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2753 items in total found

Working Papers | 2022

Effects of Climatic Variations on Child Morbidity in Bundelkhand Region of India: A Panel Data Analysis

Vanita Singh, Vidhee Avashia, Manju Sharma Bhati, and Amit Garg

Morbidity and mortality related impacts of climate change are increasingly becoming a public health challenge especially among vulnerable groups. India has made significant progress in reducing its child mortality however there exists huge regional variations. This study focuses on Bundelkhand region, and analyses the association between climatic variables and morbidity in children. Cases reported to district health office from routine surveillance system between 2009 and 2015, and climate data are used in a fixed effects panel data regression model controlling for development indicators. The panel data regression finds that incidence of morbidity in children is significantly associated with temperature and rainfall. The significance of development indicators in reducing morbidity incidence is suggestive of the critical role of inter-sectoral coordination in achieving desired health outcomes

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Working Papers | 2022

Litigating Barbie: Trade Mark Infringement, Parody and Free Speech

M.P. Ram Mohan and Aditya Gupta

In the contemporary marketplace, trade marks are not mere monikers of origin. While often regarded as commercial symbols, trade marks sometimes become part of the commonplace vocabulary and are indelibly linked to expressing ideas and thoughts. In recent years, the dichotomy of expansive protection offered through the trade mark law and use of marks as part of expressive vocabulary has become increasingly controversial. One such trade mark which has amassed immense communicative strength is Mattel Incs Barbie. The mark has assumed an enduring prominence in contemporary language and has assumed the status of a cultural icon. The present study examines the regulation of expressive secondary uses of trade marks by employing Barbie as a case study. Comparatively analysing the treatment of the Barbie mark in India, the USA, and Canada, the authors underline an imperative need to adopt a legislative framework to protect the expressive and artistic secondary use of popular trade marks.

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Working Papers | 2022

Towards an Integrated Framework for Resolving Ethical Dilemmas

Manan Gandhi and Vishal Gupta

The present paper proposes an integrated approach to resolving life's ethical dilemmas. First, it refines the set of fundamental ethical values, which will help discard the confirmed unethical choices and exhaustively contain all the different prospects of acts that can be deemed ethical from different viewpoint. Further, it comprehensively enunciates the different types of ethical dilemmas that could be generated out of the conflict between the elemental values of the set of fundamental ethical values. Finally, it contributes a framework to resolve the dilemma that caters to the different possibilities of conflict generation and exhaustively settles them.

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Working Papers | 2022

Impact of COVID-19 disruptions on the Supply Chain:Insights from India

Apurva Shrey, Avi Dutt, and Debjit Roy

Supply Chains play very important role in driving the economy of the country. COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns have disrupted the supply chains of various firms. It has been estimated that the total cost of supply chain disruption due to COVID-19 and geopolitical tensions is around $4 Trillion for US and European firms (Total Cost of Supply Chain Disruption, n.d.). This cost highlights the need to study the impact of COVID-19 on the supply chain function of companies and explore the efforts made by the firms to mitigate the same. The objective of the paper is to examine the disruptions caused by COVID-19 pandemic in value chains of different sectors. It further aims to bridge the gap between the approach taken by the industry practitioners to mitigate the challenges faced by the COVID-19 pandemic and research work carried out by the academicians. The study examines the challenges faced by the industry and suggest opportunity areas where research can support efforts in industry to improve supply chain resilience.

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Working Papers | 2022

Exploring the Role of IoT in Worker Safety and Productivity

Tarini Goyal and Debjit Roy

This paper analyses the role of the Internet of Things in increasing worker safety and productivity as well as improving performance appraisal methods in the factory setup. Analysis of productivity levels has been carried out for workers in a steel plant on the basis of data collected from IoT tags. The study depicts how IoT can allow workers to perform tasks smoothly in their respective areas of expertise, along with a robust system of communication. By preventing accidents and boosting productivity, a win-win situation is created for workers and their families, as well as for factory owners and their clients.

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Working Papers | 2022

Gai Aadharit Unnati (GAU)*: Modernizing Cow based Economy through Application of Advanced Technology

Gaurav Kumar Kedia, Amit Garg, Pradeep Kumar Mishra, Nishant Krishna, and Aprajita Mishra

The cow, in the Indian context, has been the backbone of our agricultural economy since the early age of human civilization. Our agriculture-based economy thrived alongside cow welfare; thanks to a bounty of natural gifts such as dairy products, manure, crops, vegetables, fruits, and medicinal and natural products derived from cow dung and urine. Mahatma Gandhi even talked about the importance of cow by saying Mother cow is in many ways better than the mother who gave us birth. Unfortunately, due to several economic constraints, cow owners are bound to leave the non-milching cows when they become non-productive. Such stray cattle are forced to survive on the garbage and suffer from fatal health problems. The recent ban on illegal slaughterhouses by the government (although rightly so), while beneficial for the cattle, has further complicated the situation. These stray cattle cause crop damage in villages and become victims of several injuries and casualties via accidents. There are already five million stray cattle officially on the streets of India, and with the ban on slaughterhouses, the numbers are only going to go further up. This is an alarming stage to analyse and tackle this problem in a systematic manner. In order to conquer this problem, it has been observed that Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based model incorporation can provide a solution by integrating stray cows in a circular economy. Donors could provide support to cows through a sustainable AI-based business model that is created in this paper. It provides donors to track their donations in real-time while also caring for cows (Gau Seva). Economical optimization of stray cow by-products: cow dung derivatives like cakes, compost, briquettes, incense sticks, etc., and cow dung as such along with urine can be sold to the biogas bio fertiliser generation plants for further economic benefits. The real-world application of the model also demonstrates how a community biogas plant can help sustainable energy transitions for our villages and even the cities to become self-reliant and lower their dependency on LPG, which can save millions of dollars per year for the government through lower oil imports for LPG generation. In the long run, the proposed model relies more on internal revenue generation and phasing out the donation part to enable the GAU-based sustainability model for an economy.

