Labour Reforms and Economic Justice: Inequality, the COVID-19 Pandemic and Regionalism

Analysing the patterns of inequality in India, this paper argues that those at the bottom of the income pyramid lack the enabling conditions of access to good healthcare and education to break out of the cycle of poverty. Addressing extreme inequalities would require not just the redistribution of wealth but also a transformation in the structure of the economy so that the processes of income generation become more equitable. A beginning in this direction would require a fundamental change in the relationship between labour and capital. Analysing recent legislations to reform labour laws within India, the author observes that while they provided some benefits to the unprivileged working classes, the overall effect has been to weaken labour unions and relax labour laws making it easier for them to be exploited. Enduring change will require new development models based on strong normative frameworks for ensuring equity and sustainability. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023.

Reimagining Prosperity: Social and Economic Development in Post-COVID India

This book explores the second-order effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on social and economic development in India. The chapters in this volume provide theoretical perspectives and empirical insights from a range of disciplines including history, economics, water management, food and nutrition security, agriculture, rural management, public health, urbanization, gender studies and development of the marginalized. It discusses the pressing questions that have been raised by the disruption caused by the pandemic and proposes insights and interventions to build a more just, sustainable and united post-COVID India. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023.

Introduction

This chapter provides an introduction to the papers in this volume that discuss the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on social and economic development in India and explore a path forward. While summarising some of the main insights in each paper, the chapter proposes that the disruption caused by the pandemic provides an opportunity to reframe the theoretical frameworks in the field of development to bring them into greater alignment with the principles of justice, inter-group unity and solidarity and environmental sustainability. The present narrow focus on economic growth as the goal of development will need to be replaced by a broader focus on human well-being which includes the spiritual, material and social dimensions of life. Progress towards this vision will require active collaboration between the State, civil society, the private sector and individuals as protagonists of development. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023.

Automatic Diagnosis of Covid-19 Related Pneumonia from CXR and CT-Scan Images

Covid-19 is a highly infectious disease that spreads extremely fast and is transmitted through indirect or direct contact. The scientists have categorized the Covid-19 cases into five different types: severe, critical, asymptomatic, moderate, and mild. Up to May 2021 more than 133.2 million peoples have been infected and almost 2.9 million people have lost their lives from Covid-19. To diagnose Covid-19, practitioners use RT-PCR tests that suffer from many False Positive (FP) and False Negative (FN) results while they take a long time. One solution to this is the conduction of a greater number of tests simultaneously to improve the True Positive (TP) ratio. However, CT-scan and X-ray images can also be used for early detection of Covid-19 related pneumonia. By the use of modern deep learning techniques, accuracy of more than 95% can be achieved. We used eight CNN (CovNet)-based deep learning models, namely ResNet 152 v2, InceptionResNet v2, Xception, Inception v3, ResNet 50, NASNetLarge, DenseNet 201, and VGG 16 for both X-rays and CT-scans to diagnose pneumonia. The achieved comparative results show that the proposed models are able to differentiate the Covid-19 positive cases.

Concern over career is the primary reason for poor mental health among students

COVID-19 is the cause of a lot of concern around the world. Apart from the obvious physical distress it has contributed significantly to elevation of mental health issues. Students who mostly have not been vaccinated are doing online classes with severe restriction on their social lives. Survey was done with students from school, college and university to determine their mental health status. Their mental health was evaluated with the DASS-21 questionnaire that was distributed and collected online. The students were found to have become vulnerable to stress, anxiety and depression. Their mental health status was found to be poor with university students being most affected. Upon Correlation studies with relevant questions on online education and consequent change in their mode of studies and interaction with family and friends, it was found that university students' concern over their career led to their poor mental health. Copyright © 2022, Institute of Medico-legal Publication. All rights reserved.

THE PANDEMIC AND THE INFORMAL SECTOR OF INDIA: Probable impacts and strategic intervention1

The spectre of Covid-19 and the nation-wide lockdown have threatened the very existence of the large informal sector of India. In this context, we undertake a study with two objectives. First, we examine the extent of vulnerability with probable job losses across the informal sector and some of its immediate economic consequences. Subsequently, the study proposes a strategic intervention in the informal sector with a series of short-, medium- and long-run measures. While the short-run measures emphasize providing food via various means, the medium-run interventions are intended to sustain livelihood through un/conditional cash transfers. The study argues analytically that such food and cash transfers could be undertaken maintaining macroeconomic balance and these processes could have long-run implications too. Finally, we advocate for a long-run strategy of forming/inducing clusters of informal firms: Either physically for manufacturing or virtual clustering for services. Clusters could act as collectives having synergic effects, despite being governed by the principles of private ownership, and could offer the tiny enterprises an edge in handling their conflicts and complementarities with the global capital. © 2022 selection and editorial matter, Rajib Bhattacharyya, Ananya Ghosh Dastidar and Soumyen Sikdar;individual chapters, the contributors.

