This book studies the dynamic aspects of the Human Development Index (HDI) through a partial mobility perspective. It offers a new axiomatic structure and a set of mobility indices to discuss partial trends and interrogate the human development status at the subgroup and subregional levels. While traditional human development theories are primarily concerned with static distributions corresponding to a point in time, this book looks at an oft-neglected side of HDI and focuses on relative changes in human development that may not be captured by the absolutist framework. In addition, the authors also introduce the concepts of jump and fractional mobility which aid in tracking the development and stagnation among various groups within a population. This work breaks fresh ground in the study of human development. It will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of economics, development economics, political economy, and development practitioners.

This book studies the dynamic aspects of the Human Development Index (HDI) through a partial mobility perspective. It offers a new axiomatic structure and a set of mobility indices to discuss partial trends and interrogate the human development status at the subgroup and subregional levels. While traditional human development theories are primarily concerned with static distributions corresponding to a point in time, this book looks at an oft-neglected side of HDI and focuses on relative changes in human development that may not be captured by the absolutist framework. In addition, the authors also introduce the concepts of jump and fractional mobility which aid in tracking the development and stagnation among various groups within a population. This work breaks fresh ground in the study of human development. It will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of economics, development economics, political economy, and development practitioners.

This book assesses the performance of banks in India over the past several decades, and discusses their current status after fifty years of nationalization. The performance of different categories of banks is evaluated by employing both the traditional ratio analysis and more sophisticated efficiency techniques. The book also explores the market conditions under which Indian banks operate. Going beyond a formal banking study, the book also investigates the causes of the widespread presence of informal credit in parallel to its formal banking counterpart. This approach makes it more comprehensive, unique and closer to the real world. After 50 years of nationalization, India's banking sector is at a crossroads, given the huge and unabated non-performing assets and talks of consolidation. This book, encompassing both the formal and the predominantly 'trust-based' informal credit system, provides essential insights for bankers and policymakers, which will be invaluable in their endeavours to implement meaningful changes. It may also spark new research in the fields of banking performance and efficiency analysis. Lastly, the book not only has significant implications for students of economics, banking, finance and management, but also offers an important resource to support training courses for banking personnel in India.

In production and service sectors we often come across situations where females remain largely overshadowed by males both in terms of wages and productivity. Men are generally assigned jobs that require more physical work while the 'less' strenuous job is allocated to the females. However, the gender dimension of labor process in the service sector in India has remained relatively unexplored. There are certain activities in the service sector where females are more suitable than males. The service sector activities are usually divided into OAE and Establishments. In this work, an attempt has been made to segregate the productivity of females compared to that of males on the basis of both partial and complete separability models. An estimate has also been made of the female labor supply function. The results present a downward trend for female participation both in Own Account Enterprises (OAE) and Establishment. The higher the female shadow wage the lower their supply. This lends support to the supposition that female labor participation is a type of "distress supply" rather than a positive indicator of women's empowerment. Analysis of the National Sample Service Organization data indicates that in all the sectors women are generally paid less than men. A micro-econometric study reveals that even in firms that employ solely female labor, incidence of full-time labor is deplorably poor. It is this feature that results in women workers' lower earnings and their deprivation.

In conventional mathematical programming, coefficients of problems are usually determined by the experts as crisp values in terms of classical mathematical reasoning. But in reality, in an imprecise and uncertain environment, it will be utmost unrealistic to assume that the knowledge and representation of an expert can come in a precise way. The wider objective of the book is to study different real decision situations where problems are defined in inexact environment. Inexactness are mainly generated in two ways (1) due to imprecise perception and knowledge of the human expert followed by vague representation of knowledge as a DM; (2) due to huge-ness and complexity of relations and data structure in the definition of the problem situation. We use interval numbers to specify inexact or imprecise or uncertain data. Consequently, the study of a decision problem requires answering the following initial questions: How should we compare and define preference ordering between two intervals?, interpret and deal inequality relations involving interval coefficients?, interpret and make way towards the goal of the decision problem?

The present research work consists of two closely related fields: approaches towards defining a generalized preference ordering scheme for interval attributes and approaches to deal with some issues having application potential in many areas of decision making."

