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The main purpose of this study is to test for the interaction effect of digital literacy in the relationship between financial technologies (FinTechs) of biometrics and mobile money and digital financial inclusion among the unbanked poor women, youth and persons with disabilities (PWDs) in rural Uganda.

Covariance-based structural equation modeling was used to construct the interaction effect using data collected from the unbanked poor women, youth and PWDs located in the four regions in Uganda as prescribed by Hair et al. (2022).

The findings from this study are threefold: first; the results revealed a positive interaction effect of digital literacy between FinTechs of biometrics and mobile money and digital financial inclusion. Second; the results also confirmed that biometrics identification positively promotes digital financial inclusion. Lastly; the results showed that mobile money positively promotes digital financial inclusion. A combination of FinTechs of biometrics and mobile money together with digital literacy explain 29% variation in digital financial inclusion among the unbanked poor women, youth and PWDs in rural Uganda.

The data for this study were collected mainly from the unbanked poor women, youth and PWDs. Further studies may look at data from other sections of the vulnerable population in under developed financial markets. Additionally, the data for this study were collected only from Uganda as a developing country. Thus, more data may be obtained from other developing countries to draw conclusive and generalized empirical evidence. Besides, the current study used cross sectional design to collect the data. Therefore, future studies may adopt longitudinal research design to investigate the impact of FinTechs on digital financial inclusion in the presence of digital literacy across different time range.

The governments in developing countries like Uganda should support women, youth, PWDs and other equally vulnerable groups, especially in the rural communities to understand and use FinTechs. This can be achieved through digital literacy that can help them to embrace digital financial services and competently navigate and perform digital transactions over digital platforms like mobile money without making errors. Besides, governments in developing countries like Uganda can use this finding to advocate for the design of appropriate digital infrastructures to reach remote areas and ensure “last mile connectivity for digital financial services' users.” The use of off-line solutions can complement the absence or loss of on-line network connectivity for biometrics and mobile money to close the huge digital divide gap in rural areas. This can scale-up access to and use of financial services by the unbanked rural population.

This paper sheds more light on the importance of digital literacy in the ever complex and dynamic global FinTech ecosystem in the presence of rampant cyber risks. To the best of the authors' knowledge, limited studies currently exist that integrate digital literacy as a moderator in the relationship between FinTechs and digital financial inclusion, especially among vulnerable groups in under-developed digital financial markets in developing countries. This is the novelty of the paper with data obtained from the unbanked poor women, youth and PWDs in rural Uganda.

Microcharity is a non-profit organization promoting social brotherhood through small donations and volunteer services among diverse members, aiming to address poverty through compassion, cooperation and humanitarianism. The study aims to comprehend the role of microcharity as an alternative to microcredit for poverty alleviation. It sheds light on the modus operandi, prospects and problems associated with microcharity.

The current study used a qualitative research design to investigate a social phenomenon while involving the researchers directly. The study applied participatory action research by involving participants and researchers to comprehend social challenges and evaluate their experiences. The study made considerable use of participant-observer data and field observations.

It has been revealed that microcharity has potential to address social challenges faced by the marginalized and vulnerable section of society.

This study is based on participatory action research, and therefore, it suffers from academic standardization and heavily depends on researchers. On the other hand, it offers practical approach to solve social problems and would bring forth realistic resolution by offering insights of those making use of micro charity for philanthropic activities.

The article is especially helpful for communities that must respond to emergencies and will be beneficial to individuals and institutions working for social welfare.

It will bring forth various facets of micro charity as an alternate for fundraising to rescue sufferers of social exigencies through collective efforts.

The article represents original scholarly research, leveraging the researchers' personal experience to enrich the understanding of microcharity. Its implications are valuable for communities involved in social welfare and can benefit individuals working for charitable institutions, cooperative societies, NGOs and social welfare programmes of government. Additionally, the study's insights can aid researchers in designing new methodologies to explore microcharity and its impact on social welfare initiatives.

This paper aims to conduct a systematic literature review on the fintech services and financial inclusion of the developing nations that particularly focuses on lower middle-income group nations (LMIGN) and upper middle-income group nations (UMIGN) to highlight the research areas that have not received attention and present opportunities for future research.

This paper adopts a systematic approach to examine 65 research articles published from 2016 to 2021, adhering to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines.

