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Heavy metals play a crucial role in the economic development of any nation. Industries utilizing heavy metals, consequently, emanate a large volume of metal-containing liquid effluents. Since metals are non-renewable and finite resources, their judicious and sustainable use is the key. Hazardous metal-laden water poses threat to human health and ecology. Apart from metals, these industrial effluents also consist of toxic chemicals. Conventional physical–chemical techniques are not efficient enough as it consumes energy and are, therefore, not cost effective.

It is known that biomaterials namely microorganisms, plants, and agricultural biomass have the competence to bind metals, in some cases, selectively, from aqueous medium. This phenomenon is termed as “metal biosorption.” Biosorption has immense potential of becoming an effective alternative over conventional methods. The authors in the present chapter have used secondary data from their previous research work and attempted to develop few strategic models through their feasibility studies for metal sustainability.

The major component of agriculture production includes the type of seed, soil, climatic conditions, irrigation pattern, fertilizer, weed control, and technology used. Soil is one of the prime elements in modern times for agriculture. Soil is also one of the primary and important factors for crop production. The available soil nutrient status and external applications of fertilizers decide the growth of crop productivity (Annoymous, 2017). The upcoming research question that needs to be addressed is What is the application of soil data on soil health management for sustaining agriculture? Driven by the need, the aim of the present study is (a) to explore the soil parameters of a district, (b) compare the values with the standards, and (c) pave a way for mapping the crops with suitability of soil health. This study will not only be beneficial for the district to take appropriate steps to improve the soil health but also would help in understanding the causal relationship among soil health parameters, cropping pattern, and crop productivity.

Land bank distribution in India is a complex subject and with the family size reduction, the average land holding is going down. Maintenance of the land records in physical format is very difficult. There are thousands of court disputes for different land parcels and managing the same is becoming a complex task. The aim of the chapter is to design a conceptual framework with electronic landbank records in dematerialized form, so that they can be easily maintained and traded. Associated benefits of implementing such system are also discussed. Authors have used secondary data published in previous research work in the area of Geographical Information System (GIS) and business analytics to analyze the prospects of land bank dematerialization and its possible applications. The chapter focuses on the need of regulatory support and associated IT infrastructure to put the plan in action. If implemented, this change can help India to transform its land management process and will also enable to explore commercial utilization of agricultural land and urban land plots for planned development.

A major chunk of rural people live on agriculture and other allied activities viz animal husbandry, dairying and fisheries, etc. Rural development constitutes of lot of big data related to rural employment which has driven this study to address a research question that what is the application of big data in rural development with special reference to the world’s largest public works and wage employment generating poverty alleviation program – Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA)? The concepts of MGNREGA are novel and innovative though the program continues to suffer from various rigidities depicted from the data. This drives us to the objectives of our research. The objective of the study is to explore literature and big data on rural development with special reference to MGNREGA, explore the upcoming challenges in rural employment with special reference to MGNREGA, identify gaps in existing literature and pave out future research direction. The present study paves various ways for future research directions for academicians, researchers and policy maker.