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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