Income Diversification by agro- Pastoralists in Cholistan Desert Punjab, Pakistan

The pastoralists are economically depend upon livestock for their income which include their herds of livestock and the bi products produced and sold. The nomads keep moving in search of food and forage so they do not completely destroy the natural resource of a particular area. During their journey of searching water sometimes make them closer to the agriculture land near towns where they used to earn through off farm activities which include the income earned through their unskilled labour activities. The multinomial probit regression employed in this study for analysis revealed that many pastoralists adopt the income diversification strategies which are the coping strategies for other than livestock income to reduce the risks attached with livestock income. The role of Govt. and NGOs for improvement in infrastructure is envisaged to find the enhancement of livestock sector in the area is explored in this study. The study is unique in providing perspective on providing access to different facilities and the role of government in improving living of population.

Application of artificial intelligence to enhance collection of E-waste: A potential solution for household WEEE collection and segregation in India

Our society has undergone a massive technological revolution over the past decade and electronic appliances have now become ubiquitous. The increase in production of electronic products and the growing inherent need to own the latest technology available has led to a significant increase in the amount of E-waste produced each year. India generated 3.2 million tonnes of E-waste in 2020, with metropolitan cities like Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore leading the list. Proper management and recycling of E-wastes are critical for the sustainability of any modern city today. While industrial and commercial collection of E-wastes has been in the spotlight, solutions for collection of E-wastes from individual households are limited. This article proposes the implementation of a mobile robot that identifies common electronic wastes based on transfer learning and serves as an attachment to existing municipality garbage trucks. The robot moves around, identifies electronic wastes and performs segregation of the identified material via its arm-based lift and storage mechanism. A convolutional neural network–based identification system has been employed for categorising the E-wastes and yields 96% accuracy. This is a first of its kind attempt, especially in India, to collect and segregate E-wastes from homes and individuals. The system will relieve unskilled labour from the hazardous process while providing a 20% decrease in costs over a 5-year period. The application of this article aims to provide a viable mobile solution for E-waste collection from households with minimal human intervention.

CONSTRAINTS FACED DURING THE PRODUCTION AND MARKETING OF CABBAGE AND POTATO CROPS: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF MANIPUR AND NAGALAND STATES OF INDIA

The present study was carried out by purposively simple stratified random sampling technique to select 300 respondents from both the states of Manipur and Nagaland, while to highlight the constraint faced by the growers during the production and marketing of cabbage and potato crops with Garrett Ranking Technique. For the production viz.; seed, labour, manures and fertilizers, irrigation, PPCs and other issues like animals, pests and diseases, have hampered of the potato and cabbage in the selected areas. While for marketing high price of the seed, not available in time, inferior quality of seed, low reliability of the seed, high wage rates of labour, skill & unskilled labour not available in time, irrigation facility not available, perennial sources are not available and irrigation facility not reliable etc; While for the market related issues, grading by hand & mechanical means, lack of knowledge regarding packaging, packing materials, high cost of transportation, lack of market infrastructures, unauthorized & illegal tax collections, use of improper scales in weighing, lack of support prices, lack of reliable & timely availability of market information and distant market along with the lack of cooperation among the producers and frequent ban & social boycott are some of the problems and constraints encountered by the entire producers and market intermediaries in the region.

Study on Socioeconomic Impact of MGNREGA on Beneficiaries in Chikkaballapura District of Karnataka- India

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee act or (MGNREGA) was reported in India in September 2005 with a mandate to supply at least a hundred days of guaranteed wage employment in a financial year to each rural home whose members above the age of eighteen years’ volunteer to do unskilled labour-intensive work. The main focus of the act is to assist the social protection for the people living in rural India by providing employment possibilities and therefore contributing towards the overall growth of the local people. The present study was attempted to figure out the effect of MGNREGA on the overall economic and social development of beneficiaries in the Chikkaballapura district of Karnataka. The study was carried out in the Chintamani blocks of the Mindigal panchayat area of the Chikkaballapura with beneficiaries as respondents. The results found the MGNREGA has extensively enhanced their social and economic safety.

Development Prospects of Education System in Russia

The article studies the situation in the education system ofRussiaand lines of upgrading this system in view of country economy rising to a new stage of development, i.e. digitalization of all economic processes. As information technologies grow, unskilled labour becomes a thing of the past and is being replaced by intellectual labour. A lot of specialties that can be replaced by workers using digital technologies are neglected by labour market. The key goal of higher school today is to develop concepts of new specialties, which in its turn requires designing of new programs of teaching, competences, curriculums, etc. Upgrading the education system should be carried out on the basis of all positive achievements of the past. The authors present statistic measurement of education processes and identify stages of transformations and reforms of the education system. Education is a part of our life, which in the future can prove, whether our society will be prosperous and life standard of people will change.

