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The purpose of this paper is to understand the factors determining the incidence and extent of indebtedness among agricultural households in rural India.

This study is based on a nationally representative survey carried out under the 70th Round of the National Sampling Survey Office (NSSO) across rural India. Data on household characteristics, farming characteristics, indebtedness and extent of outstanding credit have been extracted from the comprehensive survey data. Four research hypotheses have been formulated and tested using simple statistical techniques. Further, using the Heckman Selection Model, the study assesses the factors determining the agrarian indebtedness among households in rural India.

The results from the descriptive analysis show that there is a significant difference in socio-economic and farm characteristics of indebted and non-indebted households. Further, the level of indebtedness differs across sources of the loan, landholding sizes and geographical locations among agricultural households. The results of regression analysis clearly indicate that household characteristics, farm characteristics and sources of loan determine both the incidence and extent of indebtedness among agricultural households.

The main limitation of the study is that only the data giving information regarding the amount of outstanding loans have been collected, and there is no information regarding the amount of credit availed, the purpose and the due date of payment. Further, there is scope to improve the robustness of the empirical model by adding and modifying explanatory variables.

There are only a limited number of empirical studies providing an understanding of the factors determining the indebtedness of agricultural households in rural India. Hence, this study is a good value addition to the existing literature.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the market structure and level of competition in health and wellness food products by type, category, prime positioning and distribution networks in India.

The study is conducted using secondary data from Euromonitor International. Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) has been calculated for analyzing the market trends in terms of type, category and prime positioning and market competition has been analyzed using Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI). Analysis of variance has been used for analyzing the statistical difference in market competition.

Consumer purchase behavior for food is significantly changing across the world and consumers are becoming increasingly conscious of the health enhancing properties of food. With growing incidences of problems like obesity, diabetes, coronary heart diseases and foodborne diseases, consumers are becoming aware of the role of food in ensuring health and well-being. There have been significant structural changes in the health and wellness food market compositions and India has huge market potential for health and wellness food products with a market size of Rs. 435 billion in 2013 and growing at a significantly high annual growth rate of about 13.8 percent during 2002-2013. HHI results clearly indicate that there is significant competition in the health and wellness food market with average HHI of 0.19. However, the structure of market competition shows a varied trend across the types, categories, prime-positioning and distribution channels of health and wellness food products.

Results of the study provide a better understanding of temporal as well as intra-category changes in market size of health and wellness food products and the competitiveness of the health and wellness food market, providing valuable insights to the companies involved in producing and marketing of health and wellness food products in India.

Health and wellness food market is an emerging area for the marketer and there are limited analysis on market structure and competition.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the difference in students’ preferences on weekly menu of school mid-day meal (MDM) program in Uttar Pradesh, India.

The study is based on primary structured questionnaire survey through personal interviews using multi-stage stratified sampling technique. This comprehensive survey covered 2,400 primary and upper primary students belonging to eight districts of Uttar Pradesh – Allahabad, Balrampur, Gautam Buddh Nagar, Hathras, Kanpur Nagar, Mathura, Shahjahanpur and Varanasi. A total of 60 schools have been selected from each district, covering a total of 480 primary and upper primary schools. Simple statistical tools have been used to analyze the surveyed data such as cross-tabulation, percentage distribution and rank analysis. Further, six research hypotheses have been formulated to analyze the difference in school meal menu preferences among the students and χ2-statistics has been used to test the significance level of these hypotheses.

Survey results indicate that more than 90 percent students eat MDM in the school as per the weekly menu. Result of χ2-test indicates that choices on school meal menu among the students differ significantly across weekdays. Rice-pulses or rice-sambar served on Tuesday is reported to be the first preferred food of children given first preference by around 30 percent, followed by kadi-rice or kheer which is served on Wednesday. The results of χ2-tests exhibited a significant difference on weekly menu choices by gender, kitchen types, rural and urban locations and geographical regions. About 27 percent of the students reported that they want to have a change in the menu. When further probed about the kind of changes desired in the menu, puri-vegetables was found to be the most preferred choice of the respondents, beside halwa/kheer and rice with pulses/vegetables/kadi being the next preferred choices.

