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This paper aims to build upon the various studies conducted on the ecosystem and expands the understanding of the ecosystem of microfinance institutions (MFIs) in India. The discussions in this essay entail a literature review that analyzes the discourse on the ecosystem of MFIs, and based on this an attempt has been made to conceptually design a model for the ecosystem of MFIs in India.

The authors design the “Indian microfinance ecosystem model” based on the actors in the broader financial ecosystem (Bloom and Dees, 2008; Ledgerwood and Gibson, 2013) and the capital infrastructure and the context-setting factors of the social entrepreneurship ecosystem (Dees et al., 2008) that best describes the Indian MFI scenarios.

The ecosystem of MFIs in India is found to be very complicated. The interactions among numerous actors – who are core product or service providers, facilitators, client, beneficiaries, resource providers, competitors, complementary organizations, regulators, opponents and influential bystanders. The authors also observed that the capital infrastructure and context-setting factors such as policy, politics, media, economic and social conditions are equally crucial for the MFIs to survive and flourish. Moreover, the ecosystem is also dynamic and could change with the environmental conditions and entry of new entrants into the ecosystem.

Understanding the ecosystem of MFIs from the strategic perspective would also be of interest to stakeholders such as donors, investors, banks, government and so on. For MFIs, knowing their place in the ecosystem is an essential step in determining their strategy.

Understanding the elements of the ecosystem would help MFIs to assess whether they have achieved the minimum critical environmental conditions in the ecosystem for their business model to succeed.

Better understanding of the ecosystem will help create social benefits through better service delivery to the low-income population.

Expands the existing business ecosystem literature by extending it to the social policy, social entrepreneurship and more specifically to the microfinance sector. Fills a void in ecosystem literature by designing a comprehensive ecosystem model of MFIs in India. Understanding the ecosystem would help market system actors and facilitators to understand what they have to do to achieve their objectives of participating in the ecosystem. Knowing their place in the ecosystem is an essential step in determining what they should do and how they should do it. In addition to MFIs, it could have important implications for policymakers, particularly the government, that are trying to achieve financial inclusion.

This chapter explores into the understanding of poverty and mitigating the challenges by revisiting for a sustainable alleviation of the scales of economy. Eventually insufficient income and spending is the bastion of natural deprivation for household problems. Effective measures are critically examined to redefine the obstacles that are key to upliftment and eradication of poverty. It essentially aims to bridging the gap, analysing the SDG goals through a trend analysis for a time period. These strategies will introspect into overcoming the emerging areas of concern with a futuristic development. Evidently global challenges in the social, economic, political and cultural ecosystem require newness of intervention and initiatives to achieve the triple bottom line, revisiting the dimensions of poverty. Essentially it will anatomise into the causes and consequences of poverty through certain measuring yardsticks in the context of different economies globally. These social, economic, political, legal and technological interventions through their novel strategies can empower and create inclusion for the sharing of equitable wealth distribution, ensuring justice and supporting human rights, providing social security to the poorest of the poor. This study shall innovatively scan through the new entrepreneurship models to understand the skillsets across the globe in order to foster good governance in a win-win environment. Nevertheless, the aspects of poverty alleviation and sustainable order for mitigating the challenges of poverty shall be addressed in the spectrum of climate change and volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA) environment. Basically, in review of the aforesaid dimensions, this study shall vividly examine on the Sustainable Developmental Goals (SDGs) pertaining to poverty alleviation worldwide to adjust for the seamless and uninterrupted continuation trend analysis of the periodic plans of action. It shall adjudge into the befitting global trend admissible under the uncertain future.

This book chapter examines how the evolution of the tourist and hospitality industries has been impacted by digital technologies. Digitalisation makes it possible to implement resilient infrastructure in all applications to achieve sustainability. The hospitality and tourism sector is known to be information-rich due to its diverse commercial interactions with shareholders and constant evolution of managerial processes, modification of tourist and hotel services, advancements in technology and an intensely competitive atmosphere. It has been recognised that growth of tourism and hospitality industry becomes impossible without the applications of modern digital technologies that enable integration and communication, boost service quality and transmit a sizeable amount of information. In the context of the tourism sector, the establishment of resilient infrastructure that relies on digital technologies is vital in order to obtain optimal consumer feedback pertaining to the provision of high-quality service. The utilisation of digital technology has demonstrated its capacity to enhance hospitality services through the facilitation of real-time data-driven decision-making. The objective of this study is to emphasise the importance and practical uses of the internet of things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing and big data in the context of consumer quality and satisfaction. This study also addresses the significance of various technologies and their applications in attaining consumer quality and pleasure in the digital realm. Additionally, it might help company owners, managers and marketers in any field to achieve and improve high business performance by executing the right plans to use AI that fulfil the demands and expectations of both customers and staff.

