Department of Commerce, University of North Bengal

ARTICLES

EDITORIAL

This edition of Anweshan is a qualitative shift towards gradual up-gradation of the journal. An important point that needs to be reported at the very outset is that the Department of Commerce, University of North Bengal, has taken the decision to make the journal a double blind peer-reviewed one, especially for fulfilling the basic requirements of quality and enhancing the standard of the journal. To meet this requirement, considerable time had be spent in the review process and subsequently getting the articles modified and upgraded by the authors. Eventually, the process enables us publishing the articles, which are satisfying the benchmarks of academic standard.

Six valuable articles enrich this edition; for this I am thankful to the contributors for choosing the journal and enriching it with their valuable research findings. This needs a mention that we received overwhelming response from the authors. We hope the authors will equally exhibit their choice for the journal in the forthcoming editions.

It gives me immense pleasure to state that the articles are original products of honest research works and the ideas are pure. Secondly, articles reflect well organised application of empirical analyses. I hope that research articles published in this issue will add to the existing body of knowledge and fetch due recognition from academic world

This edition is going to be uploaded in the website of the university. For this I am thankful to the university authority and computer centre for their timely decision. I convey thanks to the librarian of North Bengal University for making arrangement for plagiarism check of submitted articles. It gives us the assurance that articles published in this issue are original. I am especially thankful to the board of esteemed reviewers, a galaxy of the renowned academicians, for their kind consent to act as reviewers of the journal. The most important point is that the honourable reviewers have generously spared their valuable time and reviewed the articles with their academic excellence. Without this help the journal could not be published. I convey due regards for each of the honourable reviewers. The Department of Commerce, University of North Bengal will acknowledge this help.

I am thankful to all the faculty members of the Department of Commerce, who extended all sorts of help in the processes of getting the volume published. Thanks are also due for each member of the organising committee along with the secretary of Two Days National Seminar on Advances in Business and Management. In fact, this seminar helped a lot in getting good articles for this volume.

Finally, I want to express my sincere thanks and gratitude to all technicians and personnel of the North Bengal University Press. It needs to be mentioned that without active support and cooperation of the superintendent of the Press Mr. Indranil Ray this volume could not be made so attractive.
Prof. Dipen Roy
Editor-in-Chief
Anweshan Vol. 6

EDITORIAL

It is a matter of great satisfaction that despite of so many odds and hindrances finally we have become successful to publish our fifth volume of ANWESHAN at appropriate time. This time we have received huge response from the academic ambience of our country in the form of academic contribution to this journal. A lot of suggestions and constructive criticisms have been received from the learned academic personalities from all over the country. I am thankful to my departmental colleagues who have helped me a lot in connection with the publication of this issue on time. In this issue we have been able to accommodate research articles of varied nature and dimensions. A many of them are analytical in nature and some of them are highly conceptual in their character.

In the first article titled “Day-of-the-Week and other Market Anomalies in the Indian Stock Market” authored by Prof Abhijit Dutta has tried to understand the price behavior of the Indian stock market and find if the market prices of the calendar event such as day of the week and month of the year has any effect on the Indian stock market. The author has concluded that the variance in seasonality in the Indian market as compared to the other developed markets implies that this market is not yet integrated with the other world markets and can provide a good portfolio diversification opportunity.

In the second article titled “Community Based Tourism: An Analysis of consumer Behaviour” authored by Mr. Joydeep Mukherjee and Prof Sharmistha Banerjee have tried to throw some lights on the modified version of sustainable eco tourism , community based tourism with an ultimate focus on the protection of host communities’ socio cultural heritage. In this paper they have tried to diagnose sampled tourists’ behavior pattern in order to develop and manage the newly emerged concept of community based tourism. They have indentified three most important factors who motivate tourists to travel and influence their choice of destination which are Tourism Infrastructure, Nature and environment attraction and Cultural attraction.

