India’s Response to COVID-19 Crisis

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has presented India with complex economic and public health challenges. Furthermore, these two crises interact with each other in unpredictable ways whence there is considerable uncertainty in designing a policy response. This article purports to place India's experience with the corona virus with a cutoff date of 30 June 2020 in perspective and to examine the public health and economic challenges as well as the economy's prospects in a post-COVID world. The article lists key dates in the development of this pandemic in India and globally. We then outline the economic and health strategies followed in India to combat the crisis. We further discuss some consequences of the pandemic and elements of India’s recovery strategy. We also assess elements of India's recovery. Finally, this article discusses prospects for the Indian economy in the short run

Heat Transfer in MHD Micropolar Fluid Flow Past a Vertical Plate in Slip-Flow Regime

We consider unsteady flow of a micropolar fluid through a porous medium bounded by a semi-infinite vertical plate in slip-flow regime. A uniform magnetic field acts perpendicular to the porous surface which absorbs the micropolar fluids with a suction velocity varying with time. The free stream velocity follows an exponentially increasing or decreasing small perturbation law. Using approximate method the expression for the velocity microrotation, and temperature are obtained

Fodder Market in Bihar: An Exploratory Study

Dairy farmers in Bihar are mostly smallholders having one or two local-bred milch animals, which are raised on crop residues and natural pastures with under-employed family labour. Feeding grains, oil cakes and green nutritious fodder are limited to crossbred cattle. Feed and fodder deficiencies are major limiting factors in raising livestock productivity. Fodder markets are important for communities, which have limited ability to produce their own fodder, but need quality fodder at reasonable prices to produce milk at competitive cost and trading is an important livelihood activity for poor who engaged in it. The study tries find ways to improve the livelihoods of resource-poor livestock producers by alleviating fodder scarcity. Livestock being an important source of livelihood in Bihar, the study has a direct poverty relevance for state. The findings indicate a huge gap between demand and supply of both dry and green fodder. South Bihar is fodder surplus area because of irrigated cultivation of paddy and wheat, while north Bihar is fodder deficit and depend on fodder surplus regions. There are no dedicated market places so, trading takes place along roadsides and without legal credentials. Fodder being a bulky item, makes its trading and handling difficult. Some traders do use compressing machines to make fodder blocks. Development of technology for cost-effective and nutritive feed requires urgent attention and here public sector R&D can play an effective role which can also be done in public-private partnership mode

Fodder Market in Bihar: An Exploratory Study

Dairy farmers in Bihar are mostly smallholders having one or two local-bred milch animals, which are raised on crop residues and natural pastures with under-employed family labour. Feeding grains, oil cakes and green nutritious fodder are limited to crossbred cattle. Feed and fodder deficiencies are major limiting factors in raising livestock productivity. Fodder markets are important for communities, which have limited ability to produce their own fodder, but need quality fodder at reasonable prices to produce milk at competitive cost and trading is an important livelihood activity for poor who engaged in it. The study tries find ways to improve the livelihoods of resource-poor livestock producers by alleviating fodder scarcity. Livestock being an important source of livelihood in Bihar, the study has a direct poverty relevance for state. The findings indicate a huge gap between demand and supply of both dry and green fodder. South Bihar is fodder surplus area because of irrigated cultivation of paddy and wheat, while north Bihar is fodder deficit and depend on fodder surplus regions. There are no dedicated market places so, trading takes place along roadsides and without legal credentials. Fodder being a bulky item, makes its trading and handling difficult. Some traders do use compressing machines to make fodder blocks. Development of technology for cost-effective and nutritive feed requires urgent attention and here public sector R&D can play an effective role which can also be done in public-private partnership mode

