Parmod Kumar

Coffee is a major commodity of export in developing countries. In India, it generates significant revenues besides providing employment to many. This book critically looks into various aspects of the coffee production and marketing industry and its potential for promoting sustainable development, poverty alleviation and providing decent work. The small-holder dominated coffee sector is under unprecedented crisis attributed to a host of factors like declining productivity, incidences of new pests and diseases, adverse price trends and issues related to global warming induced climate change. Supported with primary survey and secondary data, this book explores challenges related to coffee production and its economic importance in India. It analyses factors affecting productivity of Robusta and Arabica varieties of coffee— and offers important inferences about the relationship between age and productivity of the plants and factors that guarantee high productivity. The book also sheds light on institutional interventions and the use of IT applications, along with online trading, in the coffee sector. Comprehensive and insightful, the book will be of interest to students and researchers of agriculture studies, agricultural economics, horticulture with a special focus on spices and plantation, sustainability studies, development studies and crop science. It will also be useful to stakeholders of plantation crops, such as, growers, as well as policy makers, processors, traders and exporters at different levels.

Coffee is a major commodity of export in developing countries. In India, it generates significant revenues besides providing employment to many. This book critically looks into various aspects of the coffee production and marketing industry and its potential for promoting sustainable development, poverty alleviation and providing decent work. The small-holder dominated coffee sector is under unprecedented crisis attributed to a host of factors like declining productivity, incidences of new pests and diseases, adverse price trends and issues related to global warming induced climate change. Supported with primary survey and secondary data, this book explores challenges related to coffee production and its economic importance in India. It analyses factors affecting productivity of Robusta and Arabica varieties of coffee— and offers important inferences about the relationship between age and productivity of the plants and factors that guarantee high productivity. The book also sheds light on institutional interventions and the use of IT applications, along with online trading, in the coffee sector. Comprehensive and insightful, the book will be of interest to students and researchers of agriculture studies, agricultural economics, horticulture with a special focus on spices and plantation, sustainability studies, development studies and crop science. It will also be useful to stakeholders of plantation crops, such as, growers, as well as policy makers, processors, traders and exporters at different levels.

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.

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.

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 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.