In the third article titled “Growth–Inflation nexus in USA: A Threshold Regression Approach” authored by Dr. Debesh Bhowmik, Dr. Debasish Biswas and Prof Debabrata Mitra have tried to find out the nature of inflation of USA during 1961-2015 and to find out the nexus between inflation and growth using Granger causality , Johansen co-integration and vector error correction models. They have finally concluded that inflation of USA has been declining at the rate of around 1.6% during the period of their study. Growth inflation causality is unidirectional and they are cointegrated in the order one.

In the fourth article titled “EVA versus Traditional Accounting –based Financial Performance Measures: An Evaluation of Relative and Incremental Information Content in explaining variation in stock Return” authored by Prof Debdas Rakshit, Dr. Susanta Mitra and Mr. Mahesh Kumar Kurmi have tried to conduct a comprehensive study of the relative and incremental information content of EVA and its supremacy over other traditional accounting based financial performance measures in explaining the variations in stock returns. They have finally concluded that EVA has got a greater ability to predict stock returns in contrast with the traditional financial performance measures as it possesses the greatest information power in explaining the variations in the stock return.

In the fifth article titled “The Marshallian Theory of Industrial Districts and Its Italian Variant: The case of a pottery industry agglomerate in West Bengal” authored by Lawrence Thanislaus and Prof Indrajit Ray have tried to analyse an industrial agglomerate in West Bengal, in the neighbourhood of Siliguri town, which has a more recent origin, the post –Partition period of Bengal. In this article the author have tried to establish whether this cottage-industry agglomerate exhibits the traits of the theory of industrial district, which has largely been developed on the experience of modern industries in developed countries. Finally they have concluded that the reasons for this agglomeration are mainly due to the pull factors such as proximity to raw materials, market accessibility, transport facilities and above all its locational advantages.

In the sixth article titled “Driver Behaviour Inventory as Predictors of Driving Crashes and Near Misses among Professional Drivers: Testing a Contextual Mediated Model” authored by Prof Kh. Tomba Singh and A.S. Rapheileng have conducted an extensive research work to investigate the relative impact of various sources of stress classified as distal and proximal on driving outcomes, that is , occurrence of near misses and accidents. Their study has provided some important information and deep insight into a range of internal and external factors who have got a profound influence on drivers’ occupational stress level.

The last research study titled “Influence of Demographic and Job Related Factors on the Performance of the Life Insurance Advisors in the Kolkata Region” authored by Ipsita C. Patranabis has tried to determine the influence of selected demographic and job related characteristics on the performance of life advisors of the Kolkata region. In this study it has been found a notable impact of gender on the performance of the advisors. It has also been recommended that life insurance organizations should have long-term policies to encourage and support female advisors to rise in their career because encouraging female advisors to rise will not only bring about balanced diversity but it will also facilitate to reach out to the prospective female customers at a larger extent.

I firmly believe and hope that the research articles published in this issue are adequately enriched to provide food for thought to the new and existing researchers working in these fields. Any sort of constructive criticisms, observations are always welcome from my end.

Lastly, I want to express my sincere thanks and gratitude to all staff members of North Bengal University Press specially Mr. Indranil Ray and Mr. Debasish Chakraborty for their untiring and relentless effort for bringing out this issue of our esteemed Departmental Journal on right time.

Professor (Dr.) Debabrata Mitra
Editor-in-Chief

ARTICLES

EDITORIAL

It is a matter of great satisfaction that despite of so many odds and hindrances finally we have been successful to publish our fourth volume of ANWESHAN on appropriate time. This time we have received huge response from the academic ambience in the form of their academic contribution to this journal. I have also received suggestions and constructive criticism from the learned academic personalities. I am also thankful to my departmental colleagues who have helped me a lot in connection with the publication of this issue on time. In this issue we have been able to accommodate scholarly articles of varied dimensions. A many of them are of analytical in nature and some of them are highly conceptual in their character.

