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To understand the role of the unorganized sector in the push toward a circular economy (CE), the authors consider the case of the unorganized tire retreading industry in India and examine the barriers it faces in contributing to a circular tire supply chain in India.

The authors used grounded theory methodology (GTM) to understand the barriers to realizing the CE in the Indian unorganized tire retreading industry. This methodology facilitates the acquisition of new insights into an existing phenomenon or in studying emerging areas that require investigation.

Through the analysis, the authors tease out ten critical barriers that impede the Indian unorganized tire retreading industry. The two most vital barriers are the lack of effective promotional methods and the poor implementation of standards.

This study emphasizes the importance of further investigating the potential role of the unorganized sector in fostering the transition to a CE in emerging economies.

The research provides useful policy prescriptions to regulators and insights to original tire manufacturers (OTMs) that enable the unorganized tire retreaders in India to contribute to the movement toward a circular supply chain (CSC).

This study is the first to systematically examine the unorganized sector to understand the barriers to CE. This study provides an original theoretical contribution by expanding the scope of stakeholder and institutional theories.

This article analyses the structural change in microenterprises located at India's unorganised manufacturing sector in terms of output mix, choice of technique and productivity during the last few decades.

Based on data collected from a quinquennial survey of unorganised firms, this study attempts productivity analysis by using the growth accounting technique.

The paper finds that there is a significant structural change which has occurred in the small firm sector in Indian manufacturing. The share of capital-intensive industries has increased substantially in recent years. Further, though small firms are more labour intensive, the labour productivity and total productivity of these firms are very low. The falling labour productivity and rising capital intensity indicates replacement of labour with capital in Indian small firm sector.

Low productivity of the sector is a cause for concern and this needs to be addressed by making the sector more competitive in the world market. To achieve this, policies should be designed so that small firms reach the efficient scale of production.

This is the first paper which examines structural changes in the Indian MSME sector. The findings have strong implications for creation of a viable ecosystem of entrepreneurship in the country.

The materialization and continuation of the pandemic have a big toll on everyone's life. Female workers specifically from the unorganized sector faced diversified financial crises during the pandemic. These households went through multiple changes in terms of expenditure, loan burden, job uncertainty, etc. A selected sample of 149 has been considered to understand the changes that had taken place in terms of health, expenditure, and other associated evolved behavior in lockdown and post-lockdown phase in a selected rural-based area of West Bengal. By applying different statistical tools like regression, f-test, and t-test, various influencing factors for household expenditure along with the changes in savings behavior have been observed in the chapter. A sudden crisis like COVID-19 has made the selected respondents responsive toward vivid positive lifestyle and attitude changes like financial literacy, savings, crisis management, and so on.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a profile of regional industrial growth in wake of the competition among Indian states to accelerate the pace of industrialization. The results indicate tendency towards concentration of manufacturing activities even in the reform era.

The attempt is to compare trends since 1991 to the earlier decade and decipher the extent of the effectiveness of policy changes in disbursing industrial activity regionally.

The paper finds that organized manufacturing activity is concentrated in few states. The early movers continue to dominate cornering substantial share of the national industrial investments and production. Even in an era of market reforms the trend continues. This indicates a degree of “path dependence” in industrialization in the economy. There seems to be slight dispersal of activities in the unorganized segment. New forms of organization of production have fostered industrial growth in the unorganized segment. However, regions which dominate in the organized segment have been able to increase their share in the value added of the unorganized segment as well.

There is dearth of studies that examine the extent of the effectiveness of policy changes in disbursing industrial activity regionally.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the performance of small manufacturing enterprises (SMEs) in India during the pre‐reforms (prior to 1991) and reforms period (1991 onwards) with focus on 15 major states from different levels of development.

In order to capture variation across different categories of states, 15 major states in India have been classified into high‐, middle‐ and low‐income states. Further, to capture productivity growth in the sector during the pre‐reforms and reforms period, both partial factor productivity and total factor productivity method (growth accounting approach) have been adopted. The analysis is based on different rounds of nationwide survey conducted by the National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) of the Government of India during 1978‐2001.

The findings of the study reveal erosion in growth of output in the SMEs during the reforms period as compared to the pre‐reforms period with variation across different categories of states. The decline in growth of output during the reforms period can be primarily on account of fall in growth of employment and investment. The total factor productivity growth has also declined during the reforms period suggesting the need to enhance the level of technical efficiency and skills of the labour force in the sector. This is noticed in spite of major role played by the SMEs in providing employment (80 per cent of the total manufacturing sector employment) opportunities and in generating output (contributes 60 per cent of net domestic product) in the country.

