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The purpose of this paper is to study Indian aspects of policy convergence in the context of budgetary linkage of two nationalized flagship programs – Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) and Integrated Watershed Management Program (IWMP). Therefore, in lieu of inter-departmental convergences; issues related to water resource development of Jharkhand’s (India) rain-fed areas were addressed.

Centered on policy convergence strategy, present study applied comprehensive review and analysis approach for formulation of research base. A conceptual framework was thus designed for analytical purposes and therefore advancing toward conjectural knowledge base.

Application of inter-departmental policy convergence strategy suggested ample opportunities for optimal water resource development. Presence of abundant wage labor, rich indigenous water management techniques, tested replicable models, under-harvested rainwater potential, etc., appeared as catalysts of policy convergence. Yet, State’s lack of inter-departmental coordination and grass-root institutional framework will continually challenge policy convergences in absence of good governance.

An initiative of Indian government; MGNREGA has received international attention due to its wider coverage including natural resource management, besides guaranteed wage employment. Targeted at freshwater management discourse of Jharkhand; present paper reviewed prospective inter-departmental policy convergence strategy within various arena of MGNREGA, by exploring associated scopes and challenges. Similarly for cost effectiveness, related to maintenance and lift-irrigation demands of rain-fed area development; the present study suggested optimum utilization of inter-departmental funding linkages for development of sustainable water resources.

Addressing probable complexities of climate change on rural livelihoods, food security, and poverty reduction, requires mainstreaming of cross-sectoral interventions and adaptations into existing frameworks. Indigenous communities due to their isolation, reluctance to current practices, and knowledge deprivation are difficult to reach by many developmental programs. The purpose of this paper is to identify relevant adaptations from indigenous rural Jharkhand (India), applicable to improving livelihoods through integrated natural resource management (NRM). Prospects of rainwater harvest and management for supporting local rural livelihoods were also examined.

Tested and applicable models of participatory research methods widespread in sociological research were used. Focussed group discussions and structured interviews were conducted for primary data collection from micro-watershed units of this study.

In-situ soil and water conservation methods showed increased availabilities of freshwater both for food and non-food consumption in the area. Construction of rural infrastructure and land husbandry practices improved agricultural productivity and resulted in subsequent reductions in women's drudgeries. Culture fishery provided ample scope for livelihood diversification, food and nutrition security of households. Overall, micro-watershed area developmental approach improved food and nutrition securities, generated employment opportunities, improved agricultural productivity, diversified livelihoods and were widely accepted by communities.

Creating greater sense of ownership among grass-root communities was an important thrust behind the success of this particular project. By entrusting tribal communities with fund management, rural planning, and execution of various interventions, a successful replicable model was produced, which has wider community implications extending beyond societies and geographies.

This study aims to assess the impact of participation in self-help group (SHG) on the psychological empowerment of rural tribal women.

Primary data was collected using multistage random sampling from the rural women of Jharkhand, India. The propensity score matching method was adopted using the psmatch2 command in STATA.

The results show a significant positive change in women’s self-esteem, self-confidence, self-efficacy, autonomy, knowledge and skills, reduction in agony and quality of life after participation in SHG. This reveals that participation in SHG has a significant positive impact on the psychological empowerment of rural tribal women.

Despite the numerous studies on rural women’s empowerment, there is little evidence of literature focusing on the impact of participation in SHG on psychological empowerment, specifically in the tribal context. This study primarily focuses on women belonging to the scheduled tribe category of Jharkhand, one of the poorest states of India.

A leader who inspires, facilitates and leads people to outperform themselves and bring phenomenal changes on an individual and social canvas is recognized as a transformational leader (TL). TL focuses on innovative methods and processes to improve the efficiency of subordinates. Experts believe that transformational leadership management is more effective than pragmatic leadership. This study focuses on the traits of a TL. Mr. Dhirendra Kumar, Managing Director of Jharcraft, who set out on a mission to lead people to revive the lost art and craft in the state of Jharkhand, India. The case highlights how Kumar's leadership style aligns with the four components of transformational leadership suggested by Bass (1985), i.e. idealized influence, intellectual stimulation, inspirational motivation and individual considerations.

The study employs a qualitative approach to comprehend the theory of transformational leadership. First of all, an in-depth analysis of transformational leadership theory was conducted using secondary data. The findings of several researchers on the basis of their contribution to the development of transformational leadership theory were analyzed. Based on this, the Bass transformational theory framework was selected. Primary data were collected by conducting interviews with Mr. Dhirendra Kumar, Managing Director of Jharcraft.

Transformational leadership is a leadership style that can inspire positive changes in those who follow. TLs are generally energetic, enthusiastic and passionate. As per Bass's transformational leadership components, Kumar challenged the status quo and imbibed creativity and skill into local artisans. Artisans were imparted training by experts from the National Institute of Fashion and Technology and provided intellectual stimulation. Kumar offered support and encouragement to individual followers. In order to foster supportive relationships, Kumar articulated a clear vision to the followers. Kumar served as a role model for followers. Because followers trust and respect the leader, they emulate this individual and internalize the individual's ideals.