Trade, skill premium and the gender wage gap: Evidence from manufacturing industries

The paper assesses the impact of trade liberalization on the labour market by focusing on skill wage premium. The paper tests these effects by developing a monopolistic competition model with two factors of production characterized by their skill levels (skilled and unskilled labour). The paper finds that tariff’s level reductions cause a moderate increase in the wage gap. Thus, our analysis shows that a 10% decrease in tariffs is accompanied by a 16.1 % increase in the skill premium. Also, the same level of tariffs’ cut will on average increase the gender wage gap by 26.8%. The study implies that trade liberalization tends to benefit more workers in the skilled labour market compared to workers in the unskilled labour market.

Sources of Increasing Inequality

While all the evidence we have points to the rising living standards for most of the very poorest, the wages of unskilled labour in poor countries remain a fraction of those in rich countries. Those potential workers are seen as a threat to the living standards of the unskilled in rich countries and the political impetus to limit their access to those labour markets has been, and remains, one of the most potent issue in the politics of rich countries. This aversion to immigration as a threat to the wages of the unskilled often transmutes into a hostility to trade, as goods, which use a lot of unskilled labour, can be imported more cheaply. Both immigration and trade are seen as a threat to the unskilled. Two dimensions of this threat are examined in this chapter—the impact of Chinese exports on wages in the US and the impact of immigration on the UK economy.

Wage Inequality and Unemployment in the Presence of Imported Intermediate Goods: A Theoretical Analysis

This article develops a static three-sector and five-factor competitive general equilibrium model of a small open economy: sector 1 is the rural agricultural sector, which produces products using informal or unorganised unskilled labour and land as inputs; sector 2 is the urban manufacturing, final-goods-producing sector that produces products with the help of unskilled labour, who get unionised wages, and capital; and sector 3 is the service sector, which uses skilled labour with formal wages, capital and sophisticated hi-technology-intensive imported intermediate goods produced abroad as inputs. We show that an exogenous increase in capital inflow or an increase in tariff on imported intermediate input reduces the skilled–unskilled wage inequality and lowers unemployment as long as the return to capital is unaltered and output adjustments absorb the entire shock of the two policies. Such capital inflow increases rural wage and reduces unemployment via the Harris Todaro mechanism but interestingly does not allow the skilled wage to increase. Thus, two critical policy targets can be accommodated at the same time. JEL Codes: F13, J31, J46

Nominal and Effective Rates of Protection by Industry in Pakistan: A Tariff Based Analysis

The study calculates nominal and effective rates of protection and their association with major characteristics of industries—labour intensity, export orientation and revealed comparative advantage. The results indicate that nominal as well as effective rate of protection has declined between two benchmark years—1990 and 2002, but vegetable oil, motor vehicles, and a sector producing intermediate good ‘other manufacturing’ remains highly protected. Overall results reveal that manufacturing import competing sectors enjoy higher protection through trade policy—tariff while negative effective rate of protection for majority of agriculture and services sectors show their disadvantage position in the economy. The results clearly indicate government priority for manufacturing sector over agriculture and services sectors. The results also reveal that effective rate of protection is negatively associated with industrial characteristics such as labour intensity, export orientation, and revealed comparative advantage indicating that a sector needs less protection if it has comparative advantage—labour intensive and produce exportable commodity. The results of the study also indicate that trade policy in Pakistan shifts trade in favours of trade in intermediate inputs in 2002 from trade in final goods in 1990. There is a need to restructure tariff structure to remove bias against agriculture and services sectors. Agriculture where majority of unskilled labour engaged ask immediate action from government to improve the condition of poor.

Employment effects of trade reform in the Vietnamese banking industry

In response to the call for evidence of sectoral employment impacts of services trade reform, the paper examines how trade liberalisation in the Vietnam’s banking industry would change employment between sectors and total employment under in two macroeconomic settings: fixed versus variable labour supply. Using the FTAP-VN model and GTAP 7 Database, the paper finds that potential trade reform in Vietnam’s banking industry could have significant impacts on employment across industries in the economy regardless of the labour supply assumptions. Apart from the employment relocation effect as in the fixed labour supply, trade reform with a variable labour supply would expand jobs in all industries, increasing total employment by 6.3%. Trade reform would most benefit employment in the financial services itself and the industries with close linkages with the financial sector and facing the highest reduction in the relative price of labour to capital. In any cases, services would gain the most in terms of job creation from the trade reform. Services would also absorb most of the increased labour supply, followed by manufacturing and agriculture and mining. With a fixed labour supply, trade reform would encourage a substitution of unskilled labour for skilled labour across industries, placing skilled labour in a relatively disadvantaged position in the short run. In the short and median run, in order to avoid a shortage of skilled labour and consequent pressure on wages, Vietnam would need to invest in education and training to create a better skilled labour force, particularly in banking and finance. With a variable labour supply, in the long-run, the pressure on wage increase and substitution of skilled labour for unskilled labour could be mitigated with the transformation of unskilled labour into skilled labour and the increasing labour supply.