Machine Vision Surveillance System - Artificial Intelligence for Covid-19 Norms

This paper presents the design and implementation of the Machine Vision Surveillance System Artificial Intelligence (MaViSS-AI) for Covid-19 Norms using jetson nano. This system is designed to be cost-effective, accurate, efficient, and secure. The proposed system tracks and counts humans for monitoring social distancing and detects face masks using object detection methods. We used YOLO as an object detection method and neural network to detect a person and count them. And for social distancing monitoring the concept of the centroid is based on calculating the distance between pairs of centroids, and thus checking whether there are any violations of the threshold or not. To detect the face mask, a YOLO V4 deep learning model is used as the mask detection algorithm. The system also raises alerts when any suspicious event occurs. Given this alert, security personnel can take relevant actions. This research aims to provide a holistic approach to overcoming the real-time challenges encountered during the monitoring of Covid-19 norms. © 2022 IEEE.

Stock Market in India and Covid -19- An Empirical Understanding

This article has focussed on the impact of Covid-19 on the share markets in India since the pandemic begun. BSE and NSE stock exchanges have been considered. Specially 21securities (on the basis of market capital) of different sectors of NSE have been considered in this article to have a better understanding of the impact of Covid-19 on Indian Stock market over the period of study.

Treatment of AIDS: Development of Medicine by Innovation with Special Emphasis on Protease Inhibitors

In the light of the recent events in the world concerning COVID-19 virus, it is important to review the challenges faced by the world by another pandemic, AIDS. The painstaking research by the scientists, the pharmaceutical companies, the medical professionals have led to this day when AIDS patients are living their whole life span. Though we do not have any vaccine for AIDS but by intelligent use of medication, we have been able to combat the disease to a large extent. HIV is a RNA virus, whose treatment is mainly done by finding the structure and function of the proteins that are vital to its life cycle. Designing a drug/inhibitor to make those proteins ineffective constitutes the next step. WHO has recognized AIDS as a pandemic almost 40 years back but the world is yet to find a cure or a vaccine. The current treatment method is called HAART, Highly Active Anti Retroviral Therapy, where different types of inhibitors,eg. Reverse Transcriptase inhibitors, Protease inhibitors;each arresting a different important protein are given in combination. The virus replicates very fast and forms mutations which render it ineffective to the inhibitors thus resistance to the inhibitors develop. Hence development of new types of inhibitors is crucial to the problem. There are certain similarities between AIDS and COVID-19, both in terms of the attacking virus and effective medication, which make it more important than ever that the research on HIV is revisited and knowledge we gain from it is used to battle the new pandemic.

Optimizing a Supply Chain Network Using Metaheuristic for Pre and Post Pandemic Scenario

During the pandemic, the supply chains got highly disrupted and faced a new challenge to sustain service. We have proposed a mathematical model for managing supply chains in a post pandemic situation, also coined as 'new normal'. We are trying to design a model and simulate different scenarios while optimizing the network to thrive and fulfill customer demand. The model has been supported with scenario analysis and illustrative examples a packaged drinking water supply chain. The objective is to minimize the supply chain operating cost with respect to the changes in capacity due to pandemic. The fill-rate has also been recorded as a performance matrix for the chain. Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) has been used to optimize the objective function. This research will help supply chain practitioners and researchers to design networks and carry out study in risk management for pandemic or other similar outbreaks situations. © 2021 IEEE.

We have efficacy but lack infrastructure: teachers’ views on online teaching learning during COVID-19

Purpose: The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic led education institutions to move all face-to-face (F2F) courses online. The situation is unique in that teachers and students can make a direct comparison of their courses before (F2F) and after COVID-19 (online). This study aims to analyze teachers’ viewpoints for this unprecedented change. Design/methodology/approach: The study followed a mixed-method approach within an ex post facto survey research design. Research tools were distributed among 200 Indian secondary school teachers following a heterogeneous purposive sampling technique. As the study was conducted during the pandemic backdrop researchers used Google forms and telephonic interviews to collect data. Findings: Teachers viewed positively to this shift from F2F to online teaching-learning (OTL). They were found to have an overall moderate level of online teaching efficacy and where good efficacy prevails there found minimal concern for infrastructure, an attitude showing least concern for “what is not” and more concerned with “what they can do with what is having.” A statistically significant effect of teacher efficacy was found on their perception of OTL infrastructure that supports this strong conviction among few teachers. Statistical analysis revealed for every 1 standard unit increase in self-efficacy, the perceived OTL infrastructure was to be increased by 0.997 standard units which support the strong correlation between the two chosen cognitive variables (r = 0.8). Besides, teachers were not found as a homogeneous group concerning their reported readiness for online teaching yet, different subgroups of teachers exist which may require different approaches for support and counseling. Originality/value: The paper reports an original empirical survey conducted in India and the write-up is based strictly on the survey findings only. An exclusive analysis of teachers’ views of their efficacy and perceived OTL infrastructure. At the same time, path-breaking in analyzing the chemistry between the two variables which will help improving apposite culture, practice and understanding of the digital pedagogy securing quality OTL in the long run. © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited.