In the first article titled“ Self –Report Driver Stress and Aberrant Behavior” authored by Dr. Kh. Tomba Singh along with A.S. Rapheileng and Kh. Rajib Singh conducted an investigative study on self-report driver stress and aberrant driver behavior in Manipur. They examined the relationship between Driver Stress Inventory and Driver Behavior Survery. It was revealed from the study that predictors could predict penalties but could not predict accidents. High level of drivers stress had been observed to be associated with the increased self-reported driving urgency

The second article titled “Rational Inefficiency: A Discourse on John Richard Hicks, Joe Staten Bain and Harvey Leibenstein” authored by Smt Nandita Pradhan and Prof Indrajit Ray went against the traditional arguments that “in the absence of market failures, rationality generates efficiency”. It had further been argued that “rationality usually reflects the state of mind that determines the course of decision-making for an individual”. They have empathetically argued that rationality should not be considered identical to efficiency. They advocated for a new concept in their paper which they had termed as ‘rational inefficiency’ or equivalently, ‘irrational efficiency’.

The third article titled “ Assessing the role of POSB to cater financial inclusion and delivering rural credit in India” authored by Dr. Amlan Ghosh was an attempt to examine the problems of formal banking to include the excluded people specifically residing in the rural areas regarding granting of small credit. He had also advocated that Post Office Savings Bank could be effectively used by our government to cater this sort of financial need of rural India where our formal banking system failed to a considerable extent.

The fourth paper titled “ Impact of NPAs upon Profitability of State Bank of India- A critical review” authored by Mr. Ajit Kumar and Dr. S.B. Lall was an attempt to investigate whether there existed any relationship between non-performing assets and the performance of banks with special reference to State Bank of India. In their article they had opined that in order to improve the efficiency and profitability of the banks specially in case of public sector banks NPAs should have to be controlled and reduced. They had suggested for strong action against the defaulters.

The fifth paper titled “Business Education and the Skill of Employability : An Empirical Study of East and West Midnapore Districts of West Bengal” authored by Dr. Debasish Biswas and Prof Debabrata Mitra was an attempt to judge the employability skills of Management students. The perception of employers as well as teachers of different management institutions in terms of the employability of management students were also adjudged in this paper. The study was also intended to focus on the existing gap between employers and academicians in terms of employability of management students. It was expected that this study would be helpful in exploring new vistas of skilled development in business education that would serve the future job market requirements in business education in a better and efficient manner.

In the sixth paper titled “Potential Problems of Human Resource Broad Banding Salary Management Strategy” authored by Mr. Debayan Nandi intended to throw some lights on the utilities of Broadbanding. In a broadbanding structure an employee could be easily rewarded for lateral function or skills improvement, whereas in traditional multiple grade salary structure pay hike took place through job promotion. In this paper the author tried to identify the probable problems of broadbanding that often hindered the organizations from its complete application despite of its so many positive advantages.

In the last article titled “Impact of Service Quality on Customer Satisfaction in United Bank of India: An Empirical Study” authored by Dr. Kingshuk Adhikari and Mr. Biswajit Paul was an attempt to study the impact of different service quality dimensions on customer satisfaction. The authors had made an attempt to assess the impact of service quality dimensions on satisfaction of customers of United Bank of India operating within the periphery of Cachar district of Assam. The study concluded that reliability, tangibility and responsiveness dimensions of service quality had significant impact on satisfaction of bank customers.

I strongly hope that the articles published in this issue are highly enriched to provide adequate food for thought to the new and existing researchers working in these fields. Any sort of observations, criticisms are always welcome.

Lastly, I want to express my sincere thanks and gratitude to all staff of North Bengal University Press specially Mr. Indranil Roy and Mr. Debasish Chakraborty for their untiring and relentless effort for bringing out this issue of our Departmental Journal on right time.

