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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of financial development on the rural‐urban income inequality in India using annual data from 1965 to 2008.

The Ng‐Perron unit root test is utilised to check for the order of integration of the variables. The long run relation is examined by implementing the ARDL bounds testing approach to cointegration.

The results confirm a relation among the variables. Evidence suggest that financial development, economic growth and consumer prices aggravate rural‐urban income inequality in the long run.

The present study offers fresh insights to policy makers on crafting appropriate policies that reduce rural‐urban income inequality in India.

The contribution of this paper is lies in extending the literature in the context of India towards an extensively researched area of rural‐urban divide but in time series framework and utilization of a better approach of time series approach, i.e. ARDL. Specifically, to the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first empirical study to test poverty‐finance nexus using the basic principles of the GJ hypothesis and provide evidence of short‐ and long‐run dynamics on the postulated relation for India.

The purpose of this study is to measure the availability, accessibility and usability of financial products and services in both rural and urban India from 1991 to 2014.

This paper uses principal component analysis (PCA) method to construct financial inclusion index that serves as a proxy variable for indicating the inclusiveness of financial products and services among the rural and urban people. To fulfill this objective, the study proposes separate indexes of financial inclusion for both rural and urban India from 1991 to 2014. The paper uses annual time series data from 1991 to 2014 to construct the rural-urban financial inclusion index. The used data have been collected from the basic statistical returns of Reserve Bank of India and Economic Political Weekly research foundation.

The study inferences that though there is a remarkable increase in financial inclusion in India from 1991 onwards, it does not result in sizeable growth of financial access to rural masses in comparison to urban masses. The rural India does not substantiate an equivalent growth to that of urban India, contrasting a perceptible increase in financial inclusion. The finding of this study will help the researchers and policymakers to understand the status of financial inclusion in the context of both rural and urban India. Furthermore, policymakers can take appropriate policy initiatives to fulfill the financial inclusion gap that exists between rural and urban people. Additionally, the proposed index is easy to compute and can be used to make comparison across countries for further studies.

The present paper attempts to include all possible dimensions (and indicators within a dimension) that have been considered so far by various authors. Therefore, the authors hope that this index will be more indicative and accurate than previous index. Again, the authors propose to use PCA for the first time to assign the weight of factors in the financial inclusion index for rural and urban India separately.

Purpose – Informed by an intersectional perspective, this chapter examines how middle-class, immigrant Tamil (an Indian regional group) Brahmin (upper-caste) profess/ional women organize motherhood in the U.S., by identifying the arrangements of mothering they develop, and the conditions under which these emerge.Methodology/approach – Data is based on a year-long ethnography among Tamils in Atlanta, and multi-part, feminist life-history interviews with 33 first-generation, Tamil professional women, analyzed within a constructivist grounded theory method.Findings – Tamil immigrant motherhood emerges from the interplay of Tamil women's social location as an immigrant community of color in the U.S. and their agency. Paradoxically racialized as model minorities who are also culturally incommensurable with American society, Tamil women rework motherhood around breadwinning and cultural nurturing to mother for class and ethnicity respectively. They expand the hegemonic model of Tamil Brahmin motherhood beyond domesticity positioning their professional work as complementary to mothering, while simultaneously reinforcing hegemonic elements of mothers as keepers of culture, responsible for ethnic socialization of children. Mothering then enables them to engender integration into American society by positioning families as upwardly mobile, model minorities who are ethnic. This, however, exacts a personal toll: their limited professional mobility and reduced personal leisure time.Originality/value – By uncovering Tamil immigrant motherhood as structural and agentic, a site of power contestation between spouses and among Tamil women, and its salience in adaptation to America, this chapter advances scholarship on South Asians that under-theorizes mothering and that on immigrant parenting in which South Asians are invisible.

The purpose of this paper is to understand disparities in child immunization and nutritional status among children by migration status in urban India.

The study utilized third round of National Family Health Survey (NFHS, 2005-2006) data, which is the Indian version of Demographic and Health Survey. Descriptive statistics and binary logistic regression models were used to study the levels and factors associated with child nutrition and immunization by migration status.

Results suggest that malnutrition and no immunization are very high among children of rural-urban migrants and full immunization is lower than urban non-migrants and urban-urban migrants. More than half of the children from marginalized households suffer from the problem of undernutrition among rural-urban migrants. Multivariate results show economic status, age of the mother, education, caste and media exposure are negatively associated with malnutrition and positively associated with immunization. Children from south, north-east and east are found to have lesser chance of being malnourished than north region of India.

The challenges experienced by rural-urban migrants are reflected over their children and needs a greater attention among policy makers in India.

