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A continuous mixed opinion on the relevance of caste-based reservations and caste as a factor of socioeconomic disparity in the recent period demands update of evidence on socioeconomic inequalities among caste groups for effective policy making. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the caste inequalities in terms of socioeconomic opportunities and poverty are still persisting in rural Uttar Pradesh based on village census surveys?

This study used data primarily collected from four village census surveys under the project rural transformation in Uttar Pradesh, 2013. Bivariate analyses, human opportunity index (HOI), multidimensional poverty index (MPI) and inequality decomposition analyses used as methods of analyses.

The authors findings suggest that in spite of more than six decades of welfare policies and major political mobilization movements among lower castes in the state, the huge inequalities in terms of critical socioeconomic indicators such as landholding, higher education and wealth distribution and multi-dimensional poverty across the castes are still persisting in the state. Decomposition results suggest that between group inequalities contribute more to the total inequality in landholding whereas within group inequalities contribute maximum to total inequality in education and wealth status of different castes in rural Uttar Pradesh. However, within inequalities much less in general castes compared to SCs/OBCs.

Based on its latest empirical evidence, this study strengthens the argument that caste still matters in socioeconomic achievements of the population in India even after decades of planning and financing of social welfare schemes to uplift the lower castes in India. Thus, provides critical inputs to current debates on the relevance of caste as a determinant of socioeconomic status in India.

The aim of this paper is to discuss the role of the economic revitalization programme, One District One Product (ODOP) implemented in the state of Uttar Pradesh of India in 2018, examine its strategy, and analyze its impact on employment generation, export promotion and economic growth of the state from 2018 to 2020.

Along with extensive literature, this paper uses case study approach for discussion. Arguments and facts are based on secondary data comprising of research by scholars, international agencies, government publications, websites, news reports, etc.

This paper presents positive impact of the systematically crafted ODOP programme. Nevertheless, for desired success, it signifies the inevitability of active participation and engagement of public that has always been a precarious subject in the literature of public administration and governance.

This paper offers a guiding live example for other states/countries to successfully implement ODOP programme which is a transformational step for realizing the true potential of each district. Strategies like ODOP may serve as an agent of change and be of immense help to governments in solving the problems of economic inequalities and regional imbalances.

The study aims to analyse the challenges faced by the Indian Handloom Sector with a special focus on the state of Uttar Pradesh before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study further explores the benefits of AatmaNirbhar Bharat Abhiyan for the betterment of the livelihood of the COVID-19–hit handloom weavers and allied workers.

A total of 400 handloom weavers and allied workers from ten cities of Uttar Pradesh were contacted through telephone. Descriptive statistics were applied to measure the awareness about the government welfare schemes and the benefits of these schemes. Furthermore, satisfaction and opinion of the handloom weavers and allied workers regarding the benefits and sufficiency of the funds received under these schemes have also been measured.

Based on the results, the least awareness has been noted about government welfare schemes. However, a small number of weavers and allied workers were found beneficiaries of the schemes. Additionally, the majority of the respondents were found dissatisfied with the benefits. The COVID-19 pandemic is an addendum to the plight of handloom weavers and allied workers. The measures of AatmaNirbhar Bharat Abhiyan could be used to aid weavers and allied workers to restore their lost revenue.

This study has limitations. Firstly, the research is limited to the handloom industry of Uttar Pradesh. Future researchers could consider the handloom sector of other states like Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, known for hand-woven clothes. Secondly, this study aims to analyse the role of AatmaNirbhar Bharat Abhiyan in improving the living conditions of handloom weavers and allied workers and not to measure the impact of the Abhiyan on handloom weavers or the handloom sector. Researchers could measure the impact in future studies. Thirdly, the authors have not applied any behavioural theory or marketing models such as the Theory of Reasoned Action or the Blackwell model, which may be applied to study the attitude of handloom weavers towards welfare schemes. This may prove to be a potential direction for future research. Additionally, master weavers and handloom cooperatives societies were excluded while collecting the data. Future researchers could consider them to examine the role of the government’s welfare schemes for uplifting the socio-economic condition of the handloom weavers, allied workers, master weavers and the business of cooperative societies. Finally, due to lockdown and travel ban, the authors were forced to limit their survey to telephone only because of which they could not get the qualitative information in full. Researchers for future studies could visit the handloom concentrated areas personally or take the help of an enumerator for data collection.

The research holds significance for the young and competent designers, handloom weavers and allied workers. Designers could work with and hire handloom weavers of Uttar Pradesh. If designers and weavers work together, it will help them restore their business and generate revenue that they have lost due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, policymakers can collaborate with designers, which will help enhance the socio-economic condition of handloom weavers and allied workers, which has deteriorated due to the COVID-19 crisis.

