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After working through the case and assignment questions, students will be able to understand the following aspects:▪ how good strategic planning can convert a crisis into an opportunity;▪ importance of service excellence and customer satisfaction through customer delight and customer feedback; and▪ utilisation of resources and excellent time management strategies.

This case discusses how vital teamwork and motivated leadership can convert a crisis such as Covid-19 into an opportunity. This case study talks about Uttar Pradesh Metro Rail Corporation (UPMRC), a metro rail corporation working to develop metro trains in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. The case discusses how challenging it was for the metro rail corporation to transform its processes in a short period and deal with the crisis on major fronts such as facilities maintenance, human resource management, ensuring safety and security of its staff and riders, motivation of staff, service quality and maintaining all operational aspects. The case discusses how UPMRC is a leader on all fronts and has excelled in its operational work. It talks about what challenges the lockdown and unlocking phase posed in front of the leadership and how teamwork, dedication to exemplary service quality and customer satisfaction gave the team the strength to make changes that improved their processes and helped them overcome the crisis.The case starts with a discussion of metro rail inception and incorporation of UPMRC and then how this newly formed metro has to face the challenges of pre-lockdown period where the team worked very hard for sanitisation and safety. The lockdown created a completely different set of challenges related to the facilities and the entire metro train systems, which was a difficult situation to deal because of restrictions and other challenges. However, the team dealt with situations with strength and strategic planning, leading to better managed processes and staff. The unlocking phase also gave many challenges that the team handled with a lot of care and efficiency.

This case is suitable for post-graduate-level courses on services marketing, service operations management, general management, crisis management and strategic management. Participants can use the case to develop an understanding of strategic planning and management.This case can also be used in the executive education program for managers to encourage them to think through challenges faced by metro rail corporations.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 10: Public Sector Management.

This study was conducted to analyse the socio-ecological problems faced by the Suhelwa Wildlife Sanctuary and understand its potential and challenges for developing ecotourism following Triple Bottom Line (TBL) principles. The study also benchmarked best ecotourism practices across the globe to create an ecotourism plan that would provide alternative livelihood and help in sustainable management of the area by reducing poverty, dependency on forests and biodiversity protection.

Suhelwa Wildlife Sanctuary was chosen because this area has several socio-ecological crises with limited livelihood options, and there is an urgent need for alternative livelihood opportunities in the form of ecotourism. The study followed an ethnographic approach through observation, participant observation, and semi-structured interviews. Content and thematic analysis was conducted through Atlas Ti9.0 software for data analysis. Subsequently, benchmarking best ecotourism practices through a literature review was done to develop an ecotourism action plan.

The First finding was related to the study area divided into three themes: problems, potential for ecotourism development, and challenges for ecotourism development. The second finding was related to benchmarking best practices and suggesting an action plan.

This work studied an area not sufficiently acknowledged by academicians and policymakers concerning ecotourism development. The work also benchmarks the best practices for ecotourism and proposes a sight-specific ecotourism action plan in accordance with TBL.

This case study aims to appraise the financial benefits of green building construction in developing countries. The case study presents, green building's positive net present value (NPV) investment in real terms and potentially enhanced stock market returns at the firm level compared to competitors.

The case study examines secondary data on a green building certification and longitudinal operation costs to estimate green building investments' financial benefits. The case study also compares the stock market performance of green building portfolio company with non-green building competitors of similar size and industry.

The case study finds out that the real return rate on green building investment is higher than the weighted average cost of capital (WACC) of the company with an inflation-adjusted payback period of fewer than ten years. Findings compare favourably to the extant literature which was mostly in developed economies. The paper further highlights that stock market performance for a green building focused company shows improved returns to shareholders relative to non-green competitors.

The results are specific to the time and building researched; green buildings costs have reduced over time, and a new study may show improved case study findings. The case study results on stock market performance are indicative and may need further research for evaluation.

The case study presents a model for critical appraisal of green buildings investment. The paper further indicates that green building investment may lead to operational savings and superior stock performance compared to competitors.

The paper presents a green building investment appraisal model which might be useful for the industry and academia. Developing countries have limited literature on green buildings' financial benefits; this case study quantifies the financial benefits and compares them with the available literature related to developed economies’ green buildings.

The learning outcomes of this case study are as follows: to understand the concept of social commerce and how it is different from e-commerce business, to discuss the unique features of Meesho’s social commerce model, to understand concepts of entrepreneurship (e.g. addressing the gap through business, pivoting), to understand the dynamics of online grocery market and e-commerce market and to apply business strategy concepts to make recommendations.

This case study presents Meesho, an organization in social commerce in India. Meesho was founded by Indian Institute of Technology graduates Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal in the year 2015 to help the small business owners with online selling. It was initially launched as an app that connected local retailers to the customers. Owing to low customer interest and low profit margins, they pivoted the business to a reseller app that facilitated the individuals and small retailers to resell the wholesalers’ products (unbranded and long-tail products) to the customers on social media channels. However, the tough competition from other start-ups in social commerce and retail giants such as Amazon and Flipkart who targeted the same customers impacted their growth. After receiving a funding of US$300m, the founders were considering if they should enter the e-commerce market and directly compete with giants such as Amazon and Flipkart or extend the product line to the online groceries market and compete with dominant players such as BigBasket and Blinkit. Through this case study, the students could be provided an opportunity to evaluate a situation, apply the strategic management concepts and make a recommendation on the strategic plan.