The study identifies research gaps in two key themes: backward and outward linkages. In backward linkages, the literature on UMIGN should pay attention to the behavioural patterns associated with lending, investment and market provision-related fintech services. Further research is needed to understand the relationship between fintech services on the usage and quality dimension of financial inclusion in both LMIGN and UMIGN. For outward linkages, future research work should explore the role of fintech and financial inclusion in the development of LMIGN. This study provides valuable insights and guides future research directions by comprehensively mapping the existing studies.

This study does not use quantitative tools, such as meta and bibliometric analysis, to validate the findings.

This research paper offers new perspectives that introduce a novel framework for analysing literature on fintech, financial inclusion and its impact on the overall development of UMIGN and LMIGN.

This qualitative study aims to examine bankers’ perspectives regarding financial inclusion, the challenges it faces and the scope for improvement. This research proposes a financial inclusion model, considering the inputs received by bankers. Financial exclusion of different sections is an issue common to emerging countries.

Data for qualitative research were collected through interviews with bank officials. The information was gathered from 32 bankers from India’s several zones (North, South, West and East). The data were collected from bankers from different public and private sector banks. Thematic analysis was performed up to the point of saturation to study the response received from bankers.

Bank-related issues such as frequent computer problems, network connectivity problems, costs, a shortage of bank branches, fewer transactions through automated teller machines and a shortage of banking staff affect customers’ confidence in formal banking. Banking services are disrupted by a lack of trust in banking correspondents (BCs), as they are not regular employees of banks. Limits on daily transactions discourage high-value customers from using BCs and kiosks. The time spent on administrative formalities impacts customers. Financial inclusion is affected by availability, accessibility, usage and affordability. Digital financial literacy is essential for ease of transaction, but awareness about financial products helps protect customers from cyber scams. The findings of this research would benefit financial institutions globally in developing their businesses and helping to achieve financial inclusion and the United Nation’s sustainable development goals (SDGs).

This research paper undertakes a qualitative analysis of the views collected from bankers. Bankers are crucial stakeholders in the successful implementation of the National Financial Inclusion Policy of the Government of India. Bankers’ perspectives will be important not only for India and its researchers but also in the global context, as the UN’s SDGs focus on leaving no one behind.

A woman's nutritional status significantly determines her overall well-being. The authors critically examine the trends — including socioeconomic disparities — in undernutrition among Muslim women in India, a notably socio-economically disadvantaged group. The authors also investigate trends and variations across the dimensions of caste, place of residence (rural/urban), education, economic status and geographic regions.

The analysis leverages the nationally representative National Family Health Surveys (NFHS) of India conducted between 1998 and 2021. The authors examined poor–rich ratios, concentration indices, disparity ratios and predicted probabilities of being underweight (captured using Body Mass Index).

From 1998 to 2021, there has been a decline in undernutrition prevalence among Muslim women. However, stark socioeconomic variations persist. While the prevalence has decreased over time across all socioeconomic groups, disparities — both within and between groups — remain significant and, in many cases, have expanded. For certain socioeconomic subgroups (e.g. Muslim women with no formal education or those in the Central and Northeast regions), the disparity doubled between 1998 and 2021. In regions like the South, where undernutrition prevalence is low or has reduced, disparities remain significant and generally have increased.

To the authors’ knowledge, the study is the first to provide a comprehensive examination of the prevalence, trends and socioeconomic disparities in undernutrition among Muslim women in India over the past two decades.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-04-2023-0320

The global outbreak of COVID-19 and its subsequent varied impacts on different economic activities necessitate to examine its disruptions and impacts on livestock sector in India due to its recently surging potential as an unrivaled alternative to boost farmer’s income.

The studies for review were identified through search in different databases using relevant keywords. Only full text papers written in English language were reviewed. The review was organized and streamlined using Covidence software.

Analysis of the literature reveals adverse effects of COVID-19 on functioning of input and output stages of livestock supply chains. This has resulted in upstream and downstream economic losses that affect livelihoods of the producers.

Scale of unprecedented crisis due to COVID-19 pandemic requires creative policy decisions to make livestock production systems robust, resilient and sustainable. Organized production systems are required to integrate with livestock-tech startups to modernize their supply chains, whereas local supply chains are required to reorient with government’s intervention in terms of developing on-farm production and postproduction processing facilities.

