Suresh Chand Aggarwal

Does an environmental Kuznets curve exist for changing land use? Empirical evidence from major states of India

Varied environmental quality in terms of NOx, SOx etc. has been demonstrated as being associated with the per capita income of a specific region or/country, known as the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) in the form of an inverted U-shaped curve. Recently, many attempts have been made to examine this relationship in different contexts. This paper analyses the change in land-use pattern for 19 major states of India for 1963–64 to 1995–96. By specifying a suitable model, cropped area, removal of forest cover (deforestation) and pasture area have separately been regressed on per capita income, yield and population density. Besides OLS, the models for the analysis included the Kmenta model, the fixed effect model and the random effect model. Stationarity and cointegration have also been tested for the variables. Results from the analysis indicate the presence of an EKC for crop area at an income level between Rs.1347 and Rs.1440 and for pasture area between the income levels of Rs.881 and Rs.871. The turning point is found to be around Rs.811 for total forest area. The state level analysis confirms the existence of a turning point for crop area for the states of Punjab and Haryana and for total forest area for the states of Punjab and Maharastra.

Labor Quality in Market Services in India

The services sector in India has been growing fast and now contributes more than half of GDP. It employs the highest percentage of the ‘educated’ manpower. The paper focuses on estimating labor quality in broad sectors of the Indian economy, especially market services during the period 1983-2011. It highlights data limitations and data challenges faced while calculating the index. It explores the drivers of labor quality growth in the market services. The components included in the index are the number of workers by education, age and gender. The results of labor quality indices show that the quality changes have been highest during the period- 2001-2011 and have been driven by educational attainment. Services have also experienced the highest growth in labor quality and it has been driven more by market services. Finally, within market services, it has been slow in transport services, and hotels & restaurants but fast in telecommunication, and financial services.

Quality of Life: Issues and Challenges in Measurement

Questions have always been raised about the measurement of National Income and its use as an indicator of economic welfare. These questions were referred in 2008 by President of France to the commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress headed by Prof Stiglitz for their recommendations. Among many other issues, the commission did focus on a better measure of economic performance and well-being. It emphasized that it is important that measurement now shifts from economic production to people’s well-being and recommended that both level and distribution of consumption and income and not production should be the main focus of well-being evaluation and care may be taken to also include non-market activities. The commission also looked at the definition and the importance of the measurement of quality of life, which was described to be broader than the concept of economic production and wellbeing. They discussed different approaches and different measures of quality of life including the objective features; e.g. health, education, political voice and governance, etc.

Structural Changes in Manufacturing Employment in India, 1999-2011

A study undertaken by Ghani and associates (2013) on the organized-unorganized sector breakup of India’s manufacturing employment has found persistence of the unorganized sector within manufacturing during 1989-90 to 2005-06. A similar analysis undertaken in the paper for a more recent period, 1999-2000 to 2011-12, reveals that the share of the unorganized sector in manufacturing employment has declined by about ten percentage points. A decomposition exercise drawing on the distribution of manufacturing employment by state, industry and organized-unorganized dichotomy brings out that the fall in the unorganized manufacturing employment share is mostly attributable to the within state-industry component, and the contribution of changes in employment composition, the between state-industry component and the covariance component, has been relatively small. Further examination of the issue reveals that the declining share of the unorganized sector in manufacturing employment may in part be explained by a noticeable structural shift that has taken place from own account enterprises to establishments within the unorganized manufacturing. Results of econometric analysis indicate that the fall in female labour force participation in India in the 2000s is one of the important factors explaining the declining share of the unorganized sector in manufacturing employment.

Labour, Employment and Economic Growth in India: Gender Discrimination in Manufacturing Employment in India, 1999-2009

Introduction There have been a number of studies on gender discrimination in India. A common finding of these studies is that after controlling for endowments and certain other factors, the wages received by women are relatively lower than those received by men (see, for instance, Reilly and Vasudeva-Dutta, 2005; Menon and Rodgers, 2007; Khanna, 2012; Krishna and Bino Paul, 2012; and Paul and Paul, 2013). In this chapter, a different dimension of discrimination is studied, namely discrimination in job tenure (regular wage jobs versus casual jobs). The analysis is confined to Indian manufacturing, as in the paper of Menon and Rodgers (2007). The main hypothesis tested econometrically is that after controlling for endowments and industry affiliation, the women tend to get discriminated in the matter of getting regular jobs. A related hypothesis is about the effect of economic reforms, particularly trade liberalization, on gender discrimination. There are reasons to believe that liberalization of trade and industrial policies, inasmuch as it leads to increased competition, will reduce gender discrimination in wages. This view is based on a theory of discrimination (see Becker, 1971). The argument is that gender discrimination is costly and the employers do discrimination despite it being costly because of the nature of their preferences. Hence, the employers will have to curb their preference for discrimination if competitive forces bring down their profit margin. A question of particular interest to this chapter is the inter-state differences in the extent of gender-based discrimination in manufacturing employment. The focus, as mentioned above, is on the tenure of employment i.e. how far women tend to be discriminated against in the matter of getting regular jobs. It would be interesting to find out which are the Indian states where the extent of gender discrimination in manufacturing employment is relatively high, and the states in which it is relatively low. What is more important is to look for an explanation of the observed inter-state differences.