The present study provides managerial implications to the policy makers and scheme/program implementers for better understanding of the students’ preferences on school MDM weekly menu.

There are several evaluation studies undertaken by various agencies to assess the impact of MDM program on school attendance, retention and nutritional status of children. However, there are limited numbers of studies available, which have measured the students’ preferences on school MDM menu.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a marketing strategy for a modern food/grocery market based on consumer preferences and behaviour.

A total of 101 households having sufficient purchasing power were personally surveyed with a structured questionnaire. These households are spread across the well‐developed Gomtinagar area of Lucknow city. Simple statistical analysis such as descriptive statistical analysis, frequency distribution, cross tabulation, analysis of variance, and factor analysis to assess the consumers' preferences for food and grocery products and market attributes were carried out.

The preferences of the consumers clearly indicate their priority for cleanliness/freshness of food products followed by price, quality, variety, packaging, and non‐seasonal availability. The consumers' preference of marketplace largely depends on the convenience in purchasing at the marketplace along with the availability of additional services, attraction for children, basic amenities and affordability. Results suggest that most of the food and grocery items are purchased in loose form from the nearby outlets. Fruits and vegetables are mostly purchased daily or twice a week due to their perishable nature, whereas grocery items are less frequently purchased.

This paper analyses the buying behaviour of the consumers under survey with respect to food and grocery items. These consumers are in a relatively advantageous position in terms of purchasing power and awareness of health and nutrition.

The results may help the food processors and outlet owners to understand a diversified set of preferences for products and market attributes, so that they can make better decisions in the emerging organized food and grocery retail environment.

The topic is relatively less researched in emerging markets especially where organized retail is still in its early stages.

In line with the ongoing global and domestic reforms in agriculture and allied sectors, the Indian Government is reducing its direct market intervention and encouraging private participation based on market forces. This has led to increased exposure of agricultural produce to price and other market risks, which consequently emphasize the importance of futures markets for price discovery and price risk management. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the efficiency of agricultural commodity markets by assessing the relationships between futures prices and spot market prices of major agricultural commodities in India.

The efficiency of the futures market for 12 agricultural commodities, traded at one of the largest commodity exchanges of India, i.e. National Commodity & Derivatives Exchange Ltd, has been explored by using Johansen's cointegration analysis and Granger causality tests. Unit root test procedures such as Augmented Dickey‐Fuller and non‐parametric Phillips‐Perron were initially applied to examine whether futures and spot prices are stationary or not. The hypothesis, that futures prices are unbiased predictors of spot prices has been tested using econometric software package.

Results show that cointegration exists significantly in futures and spot prices for all the selected agricultural commodities except for wheat and rice. This suggest that there is a long‐term relationship between futures and spot prices for most of the agricultural commodities like maize, chickpea, black lentil, pepper, castor seed, soybean and sugar. The causality test further distinguishes and categorizes the commodities based on direction of relationship between futures and spot prices. The analysis of short‐term relationship by causality test indicates that futures markets have stronger ability to predict subsequent spot prices for chickpea, castor seed, soybean and sugar as compared to maize, black lentil and pepper, where bi‐directional relationships exist in the short run.

The results of this study are useful for various stakeholders active in agricultural commodities markets such as producers, traders, commission agents, commodity exchange participants, regulators and policy makers.

There are very few studies that have explored the efficiency of the commodity futures market in India in a detailed manner, especially at individual commodity level.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the structure of contractual arrangements in mango orchards and factors affecting the mango contract design in India.

The study is based on personal structured questionnaire survey of 83 contractors in one of the major mango growing areas in India. A snowball sampling approach was adopted to select suitable respondents for the study. Descriptive statistics have been computed to understand the contractor’s response on contract attributes. Factor analysis was used to categorize the contractors’ responses on various attributes of the mango contract. Further, a logistic regression model has been developed to determine the factors affecting the contract decisions.

The study identifies nine aspects of mango contracting covering orchard owner, orchard and contract management characteristics. Further, a logistic regression model has been developed to assess the factors affecting the contractor’s decision on the time of entering into mango contracting, i.e. pre-flowering or post-flowering stage. Regression analysis results clearly indicate that contractors who prefer pre-flowering contracts pay significantly higher attention to contract management attributes. On the other hand, those contractors who normally enter in contract once the mango trees have flowered are more likely to pay attention to orchard-related features.

