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In December 1998 we held a conference at King's College called Making New Deal a Good Deal for Mental Health. This was before the New Deal for Disabled People (NDDP) pilots started. At the time of writing, the first results and interim evaluation of NDDP had just been published.i So ‐ how has it lived up to its billing? Has the cautious optimism at that conference been justified?

Reaching at the true development state is one of the important policy agenda of any country or its provinces under it. The true development state can further be ensured if the country or province does inclusive development. Financial inclusion is one of the important agenda through which a country or a province's inclusive growth and development can be ensured. The present study aims to compute the magnitudes of financial inclusion and its associated income link across the 18 districts of the state of West Bengal in India, with the help of the four banking indicators or dimensions – number of branches, number of accounts, amounts of deposits, and amounts of credit of the scheduled commercial banks, for the period 1997–2018. It finds that except Kolkata, all the other districts have low IFI values. Kolkata is at the top with near 100 percent financial inclusion. Mostly the districts from the North Bengal region are having very low magnitudes whereas the districts from the South Bengal region are having relative high magnitude of financial inclusion. The ultimate effects of these levels of financial inclusion have led to very low level of net domestic products of the districts.

Janet Gordon and Barbara Mills of the Employment Service describe and reflect on some of the lessons from innovative ways of partnership working in the New Deal for Disabled People pilots.

The arguments about loosening up the benefits system to allow disabled people to work and retain more of their benefits need testing and evaluation in practice if they are ever to be resolved. The Government's encouragement of area based initiatives to help improve the health and wealth of deprived communities provide an opportunity to do just this. The scheme below is just one idea that is being put forward. A life in the day would welcome news of others.

Entrepreneurship, Small Business, Small-scale Dairy Farmers

This case is appropriate for undergraduate final year/senior as well as graduate-level programme students.

This case explores the life of Saravanan, a small-scale dairy farmer in Malaysia. He inherited the business from his father. Small-scale farmers in Malaysia own farms with 30 (or fewer) milking cows. Over the years, milk consumption had been on the rise, but production was less than promising. Besides low-quality milk, Saravanan often experienced issues of low milk yield. Selling fresh milk as his only source of income and the milk collection centre as his sole marketing channel, Saravanan was caught in a financially tight situation when product diversification and marketing initiatives were limited. Saravanan’s problems began with rejected fresh milk, which landed him with zero income for the day. This issue was detected when the authorities identified a few contaminated batches of milk during a site visit. The problem compounded when Saravanan had to settle three months’ debt with the feed supplier on the same day. Saravanan’s predicament echoed the plight faced by small-scale farmers in Malaysia. After managing the farm for more than 30 years, Saravanan had plans to pass it to his son, Mugunthan. However, doubts about the sustainability of the business remained. Would Mugunthan suffer the same dire fate? Would he be able to find a way out? Based on the problem-solving framework, the case attempts to identify and assess the problems faced by small-scale dairy farmers in Malaysia, and at the same time, to suggest solutions that will ensure the sustainability of their business.

After attempting the case, students should learn to empathise with the hardship small-scale dairy farmers endure in the pursuit of their businesses, analyse issues and determine the root causes of the problems faced by small-scale dairy farmers in Malaysia based on the problem-solving framework, generate and justify sustainable solutions to solve the problems faced by these dairy farmers and present the case, discuss and work in teams, and critically offer sustainable solutions based on framework and theories.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.