Prof Debabrata Mitra
Editor-in-Chief

ARTICLES

EDITORIAL

It is a matter of deep satisfaction that we have been able to publish the third volume of ANWESHAN on time. Since the publication of the first volume in 2013 , we have experienced a holistic response from the academic community, professional institutes and academic associations in various disciplines in forms of commendations, criticisms, suggestions and encouragement . The publication of this issue is a result of a synergistic effort of the contributors, the reviewers and my departmental colleagues in trying to build up an archive of knowledge that is pertinent to the contemporary business scenario in the global and national context. One of the principal aims of this journal is to encourage young researchers to de-velop and test theory, delve into relevant issues in business and management and use a diverse range of research techniques that are based on statistical inferences, qualitative analysis and conceptual debates.

The first article is an invited article from Professor Paresnath Chattopadh-yay, former Director of Research, Institute of Cost Accountants of India and for-mer Professor Department of Business Administration, University of Burdwan. His article on ‘Non-Performing Assets of Commercial Banks: Thorns in the Flesh’ has pointed out that compulsion of capital contribution to companies in form of seed money, starting capital and subsequent contributions in various forms have culminated in huge stocks of non-performing assets. He has pointed out that the schemes of social banking that Government of India launched did witness an up-surge of funds for building industrial and commercial enterprises all over the country for some period of time since nationalization but the results were not real-ly encouraging.

The second article titled ‘Information Flows between Sectors in Indian Stock Markets’ is also an invited article from Professor Madusudan Karmakar, Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow. He has made empirical investigations into return and volatility spill over mechanism between ten sectors of the Bom-bay Stock Exchange in India. He has used cointegration analysis to examine the co-movements between different sectors prices and VAR analysis to investigate the transmission of shocks between different sector returns. He has also used a bivariate GARCH model to estimate the volatility spill over mechanism.

Two articles in this volume deliberate on the effects of globalization. Globaliza-tion shrinks geographic space and widens peoples’ access to knowledge and the benefits of science and technology, multiculturalism, an increase in opportunities and mutual action towards solutions to universal predicaments. Advancements in technologies have been a key force behind the space and time compression that characterizes globalization and have had a overwhelming bearing on the ways in which people, institutions and corporations around the globe have up scaled their socio-economic status. However, the downbeat corollaries like burgeoning pov-erty in societies, a growing disparity between privileged and excluded people, absence of sustainable livelihood options, stumpy standards of living, forced mi-gration and violation of human rights and fracas due to economic disparities are also thorns in the flesh. . Noticeably diverse assertions have been heard about how just much progress is being made against poverty and inequality in the cur-rent period of globalization and is an area which needs to be much deliberated on.

Dr. Banhi Baran Ghosh and Professor Debasish Sur in their article ti-tled ‘Globalization and India’s Technology Regime: an Empirical Analysis in the Macroeconomic Perspective’ have pointed out that after liberalisation of the Indi-an economy in 1991, opportunities have become ripe for the economy to acquire technology from abroad easily at a lower cost and delved into the impact of the import of technology on the public R&D of the Indian economy during the pre-and post- liberalisation periods on the basis of the Log-linear model of regression analysis.

Professor Ajit Kumar Ray in his article titled ‘Globalization, Growth, Pov-erty and Inequality: Perspectives from Eastern Europe and South Asia’ has exam-ined the claim of positive relationship between growth rate with reduction of poverty and inequality and found that the claim that growth reduces poverty and inequality has not been realized. Moreover, positive growth due to globalization either immiserizes the poor or trickles down benefits insignificantly.

Tea industry occupies a vital place in the industrial scenario of India and North Bengal. According to ASSOCHAM the total turnover of the tea industry in India is likely to reach Rs 33,000 crore by 2015. With nearly 0.6 million hec-tares under tea cultivation, the domestic tea industry is growing at a compound annual growth rate of about 15%. Keeping pace with this the number of small tea growers in North Bengal are on an increase. Currently there are about 35,000 small tea growers in North Bengal and total production is around 97 million kg, which is almost 32.5% of North Bengal's tea production of 280 million kg. Con-sidering the fact that proliferation of small tea growers into non-traditional areas is a very significant phenomenon of tea industry of North Bengal in recent years, Tamash Ranjan Majumdar in his article ‘ Productivity and Technical Efficiency of Smallholding Tea Plantations in North Bengal−A DEA Analysis’ has estimated technical efficiency at the level of individual grower using Data Envelopment Analysis. He has shown that the mean efficiency of DMUs is quite high for the whole sample though it varies considerably across different classes of holdings. His paper indicates that there is ample potential for improvements in efficiency performance in terms of realisation of higher yield for all holding sizes of planta-tions, and especially for the bottom size class.