The research holds significance from the point of view of exploring the challenges faced by handloom weavers and allied workers of the state of UP before and during the COVID-19 period while examining the role of AatmaNirbhar Bharat Abhiyan in setting off these challenges.

The present research has been conceptualized to make an inter-district analysis in terms of IHDI of Uttar Pradesh. It aims to provide district-wise estimates of HDI and IHDI with the latest available data, which may prove to be a critical policy input to the policy makers that how different districts are performing in terms of education, health and standard of living parameters and help in implementing tailor made policy actions.

The paper utilizes the Census of India data and unit-level data of National Sample Survey (NSS) for constructing HDI and IHDI. The broad framework for computing IHDI in this study is similar to the approach of UNDP's HDR 2010. To adjust the inequality aspect, the Atkinson inequality aversion parameter has been estimated at indicator level on the basis of NSS unit record data.

The study reveals that inequality discounted income index is on an average 30 percent lower than unadjusted income index. However, quite high variation exists in case of education and health. The difference ranges from 30 percent to 40 percent in the case of education and from 3 to 36 percent in the health dimension. The surprising fact which study finds that health infrastructure and education infrastructure are poorly correlated with their respective outcomes.

The study offers a policy suggestion that increasing investment on educational and health infrastructure will not have any significant impact on their respective outcomes unless distributional inequalities are reduced. The study also suggests that rising income inequalities are threat to inclusive growth and sustainable development goals agenda. Thus, it recommends policy makers to take pro-active timely policy measures to reduce income inequalities. The educational achievement should be fixed in terms of average years of schooling and expected years of schooling rather than in terms of literacy rate.

The present research is an original work. This is the first study in the case of Uttar Pradesh which attempted to estimate district-wise IHDI following the internationally accepted UNDP (2010) methodology.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the social and economic disparities across social groups in rural Uttar Pradesh. The paper demonstrates that the structure of the rural economy in India is characterised by deeply ingrained prejudices and social discrimination. The four-village study undertaken in one of the most populated states in India, Uttar Pradesh, clearly reveals that there is a huge disparity in terms of various social and economic indicators and that the so-called high growth has hardly helped in bettering their lives.

The paper is based on primary data collected from the Census survey of villages exploring socio-economic disparities across social groups by using decomposition models.

The results evidently lend credence to the postulations that a large proportion of the disadvantaged groups are prone to multiple deprivations, both in the society and in labour markets. The inquiry reveals this phenomenon clearly.

From the policy point of view, it is therefore imperative to ensure the direct and focussed provision of basic human requirements in terms of education, employment and income of the state. The implementation of direct policy interventions is an absolute necessity if the state has to guarantee convergence and the inclusive growth process on a sustained basis.

This paper fulfils an identified need to study the inequality among the social groups in terms of education, employment, income and livelihood opportunities in selected villages of four districts of Uttar Pradesh.

This paper aims to explore the factors for self-help groups (SHGs) women empowerment in the state of Uttar Pradesh using the primary data.

The primary data have been collected by a household survey in the four districts of Uttar Pradesh. Factor analysis is used to estimate the odd of improving women empowerment after participating in SHG.

Factor analysis extracted four factors which were economic development, improvement in family matters, decision to use public amenities and political empowerment. Also, analysis of variance and t-test was used employing SPSS. The results, therefore, show that education has a significant impact on all the aspects of SHGs people.

The findings of the study can help policymakers to adopt appropriate policies that integrate empowerment in development projects with women.

The results of this research could encourage more women to participate in SHG activities and development projects.

This research provides the most updated data from a primary survey in the state of Uttar Pradesh.

Reports the results of a study into the urban health issues of Muslim minorities, in the city of Aligarh, India, in 1991‐1993. Outlines the conceptual framework and presents the methodology before providing a brief portrait of the Muslim minority status and urbanization. Concludes that basic health information is still lacking. Comments that infectious diseases, malnutrition and occupational diseases are the most common, with women, children and elderly being the most vulnerable.

Children are the most vulnerable group owing to long lasting impact of the violation of human rights in term of proper nutrition and their right to live. The purpose of this paper is to assess the risk of child mortality associated with size of child at birth and mother’s anemia level in northern India.

The data were used from 2015–2016 National Family Health Survey (NFHS). The participants (n = 41,412) were children aged under-five years from north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. The main outcome measure was child deaths defined by under-five mortality. The univariate, bivariate and multivariate analyses were used in data analysis. Kaplan–Meier analyses, Log-rank tests and Cox’s regression analyses were performed to fulfill the objective of the study.

