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With 43.2 million coronavirus cases and 525,000 deaths in 2022, India ranked second worldwide, after the United States (84.6 million cases and 1 million deaths), according to the latest available June 2022 COVID-19 impact data.

Amid people’s growing mistrust in the government, India’s news media enhanced the nation’s distinguished designation as the world’s largest and most populous democracy. India’s news media inform, educate, empower, and entertain a surging population of 1.4 billion people, which is roughly one-sixth of the world’s people.

Drawing upon the media agendamelding theoretical framework, we conducted a case study research into interplay between two prominent democratic institutions, the media and the government, to analyze the role of the COVID-19 pandemic in redefining India’s networked society.

India’s COVID-19 pandemic aggravated internecine tensions between media and government relating to four key freedom issues: (1) world’s largest COVID-19 lockdown affecting 1.3 billion Indians from March 25, 2020 to August 2020 with extensions and five-phased re-openings, to restrict the spread of COVID-19; (2) Internet shutdowns; (3) media censorship during the 1975–1977 “Emergency”; and (4) unabated murders of journalists in India.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic caused deleterious problems debilitating the tensions between the media and the government, India’s journalists thrived by speaking truth to power. This study delineates key aspects of India’s media agendamelding that explicates how the people of India form their media agendas. India’s news audiences meld media messages from newspapers, television, and social media to form a picture of the issues, insights, and ideas that define their lives and times in the 21st century digital age.

The use of technology in 4th industrial revolution is at its peak. Industries are trying to reduce the consumption of resources by effectively utilizing information and technology to connect different functioning agents of the manufacturing industry. Without digitization “Industry 4.0” will be a virtual reality. The present survey-based study explores the factual status of digital manufacturing in the Northern India.

After an extensive literature review, a questionnaire was designed to gather different viewpoints of Indian industrial practitioners. The first half contains questions related to north Indian demographic factors which may affect digitalization of India. The latter half includes the queries concerned with various operational factors (or drivers) driving the digital revolution without ignoring Indian constraints.

The focus of this survey was to understand the current level of digital revolution under the ongoing push by the Indian government focused upon digital movement. The analysis included non-parametric testing of the various demographic and functional factors impacting the digital echoes, specifically in Northern India. Findings such as technological upgradations were independent of type of industry, the turnover or the location. About 10 key operational factors were thoughtfully grouped into three major categories—internal Research and Development (R&D), the capability of the supply chain and the capacity to adapt to the market. These factors were then examined to understand how they contribute to digital manufacturing, utilizing an appropriate ordinal logistic regression. The resulting predictive analysis provides seldom-seen insights and valuable suggestions for the most effective deployment of digitalization in Indian industries.

The country-specific Industry 4.0 literature is quite limited. The survey mainly focuses on the National Capital Region. The number of demographic and functional factors can further be incorporated. Moreover, an addition of factors related to ecology, environment and society can make the study more insightful.

The present work provides valuable insights about the current status of digitization and expects to facilitate public or private policymakers to implement digital technologies in India with less efforts and the least resistance. It empowers India towards Industry 4.0 based tools and techniques and creates new socio-economic dimensions for the sustainable development.

The quantitative nature of the study and its statistical predictions (data-based) are novel. The clubbing of similar success factors to avoid inter-collinearity and complexity is seldom seen. The predictive analytics provided in this study is quite elusive as it provides directions with logic. It will help the Indian Government and industrial strategists to plan and perform their interventions accordingly.

Tourism–economy relationship in India has been studied extensively in the past literature using a single equation approach. However, the present paper diverted from this trend and examined the tourism–economy relationship using the specific to general modelling approach over the 1990–2018 time period. The study also accounts for the influence of merchandise trade, capital formation, foreign investment inflows and inflation on economic growth to achieve the robustness of the coefficient estimates.

To achieve the objective, the study utilised a specific to general modelling strategy. First, the regression equation includes only three core variables: gross domestic product (GDP), international tourist receipts and international tourist expenditures. Next, the authors include other control variables in the regression equation one by one, leading us to test five model types for investigating the cointegration among the variables. As for the estimation technique, the authors employed autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach.