Specifically, the results have implications for contract terms, contract efficiency and effectiveness and overall performance. Finally, the study provides suggestions for a future research agenda to analyze mango production contracts.

Though contracting in mango growing is a common phenomena, there is limited analysis on identifying the key contract attributes and factors affecting the contract structure.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the differences in pupils’ satisfaction on various aspects of mid-day meal (MDM) program in India across food catered by centralized and decentralized kitchens.

The study is based on structured questionnaire survey through personal interviews of 1,200 school children of primary and upper primary schools of four districts of the state of Uttar Pradesh, India. Simple statistical tools such as descriptive statistics, factor analysis, t-test and analysis of variance (ANOVA) have been used for meaningful data analysis.

Pupils’ responses on 17 attributes of their satisfaction on school meal program were reduced to four components − quality of food, social bonding, health and hygiene and availability of support infrastructure, using factor analysis technique. Findings show the perceived differences in satisfaction on various aspects of MDM program. Further, ANOVA indicate that there is significant difference in the satisfaction level on MDM supplied through centralized and decentralized kitchens.

This study provides an understanding of pupils’ perceptions of school meal program in order to enable policy makers, school administration and caterers of MDM to design better food service delivery models.

Findings of the study clearly indicate that benefit of social bonding is an added advantage to continue the school meal program irrespective of the fact whether food is served through centralized or decentralized kitchens.

There are several evaluation studies undertaken by various agencies to assess the impact of MDM program in India. However, there are only limited numbers of studies available, which have analyzed the children’s satisfaction on school MDM program across kitchen types.

The paper aims to discuss and analyse the entrepreneurial process in Indian seed business and factors affecting entrepreneurship in this sector.

The paper is based on in‐depth personal interviews with 40 entrepreneurs involved in 31 seed ventures belonging to five districts covering three states of India – Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, and Uttarakhand. These firms were selected following the convenient method of sampling. All major components of entrepreneurial process – personal traits and background of the entrepreneur, legal and financial environment, and market structure – were studied in detail. Descriptive and relational data‐analytic methods were adopted such as frequency distribution, cross tabulation, and correlation analysis.

Realizing the importance of availability of quality seed to the farming community in adequate quantity in the country, current government policies are geared towards promoting and fostering entrepreneurship in seed industry in India. The paper finds that the firms established during last five to ten years have shown continuous growth indicating attractiveness of the industry. Ability to build entrepreneurial team with complementary skills and knowledge and experience of the lead entrepreneurs are found to be the critical success factors in this industry.

The findings of the paper is based on mainly qualitative data/information collected only from 40 entrepreneurs belonging to 31 seed ventures.

The study findings have implications for policy makers as well as for prospective entrepreneurs. It will help in designing appropriate policy instruments promote and foster entrepreneurship on one hand and provide suggestions for new entrepreneurs for creating sustainable new seed ventures on the other.

The paper is original and value loaded in the sense that this provides the practical implications for understanding the entrepreneurial process in a very critical segment of the agriculture sector.

The purpose of this study is to establish Loratadine [LRD] quantification in purified and capsule formulations using a precise and specific Reversal Phase with a very high-performance liquid Chromatographic [RP-HPLC] technique. The approach was evaluated in agreement with the principles of the International Conference on Harmonization [ICH]. Arcus EP-C18 Ion Pac column, 5 m, 4.6 mm, 250 mm, mobile phase Methanol: Acetonitrile (60:40) v/v. Dibasic potassium phosphate buffer, pH 7.2, flow rate 1.0 ml/min.

The HPLC system used a 340 nm UV detector for testing. A 10-min run time was used for the analysis. At concentrations ranging from 2 to 10 g/ml, the technique was linear (R² = 0.9998), exact (intra-day and inter-day relative standard deviation [RSD] values 1.0%), accurate (range recovery = 96%–102%), exclusive and strong.

The detecting and quantitation limits were 0.92 g/ml and 2.15 g/ml, respectively.

The findings demonstrated that the proposed method could accurately determine LRD in bulk and pill dose formats quickly and accurately.