This study only considered the traits portrayed by Dhirendra Kumar during Kumar's tenure as the Managing Director of Warcraft, and the data were collected at one single point in time. Future research may consider Kumar's entire service journey and study factors that influenced his role as a TL.

Students will be able to learn and understand how a TL can bring positive change at the grassroots level.

This case focuses on how a TL's efforts led to the societal upliftment of poor people and made them capable.

Given the importance of transformational leadership in today's organizational context, this study builds a knowledge base to understand factors for transformational leadership and traits exhibited by TLs.

Economies and societies are not digitally isolated. Digital technologies are widely recognised as key drivers of information dissemination, knowledge sharing, income and employment. Digital technologies also influence the interlinkages of digitalisation, gender and labour market outcomes. Digital technologies impact every sphere of day-to-day life. It impacts ways of communication, trade and business; influences networking abilities; shapes societal norms, attitudes and behaviours. It is hence argued that digital technologies may have crucial implications for women's participation in the workforce.

Gender equality and increasing women's workforce participation is an important goal under the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Research indicates that women are mainly involved in agricultural work, blue-collar formal work, while collar formal work, and entrepreneurship. Digital technologies significantly impact the ways of working in all these sectors. Consequently, it is argued that digital technologies influence women's participation across all such types of work.

This chapter aims at unravelling the linkages between digital technologies and women's workforce participation. To this end, the influences of digital technologies on women's participation in agricultural work, blue-collar formal work, white-collar formal work and entrepreneurship are discussed. The implications and impacts of the use of broadband, internet and mobile technologies are also discussed. This chapter also includes important theories of women's workforce participation and discusses them in light of digitalisation.

The learning outcome is that it will help to sustain your startups in the ever-changing business environment especially in the context of emerging markets.

The present case is about Dilkhush Kumar from village Bangaon, India who developed a cab booking platform “AryaGo”, an innovative platform completely dedicated for rural road transport connectivity. AryaGo is the service line of Aryan Cabs and Rural Trans-solution Pvt. Ltd., a Startup founded in the year 2016 under Startup Bihar, a seed capital support scheme of State Government. The idea was to provide comfort, convenience, safety and affordability to all the commuters travelling from or within far-off villages. The biggest challenge during implementation in villages includes availability of updated geo-mapped images for app development and vehicle tracking. Company was foremost in providing the kiosk-based booking facility for its customers. It took the decision based on the profiling of customers and their preferred booking methods. When a customer booked a cab using IVR, they did not had access to app-based customer panel and hence they could not avail services such as, location tracking, SoS, real time tracking of vehicle. However, heavy invest in IT has put the company in financial stress and Kumar is wondering whether to expand fast or penetrate in the given target market. Should he re-design his business model so as it can really make a difference in terms of service delivery?

Post Graduate/ MBA.

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CSS 8: Marketing

Banks in India have started opening their branches in different areas to make sure that their customers get a high-touch experience and they see them as a premier brand. This could be ensured only if the banks show a stable physical presence in the market as well as provide the recent high-tech services to their customers as per the population group. The purpose of this study is to examine the survival rates of the commercial banks in India across the four population groups along with the differences that exist in their survival rates in all the population groups.

The analysis is based on the quarterly data of the number of functioning offices of the commercial banks in India as per the four population groups from March 2006 to December 2019. The survival is estimated using the Kaplan–Meier estimator.

From the analysis, it is revealed that survival of the banks changes as per the population group. In addition to this, it is found that the survival time of each category of the bank varies in each population group.

This study focuses only on the commercial banks of India; a similar research could be done for other categories of Indian banks. Also, the results would have been different if the variables such as the size of the bank, bank risk, etc. are included and studied. Moreover, this study is done using the Kaplan–Meier estimator, i.e. time-to-event. Further, an advance study could be done after considering the financial parameters of banks using the Cox’s regression model, which explores the relationship between various predictors and the time-to-event.

Due to the changes in the preferences of societies, the banks should also adopt different strategies to ensure that their products are understood and accepted by their customers. This will eventually increase the survival rate of the banks.

The work made in this study is completely new.

This paper investigates the mediating role of access to finance and entrepreneurial education for small and marginal farmers (SMFs) in the Indian northern state of Punjab. Furthermore, it examines the inter-mediatory role of entrepreneurs and the access to finance in the promotion of innovation, development and consequently poverty alleviation.

To gain a deeper insight, we used a purposive sampling technique, involving in-depth, face-to-face interviews based on a semi-structured questionnaire amongst 185 farmers from the state of the Punjab in India. The combination of open ended and dichotomous questions amenable to the Likert scale, captured responses and the transcribed questionnaires were thematically analysed.

