Journal Press India^®

I am pleased to present to our readers another issue of PRAGATI that discusses varied aspects of Indian economy ranging from the role of Self Help Groups and employment generation schemes for the poor to the challenges of information technology adoption and way forward for infrastructure development.

There are two papers in this issue that explore different dimensions of Self Help Groups (SHGs). The first paper by Santosh Devi and Sanjeev Kumar examines the growth, structure and financing aspects of SHGs in Himachal Pradesh. Employing secondary data, it is observed that SHGs have started working in all the blocks of all districts of Himachal Pradesh except district Shimla and Mandi. The second paper on SHGs is by Debabrata Mukhopadhyay who explores the role of SHGs and social inclusion across Indian states following an exploratory econometric approach. The author finds that states with lower per capita income have greater participation in SHG, and states with higher female literacy have more SHG participation rate. Again, the SHG participation has a strong regional presence in the southern states.

The paper by Jeet Saha and Zafar Iqubal investigates the relationship between total expenditure on MGNREGA and employment generation, focusing on India, West Bengal, and five specific districts within West Bengal. Employing correlation analysis and multivariate regression analysis, the study demonstrates a positive association between total expenditure on MGNREGA and employment generation.

The growth of Indian economy has been facilitated, to a large extent, by factors such as infrastructure and information technology. In this context, Gaganpreet Kaur, in her paper examines the challenges of information technology adoption by Micro and Small enterprises. Using a sample of 500 respondent firms from Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh belonging to the health care services and hospitality sector, the paper suggests that more investments in information technology will significantly impact the micro and small firms both in survival and generation of profits. Showket Ahmad Dar, Aadil Rehman and Feroz Ahmad Wani, focus on India’s infrastructural development and its challenges and financing. They propose actions on multiple fronts including flexible risk sharing mechanism, revitalizing asset monetization, giving due impetus to Infrastructure Investment Trusts, and tapping underutilized capital market resources.

The paper by Shikha Malhotra and Chaya Bagrecha on ‘External factors and gross capital flow movements to India: A VECM approach’ employs quarterly data for a period of 20 years and the empirical results show the importance of global factors in driving the gross flow movements to India. An interesting paper by Archita Nayak, Kanti Paul, and Kanak Kanti Bagchi, is on “Consumption-production patterns of fish and trends in fisheries in India: An inter-state study with special reference to West Bengal”. The paper attempts to cluster Indian states on the basis of their fish production and consumption through a statistical tool ‘Hierarchical cluster analysis’. This issue also has a paper that examines the role of the service sector in Nagaland’s economic growth. The paper by J. Suresh Kumar and D. Shobana investigates the growth and contribution of Nagaland’s services sector to the state’s gross domestic product and finds that this sector more than compensates for the poor performance of the primary sector toward GDP contribution.

We sincerely hope that our readers find this issue of PRAGATI interesting and insightful, and thank all our authors for their valuable contributions.

Prof. K. V. Bhanu Murthy

Editor