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Human development encompasses not only income, other factors of life such as education and health are equally important. Investments in education and health positively impact the development of any region. Therefore, development in general and human development in particular of a region highlights not only the application of income but also the (actual) living conditions of people. It should also focus on the living conditions of women. This can somehow be assessed by looking at the Gender Development Index (GDI), introduced by the UNDP in 1995 as the intital Human Development Index (HDI) did not address gender-related issues. The present study thus tries to examine gender inequality in terms of education and health in the North Bengal region as it can have adverse effects on the overall development in the region. The study relies on the available secondary data on education and health. It is imperative that we realize the need to narrow the gender gap for development to be inclusive as investing in women's education and health can contribute to holistic economic growth and development.

We introduce a risk management framework to assess food security, which is interpreted as the probability of fatality or adverse health effects due to lack of food and which is a product of food availability, access, and vulnerability.

We derive cost-minimizing policies to achieve food security objectives by addressing availability, access, and vulnerability, and taking into account how randomness, uncertainty, and heterogeneity affect the system.

Ignoring key sources of variability, particularly heterogeneity, may lead to biases because food security policies require targeting the most vulnerable populations, which may each have unique features such as age, location, and health status. Establishing any policy solution requires making tough choices about policy criteria. Outcomes will differ when the criteria is to minimize overall risk or to minimize risk to the most vulnerable.

Policies addressing food security crises should balance enhanced supply with targeting available food and the provision of emergency health services to vulnerable populations.

This chapter explores policy implications of deliberately targeted interventions aimed at closing the gap between nutrition baseline trends and desirable levels of nutrition intake according to World Health Organization/Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations guidelines. Special attention is paid to the implications for those at the bottom of the nutrition achievement range (Bottom Billion).

We conduct a forward looking evaluation with a global multimarket model for agriculture within the context of key drivers of change. We observe the effect of interventions on nutrition intake for the most food-insecure regions as transmitted through food prices, changes in country-level food trade, and other market-driven outcomes. We demonstrate the nutrition-enhancing effects that occur when animal-sourced protein consumption, livestock production, and livestock feed demand decrease in developed countries. We also show the effect of a significant growth in agricultural productivity and household incomes.

Our analysis shows that the most effective intervention boosts household income to facilitate adequate intake of food and key nutrients. Diet changes have notable effects but are harder to implement on a practical level. Enhancing agricultural productivity (especially in regions with historically low yields) is also effective in improving nutrition outcomes.

Short of social protection and direct assistance programs, the ability of policy to effect short-term changes in nutritional status is limited. We highlight the effectiveness of pathways that promote longer-term socioeconomic growth and productivity gains as ways of improving the nutrition and health status of consumers.

This chapter explores the inequalities and restrictions faced by women as they entered the medical profession in the United Kingdom. A case study in the first hospital in the United Kingdom to be founded and run by women, the Edinburgh Hospital for Women and Children, it demonstrates the importance of history for understanding women doctor’s early career choices and opportunities. The chapter begins with an outline of nineteenth-century notions of feminine propriety. It considers how middle-class women sought to subvert these restrictions and gain an active role in public life, and explores how this impacted upon arguments in favour of medical women. It reveals the significance of the changing nature of medical knowledge in this period, and considers how this contributed to the emergence of two distinct specialisms, both of which became the preserve of women doctors: maternal welfare schemes in the 1900s, and the treatment of VD in the inter-war period. The chapter concludes with its contribution to this edited collection.

Inclusive business (IB) is becoming increasingly important as a means to alleviate poverty and inequality in the world, one of the most significant goals set forth by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Many companies have been engaging in IB projects. Even so, why are only a limited number of projects reported to be successful? IB involves complex situations, since it tries to achieve contradictory goals of solving social issues and generating a decent level of profit for sustainability. This often requires partnering with social-issue-oriented organizations by developing cross-boundary cooperation, as well as the need to associate with local partners and the poor in developing countries, who have different institutional backgrounds from multinational corporation (MNC) managers in developed countries. IB clearly involves people with diverse institutional backgrounds to develop cooperative relations. The biggest cause of IB failures seems to be MNCs’ difficulties in overcoming institutional differences vis-à-vis local partners and the poor, and interconnecting different institutions among diverse partners in an IB project. By conducting case studies of seven relatively successful IB projects in India, Ghana, and Tanzania, this book explores answers as to how companies overcome institutional differences, interconnect diverse institutions, develop cross-boundary cooperation, and successfully fuse business and social goals, namely, how they develop institutional interconnections. This chapter also briefly introduces the book’s structure and presented cases.

Sterilization is endorsed as a method of family planning by international governmental organizations; abortion is not. Focusing on policy development for these two issues in a single country, Peru, we ask how power and inequality operate under conditions of global consensus or dissensus. The case of sterilization unfolded the way many previous research studies would predict, with Peruvian state actions corresponding to a global diffusion process. We find that global consensus provided cover for top-down actions that violated the human rights of indigenous women in the country, who were predominantly poor, non-Spanish speakers, and residents of the mountainous, sparsely populated parts of the country. With respect to abortion in Peru, in the absence of global consensus, the state resisted calls for change, advocacy networks have worked at cross-purposes, and a powerful local actor, the Catholic Church, has effectively blocked liberalization efforts. As with sterilization, however, marginalized indigenous women and their interests were rendered invisible.

The purpose of this review is to summarize existing literature on the causes and impacts of the magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic on people and businesses, and to propose a conceptual framework for the global economic recovery. The study used existing most recent empirical literature from available for exploring of the magnitude causes and effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the people and business and summarized the way of the world economic system. The review study uncovered that people and businesses are suffering from vulnerability scenarios that have causes and effects on current macroeconomic and microeconomic indicators. In addition, microeconomic indicators have affected in the categories of unemployed who are soaring, lowering incomes, increasing health spending, household spending, low productivity, mental stress, decreased consumption, social imbalance, collapsing commodity prices and so on. Nevertheless, macroeconomic indicators have affected in the categories of the global financial crisis, supply and demand, capital market volatility, disruption of fiscal policy, monetary policy, aviation industry, international tourism and hospitality, world trade, and high unemployment. The present study concluded that all government and non-government agencies have to play a major and mature role not only in developing of right policies and laws but also in ensuring practices and coordination as well as increase public and business awareness accordingly. The study summarized strategic and policy guideline for the recovery of the global economy by strengthening the health care system, commodity market volatility fix-up, financial market restructuring, resumption of manufacturing and economic activity, special care for micro-, small- and medium-scale enterprises, mitigate the unemployment problem, recovery package for tourism, hospitality and aviation sector, strengthening the global supply chain network, impacts on global immigration and remittance issues and develop sustainable development framework accordingly for recovery of the world economy.

This chapter reflects on calls for and processes of the de-colonisation of academia and the study of media, communication and the digital. It asks: what does it mean to de-colonise academia and the study of media, communication and the digital? How can academia be transformed in progressive ways? This essay takes a Radical Humanist and Political Economy perspective on de-colonisation, which means that it is interested in how capitalism, power and material aspects of academia such as resources, money, infrastructures, time, space, working conditions and social relations of production shape the possibilities and realities of research and teaching. This essay stresses the importance of defining (neo-)colonialism as foundation of debates about de-colonisation and engages with theoretical foundations and definitions of (neo-)colonisation. It identifies how material forces and political economy shape and negatively impede on the university and academic knowledge production. It provides perspectives for concrete steps that can and should be taken for overcoming the capitalist and colonised university and creating the public interest and commons-oriented university and academic system.