Using the analysis of the quantitative and qualitative responses, we explain the cause and consequences of the finance gap and the impact of poverty on household income and the debt levels of SMFs. The findings suggest that the expanding pool of SMFs is due to land ownership fragmentation that disenfranchises SMFs from accessing adequate finance thus limiting their ability to adapt to technological innovations, and therefore limiting their productivity and growth. This essentially limits their ability to transform their economic and social wellbeing. The findings from the data analysis suggest a lack of access to finance negatively impacts on SMFs' ability to use innovative practices, technologies and productivity. This adversely affects income level, access to education and social goods to propel them out of poverty. The findings advocate that government policy should focus on land reforms, which provide adequate access to finance to enable the adaption of technology and an access to markets to empower marginal farmers.

Land fragmentation resulting with population growth in emerging economies continuously expands SMFs. To improve efficiency, productivity and entrepreneurial traits amongst SMFs, it is a pre-requisite to have an agile economy. However, in emerging economies such as India, the responses of 185 farmers suggest, a bespoke policy to promote the interest of SMFs through enabling them access to finance, technologies, training and education, continues to prove elusive. This novel empirical research provides evidence that demands that policymakers, commercial institutions and donors need to respond to the needs of SMFs to ensure food security and an optimal utilisation of farmland. The limitation of this research is that the sample is from one country, which limits its generalisation. The findings of this study could be enhanced by conducting comparative studies in other regions or economies.

This empirical study examined the barriers to enterprise for SMFs in the Indian Punjab; it examined the causes and consequences and the implications for food security for India. The findings of this study highlight the importance of developing the entrepreneurial capabilities of SMFs through effective education, training and above all through an adequate access to finance to enable them to adapt their technology. Furthermore, the findings make a case as to why SMFs are an integral part of the food chain and why it is necessary to enhance their efficiency, productivity and their access to finance.

In low-income economies agriculture plays an important role in promoting economic growth and reducing poverty. Agricultural growth achieved through diversification toward the higher value crops enhance income and mitigate risk. The present study focuses on one of the eastern Indian states namely “Jharkhand”; where agriculture is the mainstay for the 80% of its rural population. The state per-capita income is below the national average; however, it has registered an impressive growth, especially in the agriculture sector in the last one decade. In this study, the authors attempt to identify the components in sources of agricultural growth; the authors also estimate the determinants of overall agricultural growth.

The study is based on the secondary data from 2000–2001 to 2015–2016. This paper first decomposes the agricultural growth into area, price, yields (technological improvement) and diversification effects through the method of growth accounting approach. Secondly, the study employs the new classical growth model through the ordinary least square (OLS) to examine the determinants of overall agricultural growth.

The author's findings indicate that there has been a shift in cropping patterns from the cultivation of cereals to non-cereals in the state during the study period. Among the major crops, the area under pulses cultivation has increased by 19% from 2000–t2002 to 2014–2016. The increase in area under cultivation and the diversification in favor of higher-value crops have been the major reasons for the accelerating overall agricultural growth in the state along with improvements in technology. The study reveals that increased use of fertilizer per hectare, capital formation and road density are the main determinants of high agricultural growth in the state.

The study is based on secondary data and based on one state. A primary study to complement this could have been better. The limited data available for some of important variables related to mechanizations are also a limitation of the present study.

Several studies have analyzed the diversification and agricultural growth in India. With our best knowledge this kind of study has not been done so far for the state of Jharkhand in eastern India.

This paper aims at analyzing the determinants of access to relief under social assistance programs among rural households during COVID-19 outbreaks in India.

The study is based on the data of COVID-19-Related Shocks Survey, which covered 5,200 rural households across 6 states of India namely Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh. The access to relief has been assessed as relief-in kind (RIK) as a free special package of wheat, rice, and pulses, supplied through the public distribution system; and direct benefit transfer (DBT) in cash under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) Yojana and the Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana (PMJDY). The association between demographic profiles of rural households and access to relief has been analyzed using the chi-square test. Further, marginal effects have been estimated to assess the determinants of rural households' access to relief.

The results show a significant association between types of relief vis-à-vis demographic profiles of the rural households. A significant difference in access to relief among rural households is also evident across the states. Further, the analysis of the marginal effects indicates that female-headed households belonging to lower social class, depending on non-agricultural occupation with lower income, belonging to below poverty line families and seeking wage employment, are more likely to access relief as food grains; whereas male respondents with lower age, belonging to lower-income quartile with memberships in Self Help Groups are more likely to access the cash benefit transfers.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the food security and livelihood of many across the globe, which necessitated provisioning a package of support to everyone, particularly rural poor households. The World Bank undertook the COVID-19-Related Shocks Survey to provide a quick policy response for managing the risk of COVID-19 outbreak effectively. The results of this study provide timely insights for developing an effective relief strategy for rural households during a crisis.

There is limited investigation on access to relief by rural households during the COVID-19 outbreaks and factors affecting the access to relief in terms of cash and kind. This study has utilized a reliable data source to analyze the access of relief packages by the rural communities during the coronavirus outbreak.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-10-2021-0632.