Although there exist some evidence on COVID-19-related impacts on livestock sector of India, but an integrated review of evidence on COVID-19 related disruptions at all the stages (from input supply to marketing) of livestock supply chains was missing.

The paper addresses the privacy–personalisation paradox in the post-GDPR-2018 era. As the regulation came in a bid to regulate the collection and use of personal data, its implications remain underexplored. The research question is: How do consumers perceive the matter of personal data collection for the use of highly targeted and personalised ads post-GDPR-2018? The invasion of privacy vs the benefits of highly personalised digital marketing.

To address the research question, this qualitative study conducts semi-structured interviews with 14 individuals, consisting of average users and digital experts.

This paper reports on increasing consumer vulnerability post-GDPR-2018 due to increased awareness of personal data collection yet incessant lack of control, particularly regarding the repercussions of the digital footprint. The privacy paradox remains an issue except among experts, and personalisation remains necessary, yet critical challenges arise (e.g. filter bubbles and intrusion).

Policy implications include education, regulating consent platforms and encouraging consensual sharing of personal data.

While the privacy–personalisation paradox has been widely studied, the impact of GDPR-2018 has rarely been addressed in the literature. GDPR-2018 has seemingly had little impact on instilling a sense of security for consumers; if anything, this paper highlights greater concerns for privacy as users sign away their rights on consent forms to access websites, thus contributing novel insights to this area of research.

Several countries, such as South Africa and India, believe that intellectual property rights (IPRs), including patents, impede the efficient increase in vaccine production to inoculate the global population as they scramble to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. Their proposal at the World Trade Organization (WTO) to waive these pharmaceutical patents has been met with resistance from a few developed countries, who believe that the abrogation of IPRs is unnecessary, even during a pandemic. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the impact of a potential waiver of medical patents at the WTO versus the status quo of IPR laws in the global economy.

This study examines key arguments from economic and moral standpoints regarding the provisions of the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement and other related international agreements and their validity based on the premise of the internalisation of positive externalities posed by vaccines.

The effectiveness of the TRIPS agreement in securing medical access is weak on account of the ability of profit-making multinationals to secure IP rights and on account of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a multilateral agreement that supports patent evergreening and a period of protection on test data which challenges the access to medicines and the fundamental human right to health.

This study examines international IPRs through the lens of human rights and proposes a new system that balances the two.

The present study aims to examine the moderating impact of governance quality on the tourism poverty nexus using a panel of six South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries during the period 2002 to 2019.

For the soundness of the results, fully modified ordinary least square (FMOLS) and dynamic ordinary least square (DOLS) econometric models were applied to determine the long-run relationship.

The findings confirmed the positive and significant impact of tourism development (international tourism arrival) and governance quality (effectiveness of governmental services) on poverty (per capita household consumption) reduction. Interestingly results confirm that governance quality and tourism development have complementary impacts on poverty reduction.

The present study has twofold contributions; First, despite the high potential of SAARC tourism, research remains limited in studies examining the role of tourism and governance quality on poverty reduction within the SAARC region. As a result, the present paper presents critical insights into the impact of tourism inflow and governance quality on poverty reduction in South Asian countries. Second, to the best of the author's knowledge, this is the first attempt to conduct an econometric analysis to examine the role of governance quality on the relationship between tourism inflow and poverty reduction in SAARC countries.

Sudden and unannounced policy changes by the government that provide banks with windfall deposits creates a challenge in terms of resource deployment. In the process, there is an impact on their risk and returns. Using data on domestic Indian commercial banks, this study aims to examine the impact of such an announcement – the 2016 demonetisation episode – on bank behaviour.

Using data on domestic Indian commercial banks during 2010–2020, the paper investigates the effect of a sudden and unannounced policy change on their risk and returns. Using the demonetisation undertaken in November 2016 as a natural experiment, the paper applies the difference-in-differences methodology to tease out the causal impact.

The findings reveal a decline in risk and an increase in returns of state-owned banks, consistent with a flight-to-safety. The response differed in terms of market and accounting measures and across state-owned banks with differing levels of capital and asset quality.

Although several aspects of the demonetisation episode have been well analysed, its impact on banks – the main conduits of the exercise – and in particular on their risk and returns, is an unaddressed area of research. Viewed from this standpoint, this is one of the early studies to undertake a comprehensive empirical analysis on this aspect.