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Over one and half years have passed since the demonetization of Indian economy had occurred on November 8, 2016. The drastic step was initiated by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi with an intention to curb the “huge” circulation of illicit or “black” money of Indian economy by means of withdrawal of high value denominations of Rupees 500 and Rupees 1,000 from the supply of broad money (M3). This step helped to demonetize around 86 per cent value of total money supply leading to an unprecedented chaos in the economy and public life. The long delays in issuing fresh currency notes at the banks and ATMs further deteriorated the sudden economic crisis.

This research paper is aimed at exploring the proclaimed “efficacy” of demonetization policy as proposed by Reserve Bank of India by means of a mathematical approach and critically examines the effects of demonetization on the illicit money supply of Indian economy on the basis of macroeconomic theory.

From the mathematical model and related estimates, it may be easily deduced that the Indian policymakers deliberately hurled the masses in one of the gravest economic crises with a clear-cut intention of creating a political gimmick, when in reality, the proportion of illegitimate money supply was not even 1 per cent of total legitimate supply of money.

The analyses and findings related to this paper are based on mathematical modeling and logical interpretations. This paper is free of plagiarism as all the necessary sources and references are properly cited.

The purpose of this paper is to review the investment-savings, liquidity-money (IS–LM) model used in the traditional macroeconomic theory as an important tool to analyze the dynamics of product and money market. The IS curve represents product market equilibrium condition and the LM curve represents money market equilibrium condition. However, the traditional IS–LM model was formulated mainly keeping in mind the dynamics of the product and money markets of developed economies. Thus, there was an urgent need to explore the pre-established IS–LM model in the light of existing enormous, illicit underground economies prevalent all around the world.

In this paper, an exploratory attempt has been made to review the IS–LM model in the light of various illicit practices and by incorporating some assumptions that are relevant to this discussion. In this model, IS_il curve could be defined as a locus of points each representing a combination of evaded tax and output of the illicit economy that will keep the illicit economy in equilibrium and, the LM_il curve could be defined as a locus of points each representing a combination of illicit supply of money and output of the illicit economy that will keep the illicit economy in equilibrium.

This paper is aimed at analyzing the traditional IS–LM model from a different perspective, namely, the pervasive underground economy thriving all around the world regardless of the stages of growth and development. A sincere attempt has been made to keep the assumptions simple and closest to the real-world scenario as well as pertinent to the logic of economic theory. In this paper, two major factors of illicit practices, i.e. tax evasion and bribery, are given prime importance and the discussion is focused on those two factors of corruption.

This paper has been prepared keeping in view the standard technical procedures and findings that are described in the relevant academic materials like textbooks and journal publications (mentioned under the “References” column). The analysis and findings appearing in the article are based on logical explanations and are completely free from plagiarism.

With 43.2 million coronavirus cases and 525,000 deaths in 2022, India ranked second worldwide, after the United States (84.6 million cases and 1 million deaths), according to the latest available June 2022 COVID-19 impact data.

Amid people’s growing mistrust in the government, India’s news media enhanced the nation’s distinguished designation as the world’s largest and most populous democracy. India’s news media inform, educate, empower, and entertain a surging population of 1.4 billion people, which is roughly one-sixth of the world’s people.

Drawing upon the media agendamelding theoretical framework, we conducted a case study research into interplay between two prominent democratic institutions, the media and the government, to analyze the role of the COVID-19 pandemic in redefining India’s networked society.

India’s COVID-19 pandemic aggravated internecine tensions between media and government relating to four key freedom issues: (1) world’s largest COVID-19 lockdown affecting 1.3 billion Indians from March 25, 2020 to August 2020 with extensions and five-phased re-openings, to restrict the spread of COVID-19; (2) Internet shutdowns; (3) media censorship during the 1975–1977 “Emergency”; and (4) unabated murders of journalists in India.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic caused deleterious problems debilitating the tensions between the media and the government, India’s journalists thrived by speaking truth to power. This study delineates key aspects of India’s media agendamelding that explicates how the people of India form their media agendas. India’s news audiences meld media messages from newspapers, television, and social media to form a picture of the issues, insights, and ideas that define their lives and times in the 21st century digital age.

It has become an ongoing debate whether Indian commodity futures markets can accommodate farmers. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether Indian commodity futures markets help rationalize farmers’ price expectation. The study starts with questions on the efficiency and other roles of commodity futures markets.