This book assesses the performance of banks in India over the past several decades, and discusses their current status after fifty years of nationalization. The performance of different categories of banks is evaluated by employing both the traditional ratio analysis and more sophisticated efficiency techniques. The book also explores the market conditions under which Indian banks operate. Going beyond a formal banking study, the book also investigates the causes of the widespread presence of informal credit in parallel to its formal banking counterpart. This approach makes it more comprehensive, unique and closer to the real world. After 50 years of nationalization, India's banking sector is at a crossroads, given the huge and unabated non-performing assets and talks of consolidation. This book, encompassing both the formal and the predominantly 'trust-based' informal credit system, provides essential insights for bankers and policymakers, which will be invaluable in their endeavours to implement meaningful changes. It may also spark new research in the fields of banking performance and efficiency analysis. Lastly, the book not only has significant implications for students of economics, banking, finance and management, but also offers an important resource to support training courses for banking personnel in India.

In conventional mathematical programming, coefficients of problems are usually determined by the experts as crisp values in terms of classical mathematical reasoning. But in reality, in an imprecise and uncertain environment, it will be utmost unrealistic to assume that the knowledge and representation of an expert can come in a precise way. The wider objective of the book is to study different real decision situations where problems are defined in inexact environment. Inexactness are mainly generated in two ways (1) due to imprecise perception and knowledge of the human expert followed by vague representation of knowledge as a DM; (2) due to huge-ness and complexity of relations and data structure in the definition of the problem situation. We use interval numbers to specify inexact or imprecise or uncertain data. Consequently, the study of a decision problem requires answering the following initial questions: How should we compare and define preference ordering between two intervals?, interpret and deal inequality relations involving interval coefficients?, interpret and make way towards the goal of the decision problem?

The present research work consists of two closely related fields: approaches towards defining a generalized preference ordering scheme for interval attributes and approaches to deal with some issues having application potential in many areas of decision making."

Though most of the people in south live in villages, there are important centers of urban concentration even here. The urban south carries all the birth pangs of underdevelopment. Unplanned growth, traffic congestion, sprawling slums are some of its basic features. The present study concentrates on Human Development aspect of these urban conglomerates. The study chooses West Bengal a State of India as its focal point. The study reveals huge inequality among the urban centers in West Bengal. It also shows limited mobility across several states. There exists wide cleavage between the urban area of advanced and backward districts. Though there is some improvement on the whole. For the purpose of study, we have calculated Human Development Indices at the urban level. Then we noted its movement across two time points 1991 and 2001. Incidentally it coincides with the era of New Economic Policy of India that are ushered in India. Our study thus helps us juxtaposed the impact of new policies on life and death of ordinary people living in those urban centers.

People are poor since they have low skill. They are low skilled since they are poor. To break this vicious cycle, it necessary to empower people so that they can gain access to the capital market. The group lending is an important idea that helps to break the shackle. Generally such group formation are voluntary. In India, however, there is an active public support system to enhance, monitor and further this system. In our study, we try to understand the efficacy of the public system in fostering this job. Most of the standard studies in this field are oriented towards the individuals who form group. In our case, the focus is different. We try to see how far the public authorities are able to fulfill their job. Using data from a poor district in India, we study growth and sustainability of Self Help Groups . We find that the public system is not very effective in provision of the necessary impetus towards the group formation. The links are weak and often non-existent. A radical shift in the standard practice is highly required.

The informal sector is now asserted to be an integral part of the growth process. This paper enables us to see how far this new concept helps us to understand the condition of female bidi workers in Murshidabad district of the Indian state West Bengal. For this work we have selected Aurangabad, a small town under Suti 2 block in the district of Murshidabad, West Bengal. Bidi industry is a typical putting-out system where the bidi is manufactured at home using raw- materials supplied by the capitalist firms to whom the bidi is sold. Our paper indicates the plight of the informal bidi worker in Murshidabad. They have very little human capital embedded in education and health. Continuous work has hampered their productive capacity and long run sustainability chained by social taboos and injustice. The informal bidi workers are twice deprived, first as an informal sector worker and second as female worker.

The traditional system of education where the teacher is the sole instructor and the students as mute spectators are long foregone. In its stead a new innovative method is evolved. The study wish to see the efficacy of this new system in an underdeveloped poor country like India. This work is a result of assessment surveys that are conducted by the SSA (Sarva Shikhsa Avijaan- Educational For all Program) authority in the Burdwan district of West Bengal, India. Under SSA a new and innovative technique is used. We see the students in India are facing at least three problems in tackling this new method. First, being a first generation learner almost no familial help is sorted out to them. Unfortunately the teachers are not always able to mitigate this gap. Secondly, the children (mostly minority girl child) are burdened with heavy doses of family labor of daily household chores. Thirdly these girl children are strained by strong social taboos (like child marriage) that make their learning uncertain. In spite of these odds, the new system has raised their curiosity to a great extent. It is our duty that the sparkle in their eyes do not die away.