Harpreet Kaur

The securities market in India is regulated by the Securities and Exchange Board of India constituted under the Securities and Exchange Board of India Act, 1992. The Board has to protect interests of investors and promote and regulate the securities market. Recently, the Parliament of India has passed the Securities Laws Act, 2014, in order to give more powers to the Board for calling for information for any person including banks or any other authority, calling for information from any outside authority and search and seizure. It can regulate any Ponzi or money collecting scheme, access call data records of people involved in such illicit schemes and arrest defaulters. The Act has also allowed for setting up special courts to fast track the investigation and prosecution in matters relating to securities market. The case of Sahara Group companies and NSEL is the most important case, which has made headlines worldwide. The present chapter will give an overview of securities market in India to the readers. It will give an insight into trends in the primary and secondary market, different issues in securities market in India and their regulation including recent scams and investigations undertaken by SEBI.

The proportion of the world’s population living in urban areas is increasing rapidly, with the vast majority of this growth in developing countries. As growing populations in urban areas demand greater food supplies, coupled with a rise in rural to urban migration and the need to create livelihood options, there has been an increase in urban agriculture worldwide. Urban agriculture is commonly discussed as a sustainable solution for dealing with gaps in the local food system, and proponents often highlight the many social, environmental, and economic benefits. We argue that the sustainability of urban agriculture should not be assumed. There is a need for research to take a bottom-up approach, exploring the influence that city-level conditions have on livelihood decisions by farmers and how this shapes the practice of urban agriculture. This paper uses a case study for an in-depth look at urban agriculture in Delhi, India to understand from the farmers’ perspective how urban agriculture is practiced and what factors influence farmers’ livelihood decisions. Using a team-based, multi-method Rapid Assessment Process, data were collected through preliminary key informant interviews, field observations, semi-structured interviews with urban farmers, and geographic information systems mapping. This research provides an in-depth description of market-oriented urban agriculture in a developing country, explores how farmers’ livelihood decisions are embedded in the urban context, and discusses the potential of urban agriculture as a sustainable city-system