There were a total of 2,835 deaths out of 41,412 births in the past five years preceding the survey period. Children of very small size at birth were significantly two and half times more likely to die than children of average size at birth. The estimated adjusted hazard ratio indicated that the children of severely anemic mothers were significantly 1.5 times more likely to die compared to children of not anemic mothers. Size of child at birth, mother’s anemia level, mother’s age at time of her first birth, wealth index and mother’s education were significantly associated with the under-five mortality in northern India.

The limitation of this study is recall errors arising from the dates of birth and death given by women interviewed in the survey were minimized by restricting the analyses to births within the five-year period preceding the survey.

This study advocates the promotion of comprehensive prevention strategies through appropriate institutional mechanism would be the best intervention or adaptive mechanism to reduce the adverse impact of size of child at birth, mother’s anemia level on under-five mortality in Uttar Pradesh, India.

This research is original. This study enjoys a unique importance by exploring effect of size of child at birth and mother’s anemia on child survival in developing countries like India.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the agricultural practices in a drought-prone region of India in an effort to find out how science, technology and innovation (STI) measures can address the existing problems and help achieve sustainable solutions. This study has been planned with two specific objectives: to study the agricultural practices of small and marginal-holding farmers in a drought-prone region and to examine the opportunities for suitable interventions to mitigate the impacts of droughts. The study is based on primary survey conducted in Banda district of Bundelkhand region, Uttar Pradesh, India.

Empirical survey was done in eight different blocks of a drought-prone region of India using structured questionnaire. The questionnaire was pre-tested with a group of 12 farmers during a workshop through a pilot survey conducted during April 2017. Stratified sampling based on land holdings (small farmers having 1–2 ha of land, medium farmers having 2.1–5 ha of land and large farmers having more than 5 ha of land) and irrigation types (canals and tube wells) were utilised in different blocks of the district for selecting farmers in the surveyed villages.

Findings suggest that due to various reasons like change in climatic conditions, frequent crop failure, crop diseases and high cost of production, farmers have adopted certain crops which are not suited to their agro-climatic conditions. The paper recommends that farmer’s school or “on-farm training school” have to be initiated to integrate farmers’ traditional knowledge with modern knowledge systems with amalgamation of STI tools.

Uttar Pradesh is divided into nine agro-climatic zones; however, this study is focused on Bundelkhand and may be region specific, though the findings are important for other drought-prone areas.

The paper links the existing agricultural practices and further linking them with farmers’ socio-economic, cultural and environmental settings. Only 17.5 per cent of respondents owned any agricultural equipment due to high cost of farm tools, difficulty in taking equipements on rental basis and lack of sharing tools among the farmers.

This paper targets small and marginal farmers in the drought-prone region of India who face the dual shock of climate impacts and poverty. Adoption of modern agricultural practices and use of technology is inadequate which is further hampered by ignorance of such practices, high costs and impracticality in the case of small land holdings.

This paper has advocated for well-organised, efficient and result-oriented STI system to mitigate the adverse impacts of drought-prone agriculture. Farming community in drough-prone areas needs adequate investment, local-specific technology, better quality inputs, real-time information on weather and most importantly latest know-how for sustaining commercial and cost effective sustainable agriculture.

The authors intend to assess the village health sanitation and nutrition committees (VHSNC) on six parameters, including their formation, composition, meeting frequencies, activities, supervisory mechanisms and funds receipt and expenditures across nine districts of the three states of India.

The cross-sectional study, conducted in the states of Uttar Pradesh (five districts), Odisha (two districts) and Rajasthan (two districts), used a quantitative research design. The community health workers of 140 VHSNCs were interviewed using a semi-structured questionnaire. The details about the funds' receipt and expenditures were verified from the VHSNC records (cashbook). Additionally, the authors asked about the role of health workers in the VHSNC meetings, and the issues and challenges faced.

The average number of members in VHSNCs varied from 10 in Odisha to 15 in Rajasthan. Activities were regularly organized in Rajasthan and Odisha (one per month) compared to Uttar Pradesh (one every alternate month). Most commonly, health promotion activities, cleanliness drives, community monitoring and facilitation of service providers were done by VHSNCs. Funds were received regularly in Odisha compared to Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. Funds were received late and less compared to the demands or needs of VHSNCs.

This comprehensive analysis of VHSNCs' functioning in the selected study areas sheds light on the gaps in many components, including the untimely and inadequate receipt of funds, poor documentation of expenditures and involvement of VHSNC heads and inadequate supportive supervision.

VHSNCs assessment has been done for improving community health governance.