We study the disruption of food supply to households and reduced farm‐to‐market arrivals in India's food supply chain during the COVID‐19 lockdown. We focus on the relationship between logistics quality (and performance) and the intensity of disruptions across India's states. We find four policy‐relevant findings: (1) Food consumption expenditure was higher in states with better logistics quality; (2) These states recovered more quickly from farm‐to‐market disruptions with higher agricultural market arrivals in the later phases of the lockdown; (3) Rural food supply chains turned out to be as vulnerable as urban ones; and (4) Expenditure on cereals and pulses faced large reductions.

Women are contributing to increase the productivity of Global Value Chains (GVCs); however, the gendered aspect has often been overlooked in the GVC analysis. This book by Barrientos helps us to understand and explore the impact of GVCs on women's empowerment, welfare, and access to employment opportunities. Barrientos has been one of the first researchers to investigate gender issues in GVCs. She has been widely acclaimed for her work in gender, global production, and decent work and has published articles such as "The gender dimensions of globalization of production" and "Gender, flexibility, global value chains." This book provides some new perspectives on how global retail has led to an exponential rise in the women workforce in the GVCs and advances the theory of gendered Global (re) Production Networks (G[r]PN) with greater emphasis on low-and middle-income countries. The author also exposes readers to the plight of the marginal, contractual, and female labor force engaged in these GVCs.Other books, such as by Gunewardena and Kingsolver (2007), focus on the economic marginalization of women due to globalization. Beneria et al. (2015), in their book on gender, development, and globalization have discussed the implications of gender inequality due to changes in social and economic processes triggered by globalization and Amartya Sen's Capability approach (also discussed in this book). Similarly, books on gender and work, such as Rao et al. (2015), provide an analytical framework to analyze gender bias in organizations and map strategies to bring the desired change. While Barrientos' book bears similarities with the above narratives as it comes under the ambit of a similar overarching theme, the specific question of gender and work within the global value chain has not been dealt with in such depth in any such books. From a gender perspective, work in GVCs has received less attention in books and literature. Thus, the author tries to compensate for it by shedding light on specific knowledge gaps not previously addressed.The author introduces us to the rise of the retail value chain, its linkages to changing gender roles in workplaces, and its impact on both business and society in the first four chapters. The author discusses how women are drawn into different value chain roles in the first chapter and how gendered boundaries are getting blurred in the second chapter. Subsequently, she discusses how gender inequalities have become systemic within value chains and addresses the core issue of how global retail value chains shape gender patterns of work in chapter 4. Using intriguing case studies, she subsequently discusses the gendered aspect of downgrading and upgrading in GVCs and their mixed outcomes in the following four chapters. The case studies included the Ghanian cocoa-chocolate value