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The purpose of this exploratory study is to look at how the Internet was used by political parties and candidates during the Indian parliamentary elections of 2009.

A total of 31 web sites belonging to political parties and their candidates in the Indian states of Maharashtra and Gujarat were examined for how they were used to mobilize volunteers and voters. An online questionnaire and in‐depth interviews were administered to the web site coordinators/designers and politicians.

The study found that sites were not used to their maximum potential but instead, merely for publicity, online presence, and to explore the new medium. There was greater reliance by most candidates on traditional media such as rallies and face‐to‐face interaction. The reason may be due to the limited Internet penetration in India, which also means the Internet may have less influence on voters. Some candidates have shown the way to the potential use of the medium for fund raising and recruiting volunteers. But Indian politicians will likely continue to be cautious in using the Internet.

This study was limited to the states of Maharashtra and Gujarat and did not consider the impact or the effectiveness of the Internet.

This is the first such study of the use of web sites for electioneering in India. It also documents the development in the use of the new medium for campaigning in 2009 as compared with the elections of 2004.

According to the published report by the National Sample Survey 2014 the data says that the incidence of indebtedness among households in the rural areas of Maharashtra, India, is almost twice that of other rural places in India. Around 64 percent of rural households are indebted in Maharashtra as against 31 percent other households in India. The purpose of this paper is to examine which source of credit is creating more distress among the farmers. Further the researchers also wanted to find out the reasons why the farmers choose private moneylender over the formal financial institutions.

To achieve the objective, the authors used the mixed method methodology. The qualitative study was done using the ethnography approach .In depth interviews were conducted and coded accordingly to find out the themes. The interviews conducted were semi structured and had open ended questions in it, followed by a structured questionnaire. Different statistical tests were also applied on the responses obtained from the questionnaire to check the reliability and validity of the interviews. This methodology gave a robustness to the findings of the study.

The results show that sources of loan play a major role in causing farmer distress in Maharashtra. The findings also show major reasons like grapevine bureaucracy, lengthy documentation, etc. as the major reasons for choosing private lenders over the formal financial institutions. The most interesting finding of the study was a phenomena observed during the field study. The borrowers first borrow from financial institutions for their credit needs, when they fail to repay the debt borrowed they again borrow money from the private money lenders and with this borrowed money they try repaying a part of the old existing loan in order to make themselves eligible for the next loan cycle.

The limitation of the study is that due to time constraint only two districts with high number of farmer suicide could be visited. Given more time and fund a comparative study can be done among different states of India.

This study will help the policy makers in identifying the real cause of farmer distress. The motive behind the policies made by the government is very noble but the implementation of these policies is inadequate and without a strong research base. The paper will be able to highlight how much the state intervention is required at multiple levels in order to ensure that the benefits reaches to those who deserve it.

It is imperative that we have yet not realized the gravity of the situation where people belonging from a community which is so essential to the economy are killing themselves because of lack of money. This is not just about the fact that the people who give us food are unable to access food themselves.

The paper contains significant information with regard to indebtedness. It focuses on the issue troubling the authorities the most. It provides the ground realities of the incidence of indebtedness in Maharashtra, one of the most distressed states of India. Lot of studies have been done in the past but very few studies have used mixed methodology to study this incidence of debt among the farmers of Maharashtra. This study also unveils a new phenomena of borrowing happening among the farmers of Maharashtra.

This paper aims to study the motives that led to conflict between two groups – Employees of state-owned power distribution companies and the Government – over permitting parallel licensing to a private company for power distribution services in selected areas of the Maharashtra state in India. The study also seeks to comprehend the reconciliation process and the role of leadership in thwarting the strike that could have impacted common citizens.

The research is built on a case-based approach to analyze the pre- and poststrike environment along with the impact of the power shortage during the few hours of the strike. A semi-structured interview method wherein government and employee union representatives were interviewed to understand their version of the incident is used. Related literature, reports and news were reviewed to realize the impacts and consequences of similar situations in the past.

The strike was called off within a few hours with the intervention of state government to resolve the issue, promising the union the government’s intention not to privatize but to invest INR 500bn in the three government companies. The parallel licensing may impact government-owned power distribution companies as well as customers in the future.

It will pave the way for lessons related to such incidence where the Government and the Unions are at loggerheads over issues like privatization or ownership of the company and help the involved and other parties to seek a viable solution. The role of resilient leadership demonstrated by both parties led to a win-win solution within a few hours of the strike.