The finding of this study that children of the rural-urban migrants are in a disadvantageous position in terms of nutrition and immunization. This reflects the precarious condition of rural-urban migrants who initially settles in poor neighbourhoods, which are characterized by lack of adequate sanitation and clean water, poor housing and overcrowding, and difficulty in access to modern health services brought out by many researchers.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between financial development and rural-urban income inequality (INQ) in South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries using panel data from 1986-2012.

The stationarity properties are checked by the LLC and IPS panel unit root tests. The paper applied the Pedroni’s panel co-integration test to examine the existence of the long-run relationship and coefficients of co-integration are examined by fully modified ordinary least squares. The short-term and long-run causality is examined by panel Granger causality.

The results of Pedroni co-integration test indicate that there exists a long-run relationship among the variables. The findings suggest that financial development increases rural-urban inequality whereas trade openness reduces rural-urban inequality. The empirical results of panel Granger causality indicate evidence of short-run causality confirms that economic growth and financial development causes rural-urban INQ.

The present study recommends for appropriate economic and financial reforms focusing on financial inclusion to reduce rural-urban INQ in SAARC countries. Financial policies geared toward agriculture and rural population should be adopted to reduce the prevailing rural-urban INQ in SAARC region.

Till date, there is hardly any study exploring the causal relationship between financial development and rural-urban INQ for SAARC countries by using panel co-integration and causality techniques. So the contribution of the paper is to fill these research gaps in the literature.

Purpose – Rural–urban divides characterize many violent internecine conflicts. The lack of rural development is often cited as an underlying structural cause of this phenomenon, and thus strengthening rural–urban linkages is often touted as a way of dismantling the structural conditions for internecine violence. This chapter attempts to identify how both the strength and the form of rural–urban linkages influence the intensity of insurgent violence.

Methodology – Using geographic information systems, this chapter analyzes the intensity of specific violent attacks by rural insurgent groups in Maoist India as a function of rural–urban linkages and transportation network redundancy.

Findings – It finds that the degree of interconnectivity in transportation networks is a more robust determinant of restraint among violent actors than the sheer strength of rural–urban linkages. Production networks characterized by highly networked road systems are more likely to incent restrained behavior among rebel groups, which may be dependent on taxation or extortion through obstruction.

Limitations/implications – The chapter quantitatively analyzes a phenomenon, but does not identify causal mechanisms driving it. The policy implication is that providing transportation infrastructure within rural areas may be a more effective guard against insurgent violence than connecting urban and rural areas.

Originality – The chapter makes a methodologically unique link between the large existing literature on rural–urban linkages, and the growing literature on trade networks in violent conflict.

The purpose of this paper is to extend the methodology proposed in Majumder et al. (2012) for the estimation of the item-specific purchasing power parities (PPPs) within countries, to the cross-country context. It estimates item-specific intra-country PPPs (i.e. spatial prices) and inter-country PPPs in a unified framework using unit records of household food expenditures from three Asian countries: India, Indonesia and Vietnam, covering contemporaneous time periods. The study addresses a key limitation of the International Comparison Program (ICP) exercise, namely, that it treats all countries, large and small, as homogeneous entities. Moreover, it directly calculates bilateral PPPs between countries based on their expenditure patterns and prices alone and directly estimates the price-level indices (PLI) and their standard errors, allowing formal tests of the hypothesis of PLI being unity. The usefulness of the estimated PPPs is illustrated by applying them to comparisons of real food expenditures between the three countries, and benchmarking the comparisons with those using the ICP PPPs.

The methodology is based on the fact that a spatial price index can be viewed as a true cost of living index (TCLI). Using a general cost function underlying the Rank 3 quadratic logarithmic systems, the TCLI is calculated for a reference utility level.

The study provides formal statistical tests of the hypothesis of item invariance of the PPPs. The usefulness of the proposed methodology is illustrated by applying the estimated PPPs in comparisons of food expenditures between subgroups in the three countries. The sensitivity of the expenditure comparisons to the use of item-wise PPPs underlines the need to provide price information on highly disaggregated PPPs to a much greater extent than the ICP has done to date.

The choice of these three Asian countries was dictated by the fact that, though comparability of items between them remains an issue as with all cross-country comparisons. Also, in the absence of price data, this study followed the practice in Majumder et al. (2012, 2015a, 2015b) in using as proxies the raw unit values of the food items, but adjusted for quality and demographic factors using the procedure introduced by Cox and Wohlgenant (1986) and extended by Hoang (2009).