Observations on wide gaps between Statutory Tax Rates and Effective Tax Rates of companies in India more than a decade have led Dr. Gangotree Ghosh and Prof. S.N. Dhar in their article titled ‘Effective Corporate Tax Rates and Role of Accelerated Depreciation Allowance in India’ to argue that tax base has been eroded through a steadily escalating range of exemptions and that has been a substantial loss of tax revenue for the government from corporate taxes. The authors have examined various variables which influence Effective Tax Rates and bring to focus the role of accelerated depreciation allowance in reducing tax liabilities.

Professor Palas R. Sen Gupta and Ajoy Adhikari in their article titled ‘Re-lationship between Organizational Role Stress and Stress Consequences—A Study among Postal Employees in West Bengal’ bring to focus that the use of role theory has been seen recently to describe and explain the stresses associated with the membership of the organization. The authors have identified the relationship between ORS variables and Stress Consequences among postal employees in West Bengal as postal employees are over burdened with a massive number of customers daily with very limited physical resources at their disposal.

We earnestly hope that the scholastic deliberations made in this issue will be productive for the readers and stir up further debates on these issues and also provide food for thought for further investigation and research in these areas. We express our deep gratitude to the officers and staff of North Bengal University Press for untiring efforts for bringing out the journal on time.

Prof. Samirendra Nath Dhar
Editor-in Chief

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EDITORIAL

Creation of knowledge through business research contributes to improved decision making when it is communicated and disseminated to scholars and business professionals who are in search of effective business strategies and endeavour to take direction or inspiration from the new information, and in turn develop more new knowledge. Universities have a key role to play in this area since knowledge creation and knowledge dissemination are principal activities of faculty and scholars serving institutions of higher learning. It is on this principle that the Department of Commerce derives the inspiration to publish the second volume of the journal. In all probability, the most important role journals in commerce and management play is building up an archive of knowledge so that scholars and professionals can get access to comprehensive, up-to-date, and authoritative information in a variety of specialisations and super specialisations. In addition to this, journals published from universities attempt to play a role in upholding academic and professional standards in how research and scholarship are conducted. It is because of this reason that journals usually have to filter what is published and disseminated. The editors of this journal therefore subscribe to the notion that the necessity of peer review is based on the assumption that it provides a valid measure of the quality of a manuscript and its adherence to the norms of the journal.

ANWESHAN seeks to publish quality research work with evidence and conclusions that are pertinent to problems and strategies in business environment in India and around the globe. We encourage contributors who attempt to develop and/or test theory, delve into attention-grabbing events in business and management and use a diverse range of research techniques that are based on statistical inferences, qualitative studies, case studies, conceptual debates and computational models. For this issue we have received papers on a wide variety of topics and have selected seven for publication.

Tarak Nath Sahu, Kalpataru Bandopadhyay and Debasish Mondal investigates into the impact of the inflation rate on stock market in India during the period 1993 to 2013, explores into the long-run co-movement between the rate of inflation and stock prices in India and attempts to reveal whether inflation rate causes stock market movement in India. The authors suggest that the Indian stock markets are strongly exogenous in the sense that shocks to inflation rate explain only a small portion of the forecast variance error of the market indices and notices that a positive shock on inflation rate has a negative and persistent effect on Indian stock markets.

Debasish Sur, Susanta Mitra and Sumit Kumar Maji draws on the fact that in the environ of diverse challenges in India arising out of the liberalisation measures taken by the Government of India, FMCG companies in India have made remarkable changes in their business policies which has resulted in considerable changes in the pattern of business risk. In this backdrop, the authors seek to analyse the business risk associated with some selected companies in the Indian FMCG sector during the period 1995-96 to 2011-12.

