According to the development economics, per-capita measures of National Income and lately Quality of Life Index were considered as indices of development or wellbeing of a society. These orthodox indices of economic development appear as incomplete, ... disputed and sometimes non-comprehensive and misleading too. United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP’s) well-known Human Development Index (HDI) is basically a universally accepted measure of the quality of life of human being. Beside this an Inequality-adjusted HDI (IHDI) and a Gender Inequality Index (GII) are constructed separately in HDR 2011. But yet there is no single index which will be able to capture the basic dimensions of quality of life with existing inequality and gender discrimination altogether. Not only providing these attainments but also the socio-political environment of the economy where these facilities are being provided is very much important in the question of quality of life of an economy. The most important drawback of HDI is that it does not consider human rights as the component of human development. Hence in this research work, the focus will be on the construction of a modified Quality of Life Index (QLI).A more comprehensive single modified QLI, viz., Modified Borda Score (MBS), will be constructed representing inequality-adjusted, gender-inequality-adjusted quality of life capturing all the major components of human development approach specially also the rights component. And also we apply this newly constructed modified index MBS to South Asian countries for the year 2013 with secondary data set. We also analyze the results comparing ranking on MBS and that on some other important indexes.Read More...Read Less...

Financial incluson has moved up the global reform agenda and become a topic of great interest for policy makers, regulators, researchers, market practitioners and other stakeholders. It is a key enabler of economic and social development in developin... g countries like India. The process of financial inclusion is a function of number of variables. It is necessary to identify the determinants of financial inclusion so that appropriate policy measures can be undertaken to achieve the larger aim of financial inclusion. This paper attempts to examine the association between the extent of financial inclusion and socio-economic variables, using a panel data set for Indian states over the time period 2001-2012. For this analysis, five socio-economic variables viz. income, employment, literacy, urbanisation and caste have been considered. The findings indicate that all the variables are significant in explaining the extent of financial inclusion. This paper, therefore, calls for policy making bodies to put in place a financial inclusion framework in order to improve the level of financial inclusion.Read More...Read Less...

This paper examined the combined ranking of the public sector enterprise transportation equipment companies using a non-parametric approach during financial year 2010-2013. Using the Shannon entropy method, the efficiency scores of public sector ente... rprise transportation equipment companies under cost, revenue and profit models are combined to obtain a comprehensive ranking. Results of degree of diversification and degree of importance associated with each model suggest that profit model has a larger value of discriminatoryability and weight compared to cost and revenue models. Firms which are close to profit and cost efficient frontiers are ranked better under Shannon index compared to those which are away from the efficient frontiers. In general, firms which are closed to efficient frontier are ranked better compared to those which are away from the efficient frontier under Shannon index. Finally, this paper pointed out that Shannon-DEA approach provides a reasonable way of ranking the companies.Read More...Read Less...

The capital structure is the mixture of debt capital and equity capital that the firm uses. The choice of appropriate source of fund for capital structure is one of the major policy decisions taken by a firm. In this paper an attempt has been made to... study the capital structure and its impact on profitability by the help of analysing the last five years balance sheet and financial position through various ratios and components of capital. To achieve the objective of analysing the capital structure of the steel industry component wise dominance and a relationship between the capital structure and profitability of steel industry by taking last five years annual reports of TATA STEEL LTD. It has been observed from the study that shareholders fund has a positive correlation with the element of non-current liabilities but contains a mixed impact with current liability. On the other side, from the profitability point of view, debt equity ratio has a positive impact on price earnings ratio and dividend payout ratio which implies debt capital will improve on profitability measurement ratios.Read More...Read Less...

Quality of training and development (T&D) endeavors in organizations is determined and measured by the efficacy of its several attributes such as: needs analysis, policy, plans, methods, and evaluation, besides the sustenance from management. This st... udy appreciates on some of the deficiencies in the T&D efforts in the areas of needs analysis, implementation and evaluation at Indian businesses and compares the persistence of the infirmities in the public sector undertakings (PSUs) and private enterprises. The findings present a poor state of affairs in the PSUs as regards T&D. The study suggests some changes in the organizational processes to enhance the quality of T&D initiatives in businesses in India.Read More...Read Less...

Importance of accounting-based information in making economic decisions cannot be over emphasized. Farm accounting also provides useful information which may be used in making economic decisions by the farmers. But maintenance of formal accounts by a... gricultural farms in India is a rare practice except by agro-based joint stock companies like tea companies. Present study is undertaken to study the existing record keeping system as practiced by small tea gardens of Assam.It is found that small tea growers make little use of accounting. A concerted effort by the Tea Board, Tea Association and Bank officials can streamline the accounts keeping system by the small tea growers who are significantly contributing to the State Domestic Product. Read More...Read Less...

This study aims to gain an understanding of the perceptions of professional accountants in Kolkata regarding some important investor-service-related and fund-sponsor-related features of mutual funds. The significant role that the professional account... ants play in rendering financial advice to others in professional or other capacity justifies the necessity of the study. After checking internal consistency of the data using Cronbach’s alpha, at first Factor Analysis has been done to identify the unique investor-service related and fund-sponsor related features. Thereafter, Mann-Whitney U Test has been done to understand the significance of variation in the perception of the respondents.Read More...Read Less...

India as a growing economy faces trade-off between economic growth and conservation of environment. Improving environmental quality without affecting economic growth is necessary to achieve sustainable development. Before adopting major policy option... s it is important to know the existing pattern of growth-environment relationship in India. In the present paper this relationship is found in terms of the Environmental Kuznets Curve. In this analysis, three major pollutants (CO2, NO and SO2) are taken as the indicators of environmental degradation whereas, the growth rate of Net Domestic Product (at factor cost), represents economic growth. The data of emissions of pollutants and growth rate of NDP are taken for the years 2001-2008. The result shows that higher economic growth in India is accompanied with higher emissions of pollutants. On the basis of the given data set it may be concluded that India is at the rising portion of the Environmental Kuznets Curve.Read More...Read Less...