It addresses some limitations of the ICP, namely, ICP treats all countries as single entities with the purchasing power of the country’s currency assumed to be the same in all regions within the country, ICP uses the US dollar as the numeraire (this ignores the fact that the PPPs required in bilateral welfare comparisons between developing countries with vastly different consumption habits from the “international norm” are quite different from the ICP PPPs) and ICP uses distribution invariant prices to calculate PPPs, which overlooks the fact that the poor pay different prices from the “representative” individual.

This study highlights the importance of estimating and using item-specific PPPs in cross-country comparisons by formally testing and rejecting the assumption of item invariant PPPs and by providing empirical evidence that they do make a difference to the welfare comparisons between countries. This study provides PPPs based on food items only, which may be more relevant for poverty comparisons.

It introduces, for the first time, the concept of item-specific PPPs between countries as estimable parameters and operationalizes this concept by using them in cross-country welfare comparisons.

Using the 2001 Census data, this paper analyses district‐level rural‐to‐urban migration rates (both intra‐state and inter‐state) among males and females separately. Though many of the relatively poor and backward states actually show large population mobility, male migration is also prominent in the relatively high‐income states. Rural women, on the other hand, usually migrate within the boundaries of the states. The social networks effects are prevalent among the short‐distance migrants, and the North/South divide in the Indian context is indeed a significant phenomenon, with the exception of a few metropolitan cities. Looking at the effect of factors at the place of destination, prospects for better job opportunities are a major determinant of male migration. Low castes, minority groups and women show network effects. The paper finally brings out the effect of migration on health.

This study aims to gauge the effect of rural–urban migration and its challenges on the urban development of Bengaluru. This study examines the driving forces behind urbanization and its impact on social, economic and environment areas. The research helps to establish the sustainable city planning, after evaluation of specific challenges of zones, and this mitigation will optimize government investment and reduce cost.

Bengaluru is used as a study area to examine the interaction of migration and urban development. The study covers the period between 2011 and 2019. Panel data analysis is applied to measure the effect of urban development indicators on urban migration. The authors applied the integrated urban metabolism analysis tool to quantify the urban development indicators and identified the most critical areas for migrants. Later, authors proposed mitigation measures based on alternate scenario approach.

The authors found that there is a mixed effect of urban migration on urban development across various zones in Bengaluru. Besides, the authors suggest how planned collaboration should play a significant role in urban planning and optimize city planning judiciously. Effective mitigation measures should be developed based on zone-specific core issues, and practical trainings, research, public awareness campaigns and skill up-gradation of migrants would enhance the socio-economic and environmental conditions.

The study will support the ongoing and upcoming initiatives launched by the Government of India i.e. Awas Yojna, Atmanirbhar Bharat and Swach Bharat.

The structured city planning suggested in the study will help to save wastage of resources and cost and time of developers and policymakers. This will also help to upgrade the status of migrants and enhance the ambience of city around social, economic and environment fronts.

The first of its kind of innovative model mapped in the study area establishes a link between strategic city planning under rural–urban migration and urban development.

The present world is crippled with the pandemic coronavirus (Covid-19). The pandemic that originated in Wuhan city of China has sent every country in the world in an unprecedented situation that has social and economic impacts. This paper aims to explore whether epidemics and pandemics have any impact on consumption patterns among rural and urban consumers in India. Taking pandemic Covid-19 as a case study, it was explored how this pandemic impacted the consumption pattern of consumers in India; what are the similarities and/or differences between rural and urban consumers that are found in their consumption habits in the wake of Covid-19 pandemic.

The required data was collected through questionnaires sent to respondents. Approximately 500 respondents were contacted through the mail to fill in the survey questionnaire. Despite the sincere efforts, a total of 175 complete survey questionnaires were filled in by respondents. The study used SPSS Statistics version 25 software for the analysis of data.

It was found that epidemics and pandemics have a profound impact on the pattern of consumption in India. The study reveals that consumers resort to panic buying in the initial stages of epidemics and pandemics. It was found that consumption habits of consumers went a sea change and they were spending largely on essentials only. The study also reveals that the majority of consumers would like to continue in the same consumption habits as that of during COVID-19. The consumption pattern of urban consumers witnessed more change than the consumption pattern of rural consumers. It is due to the closure of eateries and restaurants, shopping malls, movie theatres, etc., in urban areas that forced the change in the consumption pattern of urban consumers.

The research has a limitation of using a less sample size. For the generalizations, more robust studies can be conducted with more data.

The findings of the study will give marketers an insight for framing their policies in the wake of epidemics and pandemics.

The research adds to the existing body of knowledge. There are plenty of studies on the behaviour of consumers. However, there are no major studies that focus on the behaviour of consumers during the outbreak of a pandemic. So, this study fills this gap in the existing body of knowledge.