Business Analyst Journal

The past few years has witnessed the phenomena of “internet shopping” grow in leaps and bounds. The term “online shopping” has become a buzzword and an ever growing trend among consumers even in a developing country like India. In fact, the market potential for e-commerce has a huge reservoir as explored through a sneak-peek into the exponential expansion of key players existing in the e-commerce industry. Moreover, online shopping has prodigiously influenced the lives of the modern day consumers, who have been observed to have a penchant towards it. The present research endeavour is aimed to probe into the perceptions of consumers towards e-shopping in the context of “Technology Acceptance Model” (TAM). For this purpose, a survey among 363 respondents in the metropolitan setting of Kolkata has been conducted and their responses were recorded. “Structural Equation Modeling” (SEM) has been used to examine and analyze the model fits and hypothesis testing. The findings reveal positive perception among the surveyed consumers towards online shopping.

The lack of sustained growth in agricultural output and deepening of paddy-wheat cultivation cycle over many decades have given impetus to policy prescription towards crop diversification in Bihar. The recent rise in area under fruits and vegetables as well as sugarcane has encouraged those who are observing the state's prospects closely. This essay asks for abundant caution while acknowledging the need and benefits of crop diversification. It explores the colonial agrarian history of Bihar to find similar trends towards crop diversification that did not bring any improvement in the economic conditions of the cultivators involved. The past pattern suggests that the nature of land, labour, credit and produce market was such that it exploited Bihar peasantry to the benefits of those who controlled these crucial inputs as well as channels of international trade. This has important lessons for the policy makers when the path of crop diversification is taken. If the government is serious about increasing crop diversity to boost agricultural growth and incomes of cultivators, then the choice of the cultivators has to be tilted by institutional means.

This paper examines the growth trajectories of Indian states. We find that not only is the disparity among states increasing, there is evidence that the distribution of the per-capita income of states is becoming bimodal. We use the methodology of Phillips and Sul (2007) to identify convergence clubs among Indian states and find three clubs. Furthermore, in a novel application of this methodology we use the identified clubs to run separate growth regressions for different clubs of states and find significant differences in the regression coefficients. This vindicates our approach and shows that combining data from all states at the same time to study growth dynamics can be misleading in a heterogenous country like India.