Animal Health Policy in South Asia: What can Economic Analysis Contribute?

Animal health policy in South Asia region has been characterized predominantly by direct action by the government either in providing services to livestock farmers or in undertaking livestock productivity enhancing measures. It is a widely held view among policy makers that given the poverty status of livestock farmers, the potential