This study empirically investigates the interdependency of select Asian emerging economies along with the financial stress index during the times of the global financial crisis, the Euro crisis and the COVID-19 period. Moreover, it inspects the long-memory effects of the different crises during the study period.

To address the objectives of the study, the authors apply different statistical tools, namely the adjusted correlation coefficient, fractionally integrated generalised autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (FIGARCH) model and wavelet coherence model, along with descriptive statistics.

Financial stress is having a prodigious effect on the economic growth of select economies. From the data analysis, it is found that the long-memory effect is noted in the gross domestic product (GDP) for India and Korea only, which implies that the volatility in the GDP series for these two nations demonstrates persistence and dependency on previous values over a lengthy period.

The study is unique of its kind to consider multi-segments within the period of the study to get a clear idea about the effects of the financial stress index on select Asian emerging economies by applying different econometric tools.

This paper aims to understand the two-way interaction between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the attractiveness of organization to job seekers (AOJS).

A system dynamics model is developed in the form of a causal loop diagram (CLD) that explains the CSR-AOJS interaction dynamically. To test the credibility of the developed model, the survey data are used to validate the causal relationships in the CLD.

This study found that developing an effective strategy or tool by capturing various essential CSR elements can attract potential job seekers.

The developed model is relevant to policymakers, decision-makers and managers when strategizing the CSR plan to attract potential job seekers.

South Asian region is a focal point owing to its vulnerabilities to climate-sensitive diseases, dependence on climate-sensitive livelihoods, projected levels of crop decline in the region, and high rates of poverty and malnutrition. Women are particularly vulnerable to climate change and this affects women disproportionately during different extreme events. The purpose of this paper is to understand the issue of climate change and its impact, and climate resilience among women in South Asia. Further, it also identifies the gaps and suggests future policy implications.

Climate change is increasingly being recognised as an alarming issue and the present review is important when South Asian countries are facing the brunt of climate change impacts. This paper tries to understand the issue by review of the literature and conceptual framework methodology. To understand women’s vulnerability due to climate change and its aftermath, the authors conducted both offline and online desk reviews for this study.

The findings of this study show a clear linkage between climate change and women’s vulnerabilities in South Asia. Climate change has significant socio-economic impacts on women, and it affects them disproportionately in various domains of agriculture, livelihood, food security, both physical and mental health, water and sanitation in the South Asia region.

The paper also highlights that the programmes that aim at combating the effects of climate change require a gender-sensitive approach so that climate change does not obstruct the development and reduction of poverty in the region.

The findings of this paper will add value in helping families to come out of poverty by undertaking adaptive measures with proactive assistance from the government and grassroots level organisations.

The present study also advocates for more gender- and climate-sensitive measures from governments, and implementation of intervention- and evidence-based research in the South Asian countries.

A vaccination strategy to cover the susceptible population is key to containing the spread of any virus during a healthcare emergency. This study quantifies the susceptibility of a region based on initial infection rates to prioritize optimal vaccine distribution strategies. The authors propose a metric, the regional vulnerability index (RVI), that identifies the degree of susceptibility/vulnerability of a region to virus infections for strategically locating hubs for vaccine storage and distribution.

A two-phase methodology is used to address this problem. Phase 1 uses a modified Susceptible-Infected-Recovered (SIR) model, ModSIR, to estimate the RVI. Phase 2 leverages this index to model a P-Center problem, prioritizing vulnerable regions through a Mixed Integer Quadratically Constrained Programming model, along with three variations that incorporate the RVI.

Results indicate a weighting scheme based on the population-to-RVI ratio fosters fair distribution and equitable coverage of vulnerable regions. Comparisons with the public distribution strategy outlined by the Government of India reveal similar zonal segregations. Additionally, the network generated by our model outperforms the actual distribution network, corroborated by network metrics such as degree centrality, weighted degree centrality and closeness centrality.

This research presents a novel approach to prioritizing vaccine distribution during pandemics by applying epidemiological predictions to an integer-programming framework, optimizing COVID-19 vaccine allocation based on historical infection data. The study highlights the importance of strategic planning in public health response to effectively manage resources in emergencies.