IoT-cloud based healthcare model for COVID-19 detection: an enhanced k-Nearest Neighbour classifier based approach

COVID - 19 affected severely worldwide. The pandemic has caused many causalities in a very short span. The IoT-cloud-based healthcare model requirement is utmost in this situation to provide a better decision in the covid-19 pandemic. In this paper, an attempt has been made to perform predictive analytics regarding the disease using a machine learning classifier. This research proposed an enhanced KNN (k NearestNeighbor) algorithm eKNN, which did not randomly choose the value of k. However, it used a mathematical function of the dataset's sample size while determining the k value. The enhanced KNN algorithm eKNN has experimented on 7 benchmark COVID-19 datasets of different size, which has been gathered from standard data cloud of different countries (Brazil, Mexico, etc.). It appeared that the enhanced KNN classifier performs significantly better than ordinary KNN. The second research question augmented the enhanced KNN algorithm with feature selection using ACO (Ant Colony Optimization). Results indicated that the enhanced KNN classifier along with the feature selection mechanism performed way better than enhanced KNN without feature selection. This paper involves proposing an improved KNN attempting to find an optimal value of k and studying IoT-cloud-based COVID - 19 detection.

COVID-19 response: students’ readiness for shifting classes online

Purpose: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has led education institutions to move all face-to-face (F2F) courses online across the globe. The purpose of this study was to investigate Indian students’ perception of readiness for this sudden shift and at the same time, report a possible approach of good institutional governance to respond to such an unprecedented crisis. Design/methodology/approach: This study followed a mixed approach combining both quantitative (e.g. survey) and qualitative (e.g. interview) methods. A survey was distributed among 100 purposively selected students out of which 50 were college students and 50 were from secondary schools following heterogeneous purposive sampling techniques. In total, 30 participants were interviewed as per a set interview protocol. Data were analyzed descriptively and inferentially based on several demographic differences. Findings: Findings revealed that students were neither satisfied nor ready for this sudden shift toward online education rather they felt fear, uncertainties, and several challenges owing to a deep digital divide to adapt to this unprecedented shift. They were found absorbed in memories of F2F mode before the COVID outbreak and take this online shift as a temporary adjustment owing to respond to the pandemic finding no possible alternate. Originality/value: This study contributes and extends corporate governance literature by offering new evidence of perception differences between the company and customers as well. Education providers often assume that students desire online courses for their convenience and believe it equivalent to or better than F2F courses. This study challenges these managerial perceptions by examining students’ studies empirically and the findings will help regulators and policymakers to change accordingly. © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Smart Cart: A Distributed Framework

In retail stores, most of the people spend more time in billing queue than the time he spends choosing the items due to long queue in rush time. The average time that customers of any retail store have to spend in the billing queues has a direct influence on the quality analysis of services. Thus, it is important to think about different ways to reduce the waiting time in a queue in real time scenario. We propose a cart system that distributes the whole billing queue into smaller individual units so that no one has to wait for the billing process at point of sales (PoS) for specific items. This device uses radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology to scan each product. A passive RFID sticker tag is attached with all the products. The sticker tag contains information including name and price of the product. The device includes a 13.56 MHz RFID reader/writer module that reads RFID stickers attached to the products. In this covid-19 alarmed situation, this distributed cart system also helps people to maintain social distance avoiding long queues. © 2020 IEEE.

The prevalence, preventive measures and economic impact of pandemic COVID-19 in India: The initial phase

The novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) is posing a serious threat to the mankind with its massive infection rate and potentially fatality. A total of 212 countries have been infected within the 112 days of first report causing 2 314 621 confirmed cases and 157 847 deaths worldwide. India, the country which is already battling with poverty, malnutrition and high population density is also at the second stage of coronavirus transmission. The situation is worsening and the attention has focused on the prevalence and preventive measures to be taken to protect 1.35 billion people of the largest democratic country of the world. In this review, a study has been designed to evaluate the prevalence, transmission, clinical symptoms, and preventive measures to control the community transmission of this fatal disease. The initial impact of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak on Indian economy has also been dealt with. This study reviews and summarizes the main points of the epidemic in India until the end of April 2020.

Disastrous decade for data the way forward

In recent years, the Indian offi cial data has been challenged for many reasons, most of them arising out of the perception that the government is reluctant to release unfavourable data. These doubts have been exacerbated by the controversy posed by the debate around Citizenship (Amendment) Act, National Population Register, and National Register of Citizens and the weakening of established institutions like the National Statistical Commission. The COVID-19 pandemic has further upset the data collection so that the fi rst phase of the decennial population census and the proposed NPR exercise now stand postponed. Questions on credibility of offi cial data and the pandemic-induced problems have come at a time when technology offers solutions to data collection, processing and dissemination. The initiatives launched by the government to improve the statistical system utilise these possibilities. © 2020 Economic and Political Weekly. All rights reserved.