The paper's findings highlight that tourism receipts and expenditures exert a positively significant impact on economic growth. Moreover, including the additional independent variables does not substantially change the tourism and economic growth relationship. The existence of one-way causality from tourism expenditures to economic growth supports the tourism-led growth hypothesis. These findings highlight the rationale for intervention by the government and policymakers to promote tourism potential and facilities to accelerate the overall growth performance of the country. While the existence of one-way causal effect from economic growth to tourism revenues supports the growth-led tourism development hypothesis, implying that economic expansion is necessary for tourism development.

This research article tried to present a comprehensive picture of India's tourism–economy relationship. However, the present study is organised as an aggregate economy-level analysis. It assumed that the aggregate tourism sector is homogenous. However, different tourism sectors exert different levels of influence on the economy. The authors expect future research can take the disaggregated analysis of the tourism–economy relationship.

This study provides valuable insights into the tourism-led growth hypothesis in India. The study highlights comprehensive intervention by the government and policymakers for accelerating tourism development to invigorate the overall growth performance of the country over the long run. The principal recommendation emerging from the present research is that the tourism growth potential can be depended upon to stimulate the economic performance of the Indian economy.

The present study diverted from the previous empirical studies by following a specific to general modelling strategy. First, the regression model includes only three core variables such as economic growth, tourism receipts and tourism expenditure. Next, the authors include other control variables in the regression equation one by one, leading us to test five model types for investigating the cointegrating relationship among the variables. GDP growth rate is used as a dependent variable in all five specifications. The idea is to expand the model to capture every feature of the data generating process.

Mediation is defined as a process, whether referred and agreed to by the expression mediation, pre-litigation mediation, online mediation, community mediation, conciliation or any other expression of such similar import, whereby party or parties, request an independent third person referred to as mediator or mediation service provider to assist them in their attempt to reach a peaceful settlement of a dispute. The peaceful settlement of any dispute to be initiated, processed, guided and moderated in the process of successful mediation before parties, needs mediator to have four major new skills such as witness-awareness, stillness-concentration, empathy-motivation and a pragmatic-sensibility for fulfilling the aims and outcomes of mediation. These four skills are deeply inward and psychological, which can be accessed and empowered by an exercise of deepening experience called spiritual in content and application. However, a crucial interchange of meaning and value that very often come into this situation between spirituality and psychology is an important one to be mentioned here. The two seemingly distant disciplines of experience, one of psychology and another of spirituality lies in the orientation that an individual and a collective give to life and world as a whole. When life and world are accepted in totality, spirituality can be life-affirmative and world-embracing giving us a direction to the individual psychological states of though-emotion-sensation-behaviour complex to embrace and enhance values of inclusion, harmony and development at the collective and universal level. These psychological states, both individual and collective, gradually open the vision and mission of values to live within and outside, to be and to become, and finally manifest a future world of stability, order, richness and growing perfection by solving challenges that come to our existence. It makes life both spiritual and earthly. This chapter demonstrates that this kind of spiritual meaning, value and experience entering into and operating through psychological capacities give mediator four major new skills for easing the process and purpose of mediation exercise. One, an objective awareness to witness the proceedings of the mediation calmly within the conscious cognition and without having any bias and fixed beliefs towards any issues of the parties. Two, a stillness with sensory concentration to avoid unnecessary reactions or agitations that human nature is prone to in taking sides on issues or become lop-sided in approach and consequently affecting mediation's outcome of peaceful settlement. Three, an empathy that animates and motivates parties to look for win-win situation for both as against the adversarial method currently present in the legal system where one party loses and another party gains grounds, which results in bitterness in parties' relationships, rights and obligations. Four, a pragmatic sensibility or practical responsibility by which costs or damages or injuries of all kinds such as social, economic, profit-loss ratio, psychological or organizational stress etc., can be pre-calculated, meaningfully distributed and harmonized between parties by the mediator. With millions of pending legal cases in the existing system of the courts of law that are supposedly designed to provide access to justice and, unfortunately have become fragile as a result of severe shortage of resources of all kinds to deal with sheer quantity and intricate complexity of issues in the disputes, applied spirituality in mediation can pave way for easy, flexible, quick, cost-effective and satisfactory justice to both sides of the parties when these four major new skills are developed through application of spiritual experience and experiments in the whole process of mediation. The author explains in this article the method of acquiring these four major new skills in experiential form in any mediation scenario and the rationale for infusing applied spirituality in mediation. Author also discusses the Indian situation of mediation in the light of new developments sought for enhancing the alternative dispute resolution. At the end, this chapter demonstrates the bigger picture that represent the need of spirituality using these four major new skills while mediating challenges of sustainable development. It will be shown in the end how spirituality, sustainability and mediation for settlements of disputes of sustainable development have something common, core and collective. This is the premise based on which the relationship between applied spirituality and mediation in overcoming the challenges of sustainability are expressed with the help of intuitive, inspirational, integrative and intelligent actions for a sustaining our future age, new humanity and harmonious space.

