The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) was enacted in India with the multiple objectives of providing employment in a rights-based framework, addressing rural poverty, checking migration, and building rural infrastructure. As such, every year around 15-20 per cent of households in India overall and 30 per cent in rural India receive some form of employment share under the MGNREGA programme. This volume looks at various aspect of the scheme, its linkage with employment, agricultural wages, livelihood and food security, gender issues, and migration in rural India. It also discusses challenges in implementation, hurdles and the relative successes of the scheme. Based on primary survey data from 16 major states in the country, the findings of the study provide key insights into MGNREGA and assess the implications for other welfare-oriented programmes. Rich in empirical data, this volume will be useful to scholars and researchers of political economy, economics, agriculture, rural development and sociology, as well as policymakers and nongovernmental organisations.

This volume examines the transitions in Indian agriculture since the 1980s, and emphasizes upon the role of neoliberal policies and their impact. The essays presented here deal with a range of pertinent and contemporary issues, including global food security, livelihoods of agricultural labourers, and public and private investment. These weave together glimpses of the impasse faced by petty commodity producers (marginal and small farmers) and their subsequent economic distress and social exclusion. Comprehensive in analysis, this book will be useful to scholars and researchers of agricultural economics, political economy, political science and public policy.

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) was enacted in India with the multiple objectives of providing employment in a rights-based framework, addressing rural poverty, checking migration, and building rural infrastructure. As such, every year around 15-20 per cent of households in India overall and 30 per cent in rural India receive some form of employment share under the MGNREGA programme. This volume looks at various aspect of the scheme, its linkage with employment, agricultural wages, livelihood and food security, gender issues, and migration in rural India. It also discusses challenges in implementation, hurdles and the relative successes of the scheme. Based on primary survey data from 16 major states in the country, the findings of the study provide key insights into MGNREGA and assess the implications for other welfare-oriented programmes. Rich in empirical data, this volume will be useful to scholars and researchers of political economy, economics, agriculture, rural development and sociology, as well as policymakers and nongovernmental organisations.

This volume examines the transitions in Indian agriculture since the 1980s, and emphasizes upon the role of neoliberal policies and their impact. The essays presented here deal with a range of pertinent and contemporary issues, including global food security, livelihoods of agricultural labourers, and public and private investment. These weave together glimpses of the impasse faced by petty commodity producers (marginal and small farmers) and their subsequent economic distress and social exclusion. Comprehensive in analysis, this book will be useful to scholars and researchers of agricultural economics, political economy, political science and public policy.

This book provides an overview of the applications of ion beam techniques in oxide materials. Oxide materials exhibit defect-induced physical properties relevant to applications in sensing, optoelectronics and spintronics. Defects in these oxide materials also lead to magnetism in non-magnetic materials or to a change of magnetic ordering in magnetic materials. Thus, an understanding of defects is of immense importance. To date, ion beam tools are considered the most effective techniques for producing controlled defects in these oxides. This book will detail the ion beam tools utilized for creating defects in oxides.

Defect Induced Magnetism in Oxide Semiconductors provides an overview on the latest advances of defect engineering to create new magnetic materials and enable new technological applications. Sections introduce the mechanisms, behavior and theory of magnetism in oxide semiconductors and review methods of inducing magnetism in these materials. Then, strategies such as pulsed laser deposition and RF sputtering to grow oxide nanostructured materials with induced magnetism are discussed. This is followed by a review of the most relevant post-deposition methods to induce magnetism in oxide semiconductors, including annealing, ion irradiation, and ion implantation. Examples of defect induced magnetism in oxide semiconductors are then provided, along with selected applications. This title will be suitable reference for researchers in academia and practitioners in research and development in industry working in the disciplines of materials science and engineering.

This book discusses the important issue of the socioeconomic and environmental impacts of agricultural residue burning, common in agricultural practices in many parts of the world. In particular, it focuses on the pollution caused by rice residue burning using primary survey data from Punjab, India. It discusses emerging solutions to agricultural waste burning that are cost-effective in terms of both money and time. The burning of agricultural residue causes severe pollution in land, water and air and contributes to increased ozone levels and climate change in the long term. However, appropriate assessments have not been undertaken so far to demonstrate the relevant impact of agriculture-based pollution, especially residue burning. This book addresses this gap in the literature. Punjab has been used as a case study as it is the chief granary of India, contributing to 27.2 percent of the Indian national produce of rice and 43.8 percent of wheat. It is presumed that the findings from this state will be useful not only for other agricultural areas in India, but across the world. This book, therefore, sensitizes policy makers, researchers and students about the impacts of air pollution caused by agricultural residue burning---a subject not much dealt in the literature---and provides a way forward.

Comparing and contrasting the Indian states of Punjab and Bihar, this study argues that whereas Punjab farming has bright prospects for a new phase of corporatization, Bihar's agriculture is still caught in the web of subsistence farming. As it looks at the impact of recent agriculture-related policy changes on the emerging production, marketing, and earning status of small versus large farms, this analysis reveals how farmers' opinions contend that only the large and mid-sized farms benefited from the reform process, and examines the potential for better reform.

As outlined by Suman Bery in his Foreword to this volume: in India, "the Public Distribution System (PDS) continues to be a major instru-ment for ensuring food security for the poor. The basic objective of shifting from a universal PDS to targeted PDS (TPDS) was to benefit the poor at acceptable budgetary cost. The success of the TPDS in meeting its stated objectives depends largely on the ability of the State Governments to identify the genuinely poor families, restricting the number of poor families to the number estimated by the Planning Commission and in putting in place an effective and efficient delivery system. In a number of recent studies, it has been highlighted that there are large-scale errors in the identification of targeted families, low off-take of food grains by the poor and there are weaknesses in the delivery system. In view of these concerns, the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) was entrusted with the study to examine the extent to which food grains disbursed under the TPDS are actually reaching the Antyodaya and below poverty population in the country and to find out the incidence as well as the mode of irregularities in the system. The study is based on a large primary survey conducted in 12 states in two phases. The study advocates that if the functioning of the TPDS system is to be improved, the first step would be the correct identification of beneficiaries. Proper monitoring of the system and effective punish-ment against the offender would essentially be needed. The findings and policy suggestions in this book will lead to a better-informed debate and will help those concerned to come up with new and innovative approaches for making the TPDS system more effective and pro-poor. The book will be of interest to the planners, policy makers, researchers, students and the academia.