The paper is a case study on an issue that is very contemporary; the role of leadership and its swiftness in decision-making that led to a solution to a very complex situation is something that was not done earlier in the context of the State vs Union issue.

The labor regulatory framework in India provides a conducive environment for social dialogue and collective participation in the organizational decision-making process (Venkata Ratnam, 2009). Using data from a survey of workplace union representatives in the federal state of Maharashtra, India, this paper examines union experiences of social dialogue and collective participation in public services, private manufacturing, and private services sector. Findings indicate that collective worker participation and voice is at best modest in the public services but weak in the private manufacturing and private services. There is evidence of growing employer hostility to unions and employer refusal to engage in a meaningful social dialogue with unions. These findings are discussed within the political economy framework of employment relations in India examining the role of the state and judiciary in employment relations and, the links between political parties and trade unions in India.

Recalling that the introductory chapter (Chapter 1) wanted to carry out similar types of analysis for the major states in India. Thus, the present chapter tries to examine the trends of a bank branch, deposit, credit, the credit–deposit ratio, sectoral shares of credit, magnitudes of banking transactions, credit concentration, etc., for the selected 15 states and Delhi as the only union territory for the period 1972–2019. The study period covers the pre-reform period from 1972 to 1992 and the post-reform period 1993–2019. The observations show that the branch, deposit and credit did not grow significantly during the post-reform period. As a result, the credit–deposit ratio did not increase significantly during the reform period. But, the magnitude of banking transactions increased in most of the states during the reform period. Regarding the sector-wise share of credit, AP, Maharashtra, UP and TN are the leading states in agricultural credit, WB, Gujarat and Maharashtra are in industrial credit and Kerala, Assam and Delhi are in the service sector. On the other hand, the study finds rising magnitudes credit concentrations of the states during the post-reform period in contrast to the declining concentration in the pre-reform period. Maharashtra is the state which holds around 25 per cent of all states’ credit throughout the entire period of 1972–2019. Hence, there are the notions of rising disparity and inequality in credit as well as incomes of the states and all India levels.

The purpose of this paper is to indicate the current situation of the COVID-19 outbreak in India, the world's second-most populous country. India reported its first COVID-19 case in the southern province of Kerala in late January 2020. Since then, the outbreak has spread to other provinces and union territories, with the highest number of cases reported in Maharashtra province as of 24 May 2020.

This paper presents the age- and gender-wise analysis of COVID-19 patients in Maharashtra province and the whole nation.

It shows that 75% of them belong to the age group of 21–60 years and the age above 50 years has a very high fatality rate of 14.52% in Maharashtra. This analysis also shows that 76% of COVID-19 cases are in males in the nation. The data indicates that in the nation, 75.3% of the deaths are in the age group over 60 years and 86% of cases of death had diabetes-related comorbidity, hypertension, chronic kidney problems and heart problems. In India, the case-fatality rate, which estimates the proportion of deaths among identified confirmed cases, is 2.93% as of 24 May, which is significantly less than that many countries.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first attempt to indicate the current situation of the COVID-19 outbreak in India based on age and gender.

Purpose – The globally controversial genetically modified (GM) cotton has been adopted widely by Indian farmers. Claiming the adoption to be a success of the GM technology, the GM proponents call for a large-scale introduction of GM crops in Indian agriculture. Opposition to GM crops is largely constructed in terms of the environmental risks that GM technologies pose to crop and forest biodiversity. This chapter examines the economic and political context in which these seeds were adopted to see if adequate support mechanisms were available to farmers to facilitate adoption of the new technology.

Design/methodology/approach – A field study was conducted in Vidharbha, Eastern Maharashtra. In addition, government reports and newspaper articles were reviewed and interviews were conducted in Maharashtra and Delhi.

Findings – This chapetr finds that the problems faced by farmers are much deeper than what technology can solve or which have been addressed in the GM debate. Cotton farmers face persistent problems in the agricultural production process that increase their production costs. A spate of farmer's suicides in Vidharbha and other rain-fed regions of India epitomizes the dire conditions farmers are in. This chapter asserts that state-supported policies transformed India from a food importing to a food surplus country in the 1960s during the green revolution. However, GM cotton has been introduced without a supportive infrastructure for technology transfer in Maharashtra and most cotton-growing states. The lack of support makes the gain of cotton farmers in Vidharbha from the new technology highly uncertain.

Originality/value – This analysis shows the need to examine the role of government programs in helping farmers implement technological advances in agriculture.