This research aims to explore the significance of cooperative efforts in promoting financial participation to enhance the socio-economic empowerment of the rural Muslims.

The primary study with a structured questionnaire has been conducted taking a sample of 398 rural Muslim respondents from various rural regions of south India through proportionate stratified sampling techniques. Regression analysis, paired sample t-test and structural equation modelling (SEM) through statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) 26 & SPSS analysis of moment structures (AMOS) 23 software have been implemented to test the relationship.

The research outcome demonstrated a remarkable difference in the rural Muslim’s socio-economic conditions before and after availing the loans from cooperatives. Consequently, an extension of cooperative efforts widens the scope of financial participation which again has positively enhanced rural Muslim’s socio-economic empowerment.

This study will help various policymakers, academicians and communities to take necessary action for the upliftment of a particular community. The research further adds on to the existing research on the need and importance of cooperative efforts as an alternative finance for marginalised community in developing and emerging countries.

The result of this study is only confined to south India, posing a limitation for the study. Apart from the geographical restriction, the study solemnly covers the rural Muslim community extracting other sections of the society. Hence, for more generalisable pictures of the current results, further research is recommended from other stakeholders’ perspectives.

Pakistan had never been a place of serious and nuanced debate and contestation of politics of postcolonial critique, that is, the continuity of economic, political, and cultural dependency of newly independent countries (NICs) on ex-colonizers as pointed out by neocolonialism, dependency theory, and postcolonial theory, respectively. Instead, Pakistan is presented by extant liberal academic literature as a “failed nation” and a state dominated by the military and plagued by religious extremism. As opposed to this, through the literary and activists writings of Aziz-ul-Haq, this chapter will try to illustrate how cultural contestation of the nation-building project postindependence from British rule was a lot more complex and interesting in Pakistan. This was so because the nation-building project of Pakistan was, on the one hand, an amalgamation of Indo-Persian, Arab, Indian, and Western colonial and civilizational influences and, on the other hand, entailed suppression of resilient local and national cultures of its constituent nationalities developed over centuries. This was later expressed in ethno-nationalist politics. However, when it came to the politics of the marginalized in the late 1960s, there were important political, theoretical, and literary insights which caused a change in the direction of political practice in Pakistan, which paralleled the politics expressed by writers like Fanon and early Subaltern Studies influenced by the Naxal Movement in India. The contestation and confusion arising from this dialectic also entered Pakistan's literary and cultural sphere. This chapter not only tries to give a different postcolonial critique of the failure of nation-building project in Pakistan but, though at a preliminary level, is an attempt to separate the original postcolonial theory in its radical tradition from contemporary postmodern/poststructuralist postcolonial theory marked with pessimism and resignation.