The case study can be taught in the business and strategy courses at the graduate and postgraduate levels in business schools. It is also suitable for the entrepreneurship course with focus on e-commerce start-up and sustainability, which is also taught at the MBA level. This case study can also be used in executive development programs for abovementioned courses.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

In the last 10 years, India has amended its laws dealing with sexual offences against women with the changes ranging from increasing terms of imprisonment for the offence of rape to state-funded compensation schemes for women and child victims. In this regard, challenges persist for the agencies of the criminal justice system in India especially the courts to realise the vision of restorative justice as these forums have to navigate the relevant statutory provisions and binding precedents. This chapter seeks to analyse the challenges faced by courts in proper reintegration of victims and offenders of sexual offences, the institutional responses of the courts and suggests reforms to the criminal justice system in India in consonance with the principles of restorative justice acknowledged in the restorative justice movement in the international discourse.

The impact of COVID-19 has caused a recession in economies all over the world. In this context, the current study aims to analyze the prevailing economic scenario using a machine learning approach and suggest sustainable measures to recover the global economy taking the case of Make in India (MII) initiative of developing the economy as a base for the study.

A well-known topic modeling technique – Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) algorithm has been employed to extract useful information characterizing the existing state of selected sectors under the MII initiative alongside catalytic policies that have been implemented for the same. The textual data acts as the base of the study upon which suggestions are provided.

The findings obtained suggest that digital transformation will play a key role in concerned sectors to optimize the performance of manufacturing organizations. Additionally, inter-relationship between Key Performance Indicators for the economy's revival is crucial for effective utilization of foreign direct investment resources.

The novel efforts to utilize MII initiative as a case present crucial information which can be used by policy makers and various other stakeholders across the globe to enhance decision-making and draft legislation across different sectors to empower the economy.

The study presents a novel approach to utilize the MII initiative by identifying important measures for crucial sectors and associated policies that have been presented by employing a text mining approach which in itself makes it unique in its contribution to research literature.

A woman's nutritional status significantly determines her overall well-being. The authors critically examine the trends — including socioeconomic disparities — in undernutrition among Muslim women in India, a notably socio-economically disadvantaged group. The authors also investigate trends and variations across the dimensions of caste, place of residence (rural/urban), education, economic status and geographic regions.

The analysis leverages the nationally representative National Family Health Surveys (NFHS) of India conducted between 1998 and 2021. The authors examined poor–rich ratios, concentration indices, disparity ratios and predicted probabilities of being underweight (captured using Body Mass Index).

From 1998 to 2021, there has been a decline in undernutrition prevalence among Muslim women. However, stark socioeconomic variations persist. While the prevalence has decreased over time across all socioeconomic groups, disparities — both within and between groups — remain significant and, in many cases, have expanded. For certain socioeconomic subgroups (e.g. Muslim women with no formal education or those in the Central and Northeast regions), the disparity doubled between 1998 and 2021. In regions like the South, where undernutrition prevalence is low or has reduced, disparities remain significant and generally have increased.

To the authors’ knowledge, the study is the first to provide a comprehensive examination of the prevalence, trends and socioeconomic disparities in undernutrition among Muslim women in India over the past two decades.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-04-2023-0320

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effects of flaxseed (L. usitatissimum [Linn]) on blood pressure, redox status markers and acetylcholinesterase enzyme activity in ouabain-induced hypertension in normal Wistar rats.

Male Wistar rats weighing 250 ± 7 g (n = 24) fed with an experimental diet containing 20 per cent casein were divided into three groups (n = 8) and received a daily subcutaneous injection of either 0.9 per cent saline solution (T group) or 10 µg/kg/day of ouabain diluted in saline solution-treated Oub-Lu or not with 1 per cent of flaxseed (L. usitatissimum) mixed in the diet for 21 days.

The results showed that treatment with flaxseed had a significant effect (p < 0.05) in decreasing systolic, diastolic blood pressure, mean arterial pressure and the heart rate in hypertensive rats. Total and non-HDL cholesterol levels were reduced by –26 and –35 per cent; p = 0.04, respectively. Concentrations of thiobarbituric acid-reactive substances were significantly decreased by –85 and –42 per cent (p = 0.001 and p = 0.04), respectively in the plasma and heart. Nitric oxide levels were increased in the aorta (+ 63 per cent; p = 0.001). Moreover, in the heart and aorta, a significant increase was noted in the thiol contents (+81 and +69 per cent; p = 0.001, respectively), glutathione peroxidase (+50 per cent; p = 0.03 and p = 0.01, respectively) and acetylcholinesterase activities (75 and +19 per cent, respectively; p = 0.001 and p = 0.04).

These results suggest hypotensive, cardiomoderating and antioxidant effects of flaxseed in ouabain-induced hypertension in the rat. In addition, it promotes a significant increase of the acetylcholinesterase activity in tissues.