From a sectoral standpoint and economic importance, the study considers pepper, coffee, and natural rubber (NR) futures and spot markets. The efficiency of futures markets, divergence/convergence and causality between futures and spot markets have been studied by employing co-integrations, error correction and causality models. The sample period of the data are taken from the inception of futures trading. These three commodities are also compared on the basis of trading at the futures markets vs spot markets.

Analysis shows that though pepper futures market is informationally efficient in price discovery, while coffee and NR spot markets do the process faster. Pepper and coffee futures and spot prices exhibit the convergence; NR shows a sign of divergence. Unidirectional causality from pepper futures to spot market is observed wherein the former was weakly exogenous to the latter and while, bidirectional causality is observed in coffee and rubber. Coffee spot appears weakly exogenous while this remains inconclusive in the case of NR.

The authors analyzed the futures markets in rationalizing the spot market price in three plantation crops in India. In order to make the study more generalizable, further research is warranted in other commodities including those prices of which are government regulated.

The paper is unique in terms of understanding the interaction or interrelationship between futures markets and spot markets and drawing inferences about the role of futures markets in price formation in plantation commodities like pepper, coffee and NR.

The emission of greenhouse gasses, deforestation, and global warming occurred for unplanned developmental designs in most of the South Asian countries. The present study intends to make a comparative study between Bangladesh and the Maldives regarding the impact of pollution on economic growth. The developmental process of these two countries has been interrogated due to the absence of implementing the plan of sustainable development properly. These two countries have been chosen due to having dissimilarities of demographic structure and different developmental models. The density of the population in Bangladesh is the height of the South Asian countries. An unplanned developmental process, urbanisation, and industrialisation made the country highly polluted. Albeit foreign direct investment (FDI) and industrialisation helped Bangladesh to be promoted from a least developed country to a developing country, yet question raises about sustainable development. The South Asian tinny island state, the Islamic Republic of the Maldives has a tourist-based economic structure facing environmental disaster. The erosion of lands and growing air pollution have collectively made the island country jeopardised. This chapter will delineate the effects of pollution on economic growth both in Bangladesh and the Maldives. It will further shed light on application of environmental governance in Bangladesh and the Maldives.

Despite the susceptibility of cotton crops to pest attacks in the Malwa Region of Indian Punjab, no crop insurance policy has been implemented there– not even the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY), which is a central scheme. Therefore, this paper attempts to gauge the likely impact of the PMFBY on Punjab cotton farmers and assess the changes needed for greater uptake and effectiveness of PMFBY.

The authors have conducted a primary survey to conduct this study. Initially, the authors compared the costs of cotton production with the returns in two scenarios (with and without insurance). Additionally, the authors have applied a logistic regression framework to examine the determinants of the willingness of farmers to participate in the crop insurance market.

The study finds that net returns of cotton crops are conventionally small and insufficient to cope with damages from crop failure. Yet, PMFBY will require some modifications in the premium rate and the level of indemnity for its greater uptake among Punjab cotton farmers. Additionally, using the logistic regression framework, the authors find that an increase in awareness about crop insurance and farmers' perceptions about their crop failure in the near future reduces the willingness of the farmers to participate in the crop insurance markets.

The present study looks for the viability of PMFBY in Indian Punjab for the cotton crop, which can also be extended to other crops.

Punjab could also use crop insurance to encourage diversification in agriculture. There is a need for special packages for diversified crops under any crop insurance policy. Crops susceptible to volatility due to climate-related factors should be identified and provided with a special insurance package.

There exist very scant studies that have discussed the viability of a central crop insurance scheme in the agricultural-rich state of India, i.e. Punjab. Moreover, they do not also focus on crop losses accruing due to pest and insect attacks.

Environmental pollution has been a great concern for the government of Bangladesh. Bangladesh was the least developed country, with a lot of financial challenges. The industrial process in Bangladesh has not been able to maintain the directives of the SDGs. The lack of proper industrial policy, technological backwardness and lacunae in implementing environmental governance have affected the environment of the country. The unorganised and informal manufacturing units are often accused of emitting greenhouse gases. Like other South Asian countries, the informal manufacturing sector in Bangladesh has been established without proper planning and environmental guidelines. In Bangladesh, the informal sector includes brick kilns, food processing factories, leather tanning, etc., which are responsible for environmental pollution, health hazards and violations of SDG goals. The issue of environmental pollution by the informal manufacturing sectors of Bangladesh needs to be investigated in the context of the socioeconomic profile of the country and the performance of the government in monitoring the issue. Due to the lack of environmental governance, a high level of pollution has been occurring in the country. What kinds of economic tools and industrial policies are needed to be implemented to avoid environmental hazards? The content analysis method will be applied in this chapter.