Based on research from Darjeeling and Uttar Dinajpur districts of West Bengal this paper presents evidence that non-farm and off-farm activities are carried out by a significant proportion of farmers and make an important contribution to livelihoods. The average diversification index in the study area was 0.46. Majority of the diversifiers had medium extent of diversification. It shows that there is a high involvement of farm women (24%) in diversification activities. Diversification activities make a greater contribution to cash incomes for poorer households. The study found that farmers from Darjeeling district are more diversified (52%) compared to Uttar Dinajpur district (39%). The reason might be that the scope and marketing in non-farm sector are higher in Darjeeling as compared to Uttar Dinajpur district. In Darjeeling district unavailability of land as well as unproductive land particularly in the hill and comparatively high cost of living also forced farmers to diversify into other sectors for their livelihood. Despite the vast potentiality to diversify the livelihood towards farm and non-farm activities in the study area, there were problems such as negative perception of the community, outdated method of production, lack of improved technology and skills, lack of business start- up budget and absence of market for the non-farm output. There are also lacks of potential researchers to study the effect of non-farm activities on farm production and to identify the major problems that hamper the non-farm sector. State machinery should play a facilitator’s role in terms of promoting investment in infrastructure such as road, electricity, irrigation facility etc. more of a decentralized operations for government programmes, especially using the local institution for greater efficiency and better outreach.

With the ever changing climatic scenario and its impact on farming community, need is being felt to explore and develop alternative Resource Conservation Technologies (RCT’s) which will have positive impact on the environment as well as at the same time will save the critical inputs. Zero tillage is one such important RCT commonly practiced in the study area. Several research works have been reported for impact of zero tillage in wheat, rice but so far no systematic study on economics of rapeseed and mustard cultivation under zero tillage was available in the literature especially in Manipur of North Eastern Hill (NEH) Region. Keeping this in view, the study was undertaken to work out the cost and returns of the rapeseed and mustard growers under zero tillage. Economic analysis of the data presented in the paper showed that zero tillage method for rapeseed and mustard cultivation is the most economical and attractive option for the farming community in the area during rabi season.

Approximately 80 % of the world total coriander seed is produced in India. This country is the largest producer, consumer and exporter of the spices. Among these coriander seed is one of the most important spices. Of which, more than 80 % is produced in southeast Rajasthan. Even after introduction of advance production technologies for coriander still it is controlled by soil factors. The study was conducted in southeast Rajasthan for evaluation of soil capability to support coriander seed. The limitations considered for assessment of soil are climatic, topographic, wetness, salinity and alkalinity, soil fertility and physical limitation. The criteria of soil slope, erosion, depth, texture, available water content and length of growing period (LGP) were used for final assessment of soil suitability. Keeping these criteria, it was recorded that agroecological environment of this region and soil system environment of Baran, Bundi, Jhalawar and Kota is most suitable for cultivation of coriander seeds. The total geographical area of above four districts of Rajasthan is 2435 thousand hectares. Out of this 49 per cent is the net sown area. Considering the soil texture as one of the limiting factors, 453 thousand hectare area is suitable for coriander cultivation whereas considering the soil slope as second limiting factor 1322 thousand hectare area is suitable for coriander cultivation in above four districts of Rajasthan. The data from year the 2006-07 to 2010-11 indicated that about 200 (+ 50) thousand hectare area is being kept under coriander seed cultivation in Rajasthan out of this 99 per cent area is situated in southeast Rajasthan i.e. Baran, Bundi, Jhalawar and Kota.

The fish is important food commodity and has an important role in nutritional security of North East region of India. The average per capita consumption of protein in India is 56 gm/day (2005-06) which is below to minimum protein requirement 70 gm/capita/day recommended by the WHO. This study looked into the consumption pattern of fish in urban households of Tripura. This study also examines the socio-economic factors affecting quantity of fish purchase and level of fish consumption by urban households. Simple random technique used to select 120 respondents from four fish markets from the Agartala City of Tripura. Primary data from 120 respondents was collected and analyzed using descriptive statistics and regression analysis. It was found that majority of fish buyers were male and out of those 70% were age below 45 years. The modle class for family size was 3-4 Members/family. The average monthly expenditure on fish purchase was ` 1312.16/household. The regression analysis revealed that fish price negatively affect to the quantity of fish purchase, whereas number adult members in a family, quantity of consumption of chicken and mutton (close substitute of fish) were found to have positively effect on quantity of fish purchase. Therefore, to increase the level of fish consumption in urban areas of Tripura, strategies towards household income, sufficient and regular supply this was needed.

