No abstract

It is evident that better access to improved water sources will lead to the lessening of infant mortality rate (IMR). However, for India, such inference is ambiguous. There is a strong group of academicians such as Sahu et al. (2015) , Arun et al. (2017) and Tripathy and Mishra (2017) and organizations such as UNICEF that firmly believe that if access to the improved water sources can be improved, then there would be tremendous social welfare and much betterment to the IMR. On the other hand, Banerjee et al. (2020) have refuted such claims and opined that access to improved water sources increases the IMR. The empirical validation of their claim has been flawless, but they are somewhat silent on why such a direct relationship between IMR and improved water source exists. They have made a comment based on assumptions that it might be complacency that develops with access to improved water sources that refrain the people to consider any type of water treatment before passing it to infants for drinking. Such a comment might be valid, but neither is it built upon a sound literature review nor does it stand on strong empirics. At this juncture, the present article tests the claim of Banerjee et al. (2020) based on pure empirics.

The COVID-19 pandemic was one of the deadliest pandemics ever encountered by human civilization. However, the unconquerable human resilience and the digital duo of mobile and internet led to a victory over this dreadful pandemic. This chapter initially focuses on India to illustrate the necessity of literacy in a pandemic. Later, the chapter accepts the hypothesis that business and trade is the engine of growth and verifies that in such dire conditions whether digital business and trade acted as a buffer. Both the aforementioned aspects are quantitatively verified. This chapter uses two regression equations with robust standard errors to examine COVID-19 and literacy. Two dependent variables are population recovered to population tested and completely vaccinated to the total population, and both the population density and rate of literacy have been taken as two independent variables. Furthermore, this chapter also has analyzed the relevant data of 137 countries and has emphasized the fact how digitalization has acted as a buffer and kept business and trade going in a “no man's land.”

The Brundtland Commission report Our Common Future in 1987 gave birth to the concept of sustainable development. The meaning is benefitting the present without compromising the future. It was felt that, unless conventional growth and development are replaced by sustainable development through environmentally friendly actions, doomsday is very near. However, such sustainable development was followed by a global spree of consumerism that only added to the environmental burden. This dichotomy needs to be understood, and for the same purpose, one needs to go back to that point of Earth's history when ecology and economy were synonymous. From then on, the drift between the ecology and economy that has brought us to today's scenario needs to be understood. In this background, the chapter raises questions on how green the green sectors are. Furthermore, can sustainable development and consumerism be captured as one body of ‘sustainable consumerism'?

The concept of sustainable development has been introduced following the Brundtland Commission's report “Our Common Future.” Though significant volume of literature does exist on the various aspects and impacts of the mentioned commission, the actual impact of the commission on the environment for which it was initiated has never been considered by any academicians. The chapter tries to quantify the qualitative aspect of environment through per capita emission of CO2 over the years. It shows that the concerned commission is successful in bringing down the rate of growth of per capita CO2 emissions, but it is yet to be negative. The chapter opines that to restore the resilience of the environment and to make ecology and economy synonymous again, further efforts are needed.

Mother Nature has suffered through many industrial revolutions. Ecology suffered after the first industrial revolution. Industrial revolutions quadrupled CO2. Industrial Revolution 4.0 follows the Stockholm Conference in 1972 and Brundtland's report “Our Common Future” (1983-1987) on sustainable development. The emerging and less developed countries are condemned for their carbon footprint and CO2 emissions from manufacturing and consumption. According to the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis, developed countries advise developing nations to follow their development path to reduce carbon emissions. Industrial Revolution 4.0 replaced the Fordist style of production with information-based production. In this context, is digitization pro-environment? Regrettably, this has not been empirically studied. This chapter examines the environmental effects of digitalization and Industrial Revolution 4.0. The chapter will examine the link between the environment, digitalization, and Industrial Revolution 4.0 using empirical validation and descriptive analysis.

No abstract

In this present work, Retail Service Quality Scale (RSQS) developed by Dabholkar et. al. (1996) has been used to measure service quality. For the purpose of examining the dimensionality of the scales a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed using AMOS 20. A four factor model was derived after the analysis. High correlations among these four factors led to the inclusion of the second order service quality construct. For measuring satisfaction scale items were adapted from Khan et. al. (2016). By using structural equation modeling approach, it is found that customers of cosmetics retail stores evaluate service quality on the basis of four dimensions- personal interactions, physical appearance, problem solving, and convenience. A statistically significant relationship between service quality and satisfaction is also reported. Findings and research approach of this study will be of immense use to the researchers and practitioners in cosmetic retailing category.