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Working Papers | 2022

Bilevel Optimization: Applications, Models and Solution Approaches

Sachin Jayaswal and Ankur Sinha

Bilevel optimization is a difficult class of optimization problems, which contain an inner optimization problem as a constraint to an outer optimization problem. Such optimization problems are commonly referred to as Stackelberg games in the area of game theory, where a hierarchical interaction between a leader and a follower is modeled. This chapter presents several examples of bilevel optimization problems arising in various contexts, e.g., the product line selection problem and the shortest path interdiction problem. Depending on the context of the problem, the leader and the follower may have the same objective function but with conflicting objectives (max-min in the shortest path interdiction), or may have different objective functions (as in the product line selection problem). Under this hierarchical setting, the leader tries to optimize its own decision by taking into account the rational response of the follower. A bilevel optimization problem is NP-hard even in the simplest case in which the problems of the leader and the follower are both simple linear programs. This chapter discuses classical solution approaches that are based on the reformulation of the bilevel problem into a single level. It also discusses several alternate single-level reformulations for the application problems considered in this chapter.

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Working Papers | 2022

Mutation of the trademark doctrine: Analysing actionable use to reconcile brand identities with constitutional safeguards (Revised version as on 23.05.2022)

M.P. Ram Mohan and Aditya Gupta

Trademarks serve as a storehouse of information, assuring consumers about the quality of a product by ensuring that products bearing the trademark originate from a consistent source. The trademark doctrine has accommodated this position as its underlying thesis for several decades, and consumer confusion has served as a touchstone for trademark liability. However, given the configurations of the modern marketplace, trademarks transcend their role as source-identifiers and are framed in the language of relationships rather than transactions. With continuous and consistent use, trademarks can come to signify opulence, luxury, dependability and become cultural icons. The modern trademark doctrine must accommodate these realities of the marketplace while, at the same time, accommodating the flourishing exchange of expressive uses through unauthorized use of trademarks. This push-and-pull has resulted in complete obliteration of what were already obscure boundaries between the expressive and marketing spheres of trademark law. Drawing from the American, English, and European trademark jurisprudence, the present study examines the normative foundations of the modern trademark doctrine. These foundations are then extrapolated to Indian trademark law to create a workable limitation of mutating trademark doctrine through the actionable use requirement.

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Working Papers | 2022

State-owned banks and credit allocation in India: Evidence from an asset quality review

Abhiman Das, Sanket Mohapatra, and Akshita Nigania

This paper examines the role of state-owned banks' presence in allocation of credit to different sectors in India using the central banks Asset Quality Review (AQR) as a quasi-natural experiment. The AQR resulted in a larger increase in non-performing loans of state-owned banks as compared to other banks. We exploit the heterogeneity in the presence of state-owned and other banks across districts to identify the supply side channels for bank credit reallocation. Using a difference-in-differences analysis, we find that the top-third of districts based on presence of state-owned banks branches experienced a higher fall in the share of credit to the industrial sector in the post-AQR period compared to other districts. Such districts also experienced a greater increase in retail loans, which are considered less risky compared to industrial loans. Further, an analysis using a panel vector autoregression finds that the AQR, through an increase in non-performing loans of state-owned banks, led to a decrease in economic growth at the district-level. The results of this study suggest that central bank policy reforms can influence bank credit allocation at the sub national level and have real economy effects.

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Working Papers | 2022

Impact of Mergers and Acquisitions on Innovation: Evidence from a Panel of Indian Pharmaceutical Firms

Rakesh Basant and Neha Jaiswal

Based on the literature, the paper identifies processes that get initiated post an M&A event and affect the acquiring firm's innovation efforts. We apply panel fixed effects estimation techniques to analyze the individual impact of mergers and acquisitions on R&D intensity of acquiring firms using data for 217 publically listed Indian pharmaceutical firms (both acquirers and non-acquirers) during 1999-2018. The study finds that acquisitions rather than mergers provide impetus to R&D in the acquiring firms. This suggests that these two combinations-mergers and acquisitions - do not unleash the same type of innovation activity related processes in the acquiring firm. Results also show that when mergers or acquisitions are combined with purchase of assets, they have a positive impact on R&D intensity. Purchase of assets when combined with M&A seem to provide access to relevant complementary assets that makes R&D activity profitable for the acquirer post the merger or acquisition event. Possibly, firms view purchase of assets as a strategy that is complementary to M&A strategies for enhancing innovation. The paper shows that impact of M&A on R&D takes time and it is useful to analyze the impact of mergers and acquisitions separately, rather than combining the two together.

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