Editorial

Citation

Shainesh, G. (2011), "Editorial", Journal of Indian Business Research, Vol. 3 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/jibr.2011.41303baa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Indian Business Research, Volume 3, Issue 2

Leaders in emerging as well as developed economies are now increasingly concerned about achieving inclusive growth. In the last two decades, the sustained growth of India’s economy has helped lift millions of families out of poverty. This period also witnessed increasing disparities, inequitable access to opportunities and even basic services like healthcare and financial services.

Two papers in the current issue focus on different aspects of inclusive growth.

In our first paper, Saibal Ghosh researched the impact of financial outreach on economic growth in “Does financial outreach engender economic growth? Evidence from Indian states”. Saibal analyzed data on 14 major Indian states covering over three decades during 1973-2004 to systematically test the linkages between finance and growth at the regional level. He finds that improvements in financial outreach have a salutary impact on per capita economic growth. The study also finds evidence of divergence in growth patterns across states. In addition, the size of state government and quality of state-level institutions and infrastructure are found to be important determinants of growth. The results support the social banking strategy pursued in India as it helps raise per capita growth at the state level by expanding the availability and consequently use of financial services. He also suggests an increasing role for technology to promote greater financial outreach.

In the next paper, Dr Anand Vinekar describes the innovative use of communication technology in creating access to a very specialized eye care service through a case study titled “IT enabled innovation to prevent infant blindness in rural India: the KIDROP experience”. Trained non-physicians (“trained technicians”) capture, store, process and analyze images of the retinas of infants, many born to poor families, for a potentially blinding condition called retinopathy of prematurity with the help of a portable retina camera (RETCAM) in rural centers. These images are uploaded to a specially customized software-hardware platform for experts to view these images real time diagnosis by using a PC or an iPhone.

In the third paper, Ramendra Singh explored the hierarchical linkages between salesperson’s sales call activities and customer’s psychosocial benefits and terminal values. He adopted the means-end chain theory for his research and developed hierarchical value maps to represent aggregate pictures of mental hierarchies in customers’ minds, based on customers’ perceptions of the benefits of sales call activities.

In the fourth paper, Subhasis Biswas and Prabina Rajib examine relationships between price and volume in India’s commodity futures market. The two competing models of price volume relationship, namely mixture of distribution hypothesis, suggesting a positive contemporaneous relationship and sequential information arrival hypothesis, suggesting a positive intertemporal causal relationship are tested using correlation coefficient and Granger causality test with Vector auto regressive methodology. The research has been done with data across three commodities including old, silver and crude oil. Results of causality suggest that inefficiency level is maximum in silver and it may be attributed to informational asymmetry.

In the final paper titled “Trends in regional industrial growth in India”, Suresh Babu and Rajesh Raj compare trends in the spread of industrial activity across regions by analyzing data from pre-reforms decade (1981-1991) with the post-reforms period (1991 onwards) to decipher the extent of the effectiveness of policy changes. They find that manufacturing activity is concentrated in few states and early movers continue to dominate national industrial investments and production even after market reforms thus indicating some degree of “path dependence” in industrialization in the economy. They also find evidence for limited amount of dispersal of activities in the unorganized segment. New forms of organization of production have fostered industrial growth in the unorganized segment. However, regions which dominate in the organized segment have been able to increase their share in the value added of the unorganized segment as well.

The range of topics and themes covered in this issue will ensure that there is something for every reader. We hope you will enjoy reading this issue.

G. Shainesh