Debasis Bhattacharya and Shuvendu Dey attempt to identify the dimensions of store loyalty with specific focus on its antecedents such as Trust, Value for Money and Satisfaction provide retailers with a view to provide information about Indian customers’ store loyalty determinants. They propose that the information can be useful to retailers in Indian market for developing marketing strategies and considering how they can best position their stores in order to maintain customer loyalty.

Hirak Ray and Joydeep Biswas examine whether adoption of IFRS reduces the home bias? The authors claim that the widespread adoption of IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) is unlikely to reduce the uncertainty about foreign financial reporting quality, familiarity bias, and geographical proximity bias that act as catalysts towards home bias.

Manidipa DasGupta and Dhruba Ranjan Dandapat try to detect how far and to what extent the lack of technical knowledge of the managerial personnel is responsible for sickness in Small Engineering Enterprises of Howrah and suggest some remedial measures for improvement of the prevailing situation

Mausumi Saha and Sharmistha Banerjee deliberate on the evolution of definitional criteria of the small scale sector in India as laid down by the concerned Ministry from the post-independence period till date and throw light upon the underlying ambiguities. The authors throw light on how other agencies have used different criteria for documentation which may have led to under/over estimation in the documentation of the performance of the sector. The authors posit the need for a uniform definition and standard documentation practice.

Prakash Chandra Adhikary comes up with the facts that though Indo–Bangladesh border trade was first initiated in 1972 it was suspended within six months. Such a suspension caused great hardships to the rural people living either side of the border. Considering the urges of several state governments of the north-east India, the Govt. of India placed a new modified proposal of ‘Frontier Traffic’ at New Delhi trade discussion in May 1973 but failed. The author then attempts to trace the changes since the 1990s when SAPTA and later on SAFTA in compatible with WTO provisions for free-trade regime were introduced by the SAARC.

I express my sincere thanks to all the authors who have burnt the midnight lamp and contributed their valuable time and effort for writing the articles for this journal. I am grateful to the erudite reviewers who have taken the pains to evaluate the articles and offer valuable suggestions and comments for appropriate refinement of the articles. I am also thankful to the authorities of University of North Bengal for sanctioning the finance required for publishing this journal. Our heartfelt gratitude goes to the officers and staff of North Bengal University press whose untiring efforts have led to the publication of the journal.

Prof. Samirendra Nath Dhar
Editor-in-Chief

NOTES AND COMMENTS

BOOK REVIEW

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EDITORIAL

A little over two decades ago India began her tryst with a liberalized economic system. Unfortunately the optimism that had preceded the reforms has now given way to chronic disenchantment. A decline in agricultural productivity, rising unemployment, inflation and increase in rural to urban migration have resulted in the public morale being perched precariously on the brink of despair. It is in these difficult times of omnipresent pessimism that the Government of India chose to allow foreign direct investment in the retail sector. The reactions from all quarters were on expected lines and reasonably mixed. While some predicted a surge for the economy in the form of investments in infrastructure projects resulting in enhanced employment levels, others were pessimistic. A large section of people were worried about allowing resource laden foreign companies to operate and source products from all over the world thus rendering the competition ineffective. A third section was worried that the unorganized retail sector which comprised 96% of the retail trade in India would be eliminated by the entry of the foreign retail giants. In the midst of the sundry bouquets and brick bats that the new policy announcement invited and its long term ramifications on the Indian economy it is imperative that the first issue of our journal ‘ANWESHAN’ is dedicated to academic research on the subject of FDI.

Professor Sugata Marjit in his paper entitled “Foreign Direct Investment in Multi-brand Retail Trade” deals with economic arguments for and against FDI in multi brand retail. He divides the ensuing debate into three phases. At phase 1 he deals with arguments for multi brand retail like better pricing for farmers and better price for buyers due to increased competition in the retail market. At phase 2 he deals with an analysis of the validity of the arguments and focuses on issues like decreased competition due to higher competitive advantage of multinational retailers which might force small retailers out of the business. At phase 3 Prof Marjit forms his judgment about the issue. He strongly concludes that it is a complex issue in a heterogeneous country like ours so a white paper should be issued by the government which must include empirical research in the area.

