The article is an attempt to evaluate the price discovery functions and hedging effectiveness of the aluminum futures market in India. The article identifies the influential direction of price discovery and hedging effectiveness of the aluminum futures market of India. It has especially focused on the aluminum futures market of India for a period ranging from 2013 to 2020. Augmented Dicky-fuller test, PP test, Cointegration test, exogeneity Wald test, Wald co-efficient test, Granger causality test, variance decomposition and minimum variance hedge ratio are employed to achieve the objective of the study. The study finds a bi-directional causality effect between aluminum’s cash and the futures market. Therefore, the Spot and futures markets of aluminum influence each other in the price discovery. The findings of variance decomposition suggest that the futures market of aluminum implies weak exogenoity on spot. Similarly, futures prices reflect strong endogeneity. The hedge ratio of sub-sample and full sample period indicates that there is a lack of hedging effectiveness of aluminum futures. The study will help the hedgers to decide the number of futures positions they need to take to manage their spot exposure. It will help the futures market regulators to examine the stability of the market and other participants to design hedging and arbitrage strategies.

Education, as a key element of social sector has universally viewed as an essential vehicle for socio-economic development and has been recognized as a distinguishing mark between a developed, developing and underdeveloped countries. Development agencies and social scientists have rightly propounded the significance of education for social change, poverty alleviation and a key parameter of human development. With scientific innovations and technological upgradations, the information and communication technology has fast becoming an important driver of socio-economic activities. ICT has brought revolutionary changes in the teaching-learning process making the education sector more dynamic and adding equity and quality in the delivery system. Form Indian perspective, ICT has been a boon to Indian education system. However, there exist regional disparities in the e-learning. Keeping in view the problems poor growth of e-learning, an attempt in this paper has been made to identify the role of e-learning in the promotion of education in India in general and higher education in particular with regional disparities. Keywords: ICT, UNDP, e-learning, GDP.

The study examines the mixture of distribution hypothesis (MDH) and the sequential information arrival hypotheses (SIH) in the base metal futures market of India. We use near-month futures daily trading data of price, volume and open interest for 7 years. It is downloaded from the official website of Multi Commodity Exchange (MCX), India. The study supports the MDH as it confirms the existence of a contemporaneous correlation between the return and change in volume of all base metal futures traded at MCX, India. The article exhibits no causality between the return and volume change of metal futures which supports the MDH and contradicts the SIH. This indicates a greater level of market efficiency. The study finds unidirectional causality between the return and daily change of open interest and bidirectional causality between the change in volume and change in open interest. This is found for all base metal futures and this aspect is left for in-depth analysis by the futures studies.