Himachal Pradesh has a rich diversity of medicinal and aromatic plants. These plants have good potential of generating income. Owing to its natural habitat the economics of production of some important medicinal and aromatic plants (MAPs), has been examined based on the field level information from the state of Himachal Pradesh. This study was designed to appraise multistage random sampling technique to select the sample of 50 farmers cultivating MAPs. Local and distant markets were selected purposively for conducting marketing study. A total sample of five traders from local markets and five wholesalers from Amritsar market was drawn randomly from the selected markets dealing in MAPs. Cost of cultivation of these medicinal plants was calculated and the financial tools like NPV, BCR, and IRR were applied to determine the financial feasibility of the plantations. The analysis revealed that the net return per hectare was maximum from Stevia (` 173627.29), followed by Safed Musli (` 85462.01), Aloe vera (` 63832.29) and Lemongrass (` 43325.69). The benefit–cost ratio was found to be in the similar trend i.e., Safed Musli (1.30), followed by Stevia (1.27), Aloe vera (1.22) and Lemongrass (1.19). However, the internal rate of return was found to be highest in case of Lemongrass (40%), followed by Aloe vera (36%) and Stevia (32%). Hence the cultivation of MAPs seems to have good returns which farmers can opt instead of growing other plants.

ICT revolution worldwide has brought immense opportunities in all the sectors of the economy. However, optimum utilization of information and communication technologies requires infrastructure development and human capital investments, overcoming bottlenecks of which will be a challenging task. One of the main challenges is the gap between the information ‘haves’ and information ‘have-nots’ what we call the digital divide. In this context, the paper investigates the extent of ICT diffusion in India and also evaluates inter-state technology divide. ICT Diffusion indices have been constructed to measure ICT diffusion in different states of India. For this purpose, Obricom (2003) methodology has been used. The results of ICT diffusion index indicate that Kerala, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka are the top ICT performers and Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Orissa, Assam are the poor performers. In order to evaluate different determinants of inter-state telecom development, pooled regression analysis was used by taking data at three points of time, i.e., 1991, 2001 and 2011. The results of regression analysis show that telecom sector growth has been positively affected by population and per capita NSDP and policy variable indicating telecom sector liberalization.

Present study recommends an option to overcome the limited water availability in surface irrigation system through provision of secondary reservoirs in the command. The harvested water can be utilized for irrigation in the dry season, short duration fish culture, etc. Approximately 10% of the command area is required for the secondary reservoir with assumption of 50% capacity of the main reservoir will be available for irrigating dry season crops. The demonstration of use of water from the secondary reservoir in addition to the water from main reservoir has resulted in substantial crop and fish yield. The gross and net returns from various cropping patterns considered using irrigation water from main reservoir (MR) and from main and secondary reservoir (MR+SR). Among the cropping patterns considered, rice-tomato cropping pattern resulted in highest net return of INR 29,457/ha followed by rice-brinjal cropping pattern (INR 22,430/ha) with benefit-cost ratio of 2.07 and 1.79, respectively. Highest benefit-cost ratio of 2.09 was obtained for rice-sunflower cropping system due to relatively lower cost of cultivation of sunflower. The highest incremental value of net returns of 3710 `/ha was obtained with rice-tomato cropping system. The low input-based scientific fish culture in the secondary reservoir has enhanced the fish yield by three fold over traditional practice increasing the gross return from the system. The economic analysis also revealed that the intervention is economically viable.

This study analyses the challenges and strategies to increase pulse production with special emphasis on chickpea and pigeon pea. The study is based on secondary data collected from published sources. Compound growth rate was estimated to study the yield performance in the major states. The study revealed that there is low yield growth in chick pea and pigeon pea in the majority of the states. The yield gap analysis in chickpea also reveals high exploitable potential yield in the western zone. Totally 3.2 million tonnes of additional pulses can be produced by extending pulses area to rainfed rice fallow lands, replacing low productive crops and summer fallows. Hence, the respective state governments may take necessary action to increase pulses production by providing technological and institutional support.

The present study deals with time series models which are non-structural-mechanical in nature. The Box Jenkins Autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) and Generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedastic (GARCH) models are studied and applied for modeling and forecasting of spot prices of Gram at Delhi market. Augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF) test is used for testing the stationarity of the series. ARCH-LM test is used for testing the volatility. It is found that ARIMA model cannot capture the volatility present in the data set whereas GARCH model has successfully captured the volatility. Root Mean square error (RMSE), Mean absolute error (MAE) and Mean absolute prediction error (MAPE) were computed. The GARCH (1,1) was found to be a better model in forecasting spot price of Gram. The values for RMSE, MAE and MAPE obtained were smaller than those in ARIMA (0,1,1) model. The AIC and SIC values from GARCH model were smaller than that from ARIMA model. Therefore, it shows that GARCH is a better model than ARIMA for estimating daily price of Gram.