Professor Abhirup Sarkar in his paper entitled “Understanding FDI in Retail: What Can Economic Principles Teach Us?” studies the pros and cons of FDI in retail from an economic point of view. He suggests that safeguards should be put in place before foreign multinationals are allowed to enter the retail sector. He concludes by emphasizing that though there will be huge losses in jobs in the traditional retail sector FDI in retail should be allowed. According to him new jobs will be created by these retail giants. While in the short run there may be a negative impact on aggregate employment it will improve in the long run when new avenues will open up for the employment of the underprivileged.

Ms Nandita Pradhan and Professor Indrajit Ray in their paper entitled “Long-run effects of FDI in India’s multi-brand retail trade: Lessons from cross-country economic history” study the effect of FDI on domestic capital formation and growth of entrepreneurship in the country. The study also involves the economic history of Great Britain and Japan and studies in detail the concept of entrepreneurship. The researchers conclude that while domestic tertiary and agricultural sectors should provide capital and entrepreneurship to an economy in its industrialization process: foreign capital will lead to the marginalization of the domestic trading class. Thus FDI will hamper formation of domestic capital formation.

Dr. Hirak Ray, Mr. Abhijit Lahiri and Mr. Joy Sarkar in their paper entitled “Do the Indian Stock Market Traits Influence the Foreign Institutional Investors?” have studied the relationship between the foreign institutional investors and the capital market in India. The study, which employs econometric tools of analysis concludes that long term stock market behavior is positively related to foreign institutional investors and that the stock market influences such FII activity.

Professor Soumitra De in his paper entitled “The QWERTY Path for FDI in India?” looks at path dependence in policies and effects of economic liberalization. The paper involves an in depth study of FDI in the retail sector in China, different relevant trade agreements and events leading to the decision to allow FDI in the retail sector. He advocates that rules for FDI be kept transparent, time bound and short and that the host country should be in a position to take advantage of the FDI. In conclusion, Prof. De emphasizes that there may be chances of regional disparity when some states allow FDI in the retail sector while others don’t.

Professor Debabrata Mitra and Dr. Amlan Ghosh in their study entitled “FDI in Multi Brand Retail: Cost Benefit Analysis” have analyzed the prevailing scenario in India with regards to the retail sector in order to arrive at a conclusion regarding the pros or cons of allowing FDI in multi brand retailing in India. The study entails a detailed cost-benefit analysis of foreign direct investment in the retail sector in India. In conclusion the researchers while enumerating the pros and cons of multi brand retail advocate a cautious approach with a proper regulatory framework including changes in laws so that the benefits of FDI in the retail sector actually accrue to the country and the people.

Dr. Debasis Bhattacharya and Mr. Shuvendu Dey in their paper entitled “FDI in Multi Brand Retail: Indian Perspective in the Global Context” have sought to analytically, descriptively and comparatively analyze the decision of the Government of India on FDI. They have concluded that 220 million street hawkers, 50 million traders and 200 million people directly connected with retail trade in India will be affected by the decision of the Government of India. Further they have expressed concern about the fate of the farmers in a country like India where farm holdings are small as compared to Canada or the USA. Overall the paper concludes that the entry of foreign direct investment in the retail sector will result in loss of livelihood for a large percentage of people in India and will not help to augment the economy as suggested.

The arguments for and against foreign direct investment in multi brand retailing are numerous. The perspectives in this publication represent diverse approaches to analyze the issue. This range includes economic history, political science and even econometrics. Some of the best minds in the field have sought to illuminate us on this very important topic. It is hoped that the articles here will help all of us to get a fresh perspective on the issue.

PALAS R. SENGUPTA
Editor-in Chief

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