children were observed. Data were analysed using a thematic analysis framework as suggested by Braun and Clark. Results: Paediatric oncology professionals (n = 14) were interviewed from diverse professional backgrounds that included consultant paediatric oncologists, junior specialist trainees in paediatric oncology, paediatric oncology nurses, social workers, survivor counsellor and psychologists looking after children with cancer. Additionally, clinic-based ethnographic observations (n = 10) of interactions between professionals, parents and young people were also conducted. The following themes emerged from the interviews: a) Information needs of children were very different from adolescents. Children were more worried about ‘here and now’; b) adolescents were, on the other hand, mostly worried about the ‘impact of cancer on their broader life, friendships and academics’; c) parents were curious about the outcome, costs and effectiveness of treatment, and different patterns emerged for mothers and fathers; d) information needs were dynamic and different at the start of the treatment, during treatment, at remission or end of life; e) the journey of the clinicians themselves impacted information-sharing practices; and f) direct observation of consultations highlighted the importance of priming parents before delivery of information, having multiple family members during the conversation and managing intense emotions expressed during the session. Conclusion: Paediatric oncology professionals need to be sensitive about the dynamic nature of information needs while interacting with children and parents of children with cancer. The above findings may help tailor the discussions that professionals ought to have with families with a child with cancer. The results may contribute to the understanding as well as to developing training courses on communications in paediatric oncology for low- and middle-income countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]