On account of non‐availability of annual data, the study relied on data collected by the NSSO of the Government of India periodically. In addition, the study did not examine the factors that explain decline in productivity growth in the sector.

There is a large body of literature on regional growth and productivity in the Indian manufacturing sector but most of the studies have considered only the organized manufacturing sector. This study contributes to the literature by analyzing the inter‐state variation in growth and productivity performance of SMEs in the pre‐reforms and reforms periods.

A vast majority of India's labour force is in unorganized sector. In the absence of economic opportunities in their own states, many workers migrate across the other states of India to seek employment. Construction industry depends almost entirely on migrant workers, majority of which are women. The main object of this paper is to shed light on the socio‐economic problems being faced by a section of the women workers in construction industry. These women workers have a very tough life. In spite of being actively involved in economic activities for survival, bearing and rearing of children remain their prime responsibility, and thus they end up with playing roles in both production and reproduction.

It has been observed in various studies that the “servicization” of the structures of production and employment has taken place in India. However, a problem peculiar to this sector or several types of services is that the output of some components of this sector is difficult to measure as well as to value it in monetary terms. The purpose of this paper is to identify the problems encountered in the measurement of service sector output.

The paper makes use of secondary sources of data including various reports, books and journals, etc. An attempt has been made in this paper to review those studies which deal with measurement problems in services sector output.

In the Indian context, it has been found that the data base on the service sector is highly disorganized. It has been recognized in studies that the limitation of the existing system is marred by the absence of a well-organized mechanism for maintaining a regular and proper database for this sector. A large number of the unorganized units are located in the service sector and the composition of units in the domain undergoes changes at a rapid pace because new units or newer service areas come into existence and others disappear with alarming frequency. Therefore, the need for “devising a proper classification of services” by identifying all new services and adopting a suitable methodology so as to maintain international comparability of data has been highlighted in various studies.

Although there are studies which try to point out measurability problems of services in developed European economies, however, studies related to service sector statistics problems in India are far less in number. This paper will therefore mainly focus on the service sector statistics problems in India and point out the way forward.

The article evaluates the adequacy of the data on employment activity for an understanding of women's work. It looks at how men and women are distributed in the labour force in India and how far the sexes are segregated into different types of work. Finally, the article examines the particular characteristics of women's work in India, and looks at how these differ from the distinctive patterns of women's work in the West.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the factors which affect the financial access of the female-owned informal enterprises (FOIEs) in India. There has been a dearth of studies particularly targeting determinants of credit access by the women-owned informal enterprises. Demand side factors affecting financial access have been studied. The study of major factors affecting access to credit by unorganized women enterprises will be useful for policy making perspectives.

The study uses nationalized micro data set on the non-agricultural informal enterprises and probit estimation has been used to identify the factors which affect the probabilities of access to credit for the FOIEs.

The study highlights what facilitates and hinders the financial access for the FOIEs particularly in India. These enterprises in rural areas have better chances to avail credit from formal sources. Firm size, measured by policy-making size of employment and gross profit, involvement in diversified activities, maintenance of accounting record, has positive and significant impact on access to formal credit. The younger firms and the firms operating in the southern states of the country have higher probabilities to avail credit from institutional sources.

The study used the latest data set available on Indian informal enterprises, thus provides important insights about the status of financing of enterprises in India. This study highlights the regional variations and gender disparities that are prevalent in the Indian economy.

The purpose of this research is to portray the historical evolution of retailing from 1980 to 2020. The study considers India as the domain as it is one of the fastest growing markets, and the retail growth is anticipated to reach more than one trillion dollars within this decade.

This paper captures the historical growth trajectory of retailing from the pre-online era to the online era and highlights how the retail environment has become modernized and sophisticated in the process in India.

The study traces the journey of retail from 1980 to the multi-billion-dollar sector it had become by 2020 in India. Furthermore, the article provides an overview of how the different retail forms and players in the Indian retail sector have been shaping the industry over the last four decades. During this period, there has been a transformational change in the format of Indian retailing. The Indian consumers' shopping mindset moved from physical in the 1980s to online, and now “Phygital” (Physical and Digital) in 2020s has become an omni-channel platform in Indian retail.

This paper aims to present a viewpoint of the evolutions of retailing from the unorganized to the organized form and from the physical to the online form over the last 40 years in the Indian retail sector landscape.