According to Global Healthcare Security Index 2021, India ranked 66 out of 195 countries, indicating the need and scope for improvement. The Cooperative healthcare system which has been rendering exemplary services is yet to gain visible recognition in India. Given the need for upgrading the health infrastructure in India and providing more affordable health services to the country’s growing population, it would help appreciate the large role that cooperative healthcare can play along with others. This study explores the structure, conduct, and performance of healthcare co-operatives in India, the factors contributing to their success and failure, and the challenges they face. The Health Cooperatives have a strong presence in Kerala and Karnataka and are also coming up in other parts of the country. However, a detailed database of them for public awareness is very limited. The cooperative hospitals can meet the basic requirements of curative treatment in rural and poorly-endowed urban areas. The democratic way in which they function makes them a destination for a financially weaker section. They must retain this feature. The study covers two successful cases which reveal that India needs a more dense healthcare cooperative network. Since cooperative hospitals in tune with the spirit of service run on the principle of being ‘Not-for-Profit’ they need to be supported by the governments more liberally, without however interfering with their governance and administration.

According to Yubin et al. (2023), films serve as a medium for conveying visual representations of various elements such as landscapes, buildings, landmarks and monuments, which provide a contextual backdrop for the narrative. According to Vila et al. (2021), the number of global tourists visiting film locations exceeds 80 million. In addition, according to Yubin et al. (2023), the promotion of tourism is facilitated through the utilisation of films, which serve to create novel representations, counteract negative perceptions and enhance the portrayal of underdeveloped destinations. A significant number of individuals engage in the practise of visiting movie sets with the intention of re-experiencing the emotional impact of the film. The devaluation of film marketing has been observed. This method represents a highly indirect approach to enticing tourists. This chapter examines the comprehension of travellers' motivations and the perception of film-exposed locations in Bollywood films (Salnick, 2023). Film tourism provides a tailored and personalised experience for individuals. The difficulty in measuring this concept arises from factors such as the emotional responsiveness, personality traits, background and interpretive abilities of the viewers in relation to media images. According to Castro et al. (2023), the inclusion of a destination on a screen can serve as a means to enhance the diversity of a site's tourist offerings or mitigate the effects of seasonality by providing opportunities for experiential activities, showcasing notable landmarks or serving as a filming location. Film destinations have the potential to gain popularity and benefit from advertising and the perception of spectators.

The purpose of this study is to construct a new index to assess the impact of an energy price shock on macroeconomic indicators of India. This paper also shows a comparative analysis of the constructed index along with pre-existing World Bank and International Monetary Fund indices on energy.

This paper uses three vector autoregressions and compute the long-term impact of the indices on the considered macroeconomic variables through impulse response functions.

This paper finds that an energy price shock has a detrimental impact on the macroeconomic indicators of India in the long run. This study also finds that the constructed index acts as a relatively more sensitive index in comparison to the International Monetary Fund and World Bank indices, which is bespoke to a developing economy case. This sensitivity is ascribed to dynamic weighting for a different basket of energy components, which are more pertinent to an Indian context.

The novelty of this research lies in the construction of a new index and its comparison to the existing ones. This study justifies why a developing economy would require a different measure of energy as opposed to the existing indices.

The study aims to examine how the information disclosed by the managers in the management discussion and analysis (MD&A) reports varies at the different levels of corporate performance.

To understand this quantile effect, first OLS technique was adopted and then, the quantile regression method was applied to explore the impact of MD&A disclosures on the firm performance across the lower and upper quantiles. The sample size for the study is 490 firms’ year observations for the period 2016–2022.

The results of the study demonstrate the negative but significant relationship between MD&A disclosures and corporate performance, supporting the two management strategies of “competitive disadvantage” in case of good performance and “management impression strategy” in case of poor performance. Furthermore, with other corporate governance variables, both the size of the board and the number of independent directors on the board are positively significant only in the case of the upper quantile indicating the heterogeneity in the relationship between the performance and the MD&A disclosures. Therefore, the overall findings of the study support that these results contradict the agency theory and the stakeholders’ theory as managers are not acting well as agents on behalf of the investors and work well only when they are controlled by the large board having more independent directors.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no study so far has incorporated quantile regression to assess the effect of MD&A disclosures on company performance at various levels of the firm performance, which gives more robust insights about the viewpoint of the managers on the different level of the firm performance. In other words, this study highlights the important information as to how the information provided in the MD&A reports varies as per the good or poor performance of the companies.