Globalisation, IT development and strengthening of WTO-GATT have resulted in equalisation and internationalisation providing a favourable environment to international businesses. At the same time, social and socio-cultural differences draw up new challenges for international marketers and businessmen. In international business, the main question of marketing is to adapt to the specialities of the desired foreign market or to follow the standardised strategy. Cultural differences, specialities, are the main barriers to globalisation tendencies. Thus, international marketing strategy - if we are sensible to differentiation - has to be adapted from culture to culture. The essence of cross-culture marketing is studying the cultural features, differences of foreign markets, fitting, adapting to them or at least taking them into consideration when making a business decision (DANKÓ, 2000). The main aim of the present paper is to overview marketing concepts and to highlight the importance of the intercultural approach to marketing.

Sugarcane is an annual crop engaging around 50 million farmers of which approximately half are women. Even though, women form the backbone of sugarcane cultivation, they still tend to exist as “the hidden farmers” with almost negligible access on land, resources, technologies, financial services, markets and even education. Despite their exclusive inputs in sugarcane farming operations like farmyard manure application, sett planting and treatments, hand weeding and detrashing, sugarcane bundling, disposal of trash and plant protection measures, the output of the land controlled by women is drastically lesser than the male counterparts. Against this backdrop the present paper is an attempt to examine the role of women in sugarcane farming in terms of their participation level, their decision making pattern in various activities, time utilization pattern, drudgeries involved and thereby implications. Hence, this study was conducted in Nehtaur Block of Bijnor District of Western Uttar Pradesh. Six villages from Nehtaur Block were selected for the purpose of the study. From these villages, 120 women who were engaged in sugarcane farming selected randomly and each was interviewed personally for the collection of data.

Sharecropping is an important age-old agrarian phenomenon in Assam. There is still vast scope to boost rice production in the study area through increasing the productivity of crops with the adoption of improved and economic methods of crop cultivation in due space and time on a sustainable basis. Sharecropping in the study area is established as supplementary source of farm income to those farmers who undertake sharecropping by hiring lands from others. It also act as a complementary source of income and employment for both the group of farmers that is one who undertake sharecropping on others lands and others who let their land for sharecropping to other farmers. Thus, Sharecropping in the study area is found as both supplementary and complementary source of farm income. Of course, in the study area, there is still great scope to make share cropping more profitable as the productivity of rice crop is 481 kg less than the productivity of Punjab and 3202 kg less than the productivity of Egypt which is highest in the world.

Friedman’s hypothesis regarding the relationship between inflation, inflation uncertainty and output growth states that full employment policy objective of the government tends to increase the rate of inflation which increases the uncertainty about the future course of inflation. Increase in inflation uncertainty lowers economic efficiency and reduces output growth. There are very few studies for underdeveloped countries particularly for India regarding the relationship between inflation, inflation uncertainty and output growth. Thornton’s (2006) study regarding the relationship between inflation and inflation uncertainty in India is univariate in nature and it cannot establish the relationship between inflation uncertainty and output growth. This study intends use the bivariate GARCH model to find out the relation between inflation, inflation uncertainty and output growth simultaneously. In this study we use monthly data of wholesale price index (WPI) and index of industrial production (IIP) of India as the proxies of price and output respectively from 1950:1 to 2011:12. Following Fountas, Karanasos and Kim (2002) we have used the following bivariate GARCH model to estimate simultaneously the means, variances and covariances of inflation and output growth. We use Granger- causality test to know the statistical relationship between average inflation, output growth, inflation uncertainty and output growth uncertainty. We find strong evidence that increase in average inflation raises inflation uncertainty and increase in growth rate increases the growth rate uncertainty. But we do not find any statistically significant relationship between inflation uncertainty and output growth rate.

In the present study, we aim to devise most appropriate prediction model for India’s annual sticklac production data based on Exponential Autoregressive (EXPAR) model. Statistical modelling and forecasting of agricultural time-series data plays a vital role in comprehending the underlying relationships among statistically significant variables and helping the planners in policy making. Accordingly, in this paper, a promising methodology of EXPAR family of models has been employed to describe India’s annual sticklac production data that depict such cyclical fluctuations.The fitted EXPAR model captured the data in a satisfactory manner. Further, the performance of the model is compared by computing various measures of goodness-of-fit and forecast performance. We conclude that EXPAR model performs quite well for modelling as well as forecasting of the cyclical data under consideration.