Feed and Fodder Value Chains in Bihar: Some Empirical Evidences

Livestock production, especially dairy, has long been an important activity for smallholder and resource-poor farmers in India, both for household nutrition and income. Most of the livestock are kept in mixed farming systems, where crop residues, mainly cereal straws have been an important feed resource. India is deficient in the supply of fodder, resulting in very low levels of productivity that limit marketable surplus of milk. In Bihar State, over 50% of the land area is planted to rice, and rice straw along with wheat straw and some pulse residues form the main animal feeds. Recent studies in the Indo-Gangetic Plain have highlighted the problem of insufficient fodder and the poor nutritive value of fodder, a problem which becomes more acute in the more eastern parts of the region where agricultural resources–particularly arable land and water–become scarcer. Fodder scarcity affects most farmers but is particularly acute for landless and those with access to only small area of land. Chronic feed deficit is the major constraint to animal production in Bihar. Most of the dairy farmers are smallholders having one or two local-breed milch animals, which are raised on crop residues and natural pastures with under-employed family labour. Feeding grains, oil cakes and green nutritious fodder are generally restricted to some crossbred cattle. The feed and fodder deficiencies, in fact, have been the main limiting factors in raising livestock productivity. The present study is an attempt to look into various issues of feed and fodder markets and the role of various stakeholders in fodder value chains

Dimensions of Rural Poverty in Bihar: A Village Level Study

The measures of poverty involves a) the specification of the threshold income level below which a person is considered poor (the poverty line) and b) construction of an index to measure the intensity and severity of poverty suffered by those whose income is below the poverty line. Sen(1976) has proposed several criteria that a poverty measure must satisfy to be able to assess the changes in social welfare whereas Foster et al (1984) proposed a class of poverty measures that are additively decomposable and that satisfy all the criteria for an ideal poverty measure. For this study, we used a method known as FGT index to measure the incidence of poverty (headcount ratio), intensity of poverty (poverty gap ratio) and severity of poverty (squared poverty gap ratio). To find out the determinants of poverty, affecting the probability of an individual being poor, we estimated a Probit model using poverty as a dependent factor-a binary (poor-1 and non-poor-0) and a set of agricultural and socio-economic variables as explanatory variables. Despite annual growth of more than 10 per cent in Bihar’s economy, poverty remained the same during 2004-05-2009-10.Incidence of poverty was double among agricultural labours than that of farm households and the poverty gap between farm and agricultural labour households increased during last two decades. The decline in poverty has been also higher among farm households than the decline observed among agricultural labour households during last two decades however the decline in poverty was comparatively high among agricultural households than farm households during 2004-05-2009-10, mainly due to adverse weather at one hand and increase in wages of agricultural labour at another during the period. The comparatively high poverty incidence, gap and severity are observed in less developed village than developed villages in Bihar. Hence it may inferred that the level of development has direct influence on poverty alleviation that is; higher the development, lower the level of poverty in rural area. In villages, land is the main income generating asset hence the poverty incidence, gap and severity level are comparatively low in case of large households but the observation does not hold true in case of medium and small households because their land base is very low in Bihar. The highest poverty incidence, gap and severity are not found among labour households. It is only due to larger proportion of earning members and the majority of them are employed in non-farm activities on comparatively high wage whereas family member of households with even small piece of land do not prefer to work as labour, resulting less income flow and higher level of poverty among them. Various agro-economic and social factors are responsible for poverty. The three key determinants that help the household in keeping away from poverty are education, number of earning and family size. The education enhances the skill, chances of getting remunerative employment and increasing labour productivity which lead to higher income and decline in poverty. Larger proportion of earning members in the household also helps increasing income flow whereas smaller size of family leads to comparatively less expenses and more income to the household hence low level of poverty. These findings of poverty determinants call for establishment of effective educational and training infrastructure and streamlining of their functioning in rural area. The family welfare programme needs to be strengthened for population control since smaller family is likely to be away from poverty

Rural Poverty in Jharkhand: An Empirical Exploration of Socioeconomic determinants

In India, poverty reduction is one of the major objectives of economic development programmes. Though, India was the first country in the world to define poverty as the total per capita expenditure of the lowest expenditure class, which is required to ascertain a minimum intake of 2400 kcal/day in rural and 2100 kcal/day in urban areas. There exists a substantial interstate and urban rural differential in the cost of goods and services. The present study envisages analysing the nature, extent and severity of rural poverty across different household classes at selected villages in the state of Jharkhand. It also attempts to find out the determinants of poverty in the villages under study with the help of data obtained from four village’s viz. Dubaliya, Hesapiri, Dumariya and Durgapur under the project entitled “Tracking change in rural poverty in household and village economies in Eastern India.” For this study, we used a method known as FGT index to measure the incidence of poverty (headcount ratio), intensity of poverty (poverty gap ratio) and severity of poverty (squared poverty gap ratio). To find out the determinants of poverty, affecting the probability of an individual being poor, we estimated a Probit model using poverty as a dependent factor-a binary (poor-1 and non-poor-0) and a set of agricultural and socio-economic variables as explanatory variables. The severity of poverty was least (0.9%) in Dubaliya village, whereas it was highest in Durgapur village (15.4%) of Jharkhand where incidence and depth of poverty were also comparatively high. Even in case of poverty severity, labour class households and large farm households appears to be comparatively less affected than that of small and medium classes. However, in general, the pattern of severity is apparently mixed here. Among various determinants of poverty, obtained by estimating a probit model, considering poor as 1 and non-poor 0, it was found that length of education and number of earning members in family had significant poverty reducing effect, implying that for taking a poor household out of poverty promotion of education and creation of more employment opportunities to provide employment to a large number of household members are essential. It also emanates that big family size and increased dependency on agriculture would induce poverty and it is therefore imperative that family planning policies and alternative non-farm employment programme should receive due priority in any poverty alleviation programme in the state

Rural Poverty in Jharkhand: An Empirical Exploration of Socioeconomic determinants

In India, poverty reduction is one of the major objectives of economic development programmes. Though, India was the first country in the world to define poverty as the total per capita expenditure of the lowest expenditure class, which is required to ascertain a minimum intake of 2400 kcal/day in rural and 2100 kcal/day in urban areas. There exists a substantial interstate and urban rural differential in the cost of goods and services. The present study envisages analysing the nature, extent and severity of rural poverty across different household classes at selected villages in the state of Jharkhand. It also attempts to find out the determinants of poverty in the villages under study with the help of data obtained from four village’s viz. Dubaliya, Hesapiri, Dumariya and Durgapur under the project entitled “Tracking change in rural poverty in household and village economies in Eastern India.” For this study, we used a method known as FGT index to measure the incidence of poverty (headcount ratio), intensity of poverty (poverty gap ratio) and severity of poverty (squared poverty gap ratio). To find out the determinants of poverty, affecting the probability of an individual being poor, we estimated a Probit model using poverty as a dependent factor-a binary (poor-1 and non-poor-0) and a set of agricultural and socio-economic variables as explanatory variables. The severity of poverty was least (0.9%) in Dubaliya village, whereas it was highest in Durgapur village (15.4%) of Jharkhand where incidence and depth of poverty were also comparatively high. Even in case of poverty severity, labour class households and large farm households appears to be comparatively less affected than that of small and medium classes. However, in general, the pattern of severity is apparently mixed here. Among various determinants of poverty, obtained by estimating a probit model, considering poor as 1 and non-poor 0, it was found that length of education and number of earning members in family had significant poverty reducing effect, implying that for taking a poor household out of poverty promotion of education and creation of more employment opportunities to provide employment to a large number of household members are essential. It also emanates that big family size and increased dependency on agriculture would induce poverty and it is therefore imperative that family planning policies and alternative non-farm employment programme should receive due priority in any poverty alleviation programme in the state

BUOYANCY AND CHEMICAL REACTION EFFECTS ON MHD FREE CONVECTIVE SLIP FLOW OF NEWTONIAN AND POLAR FLUID THROUGH POROUSMEDIUM IN THE PRESENCE OF THERMAL RADIATION AND OHMIC HEATING WITH DUFOUR EFFECT

The present paper investigates the effects of thermal radiation, joule heating on an unsteady hydro magnetic free convective flow of a viscous electrically conductive Newtonian and polar fluid past a semi-infinite vertical plate embedded in a porous media in the presence of heat absorption, chemical reaction, slip flow and Dufour effect. Analytical perturbation solutions are obtained for the velocity, temperature and concentration fields as well as for the skin friction coefficient, Nusselt number and Sharewood number. The results are presented in graphical forms to study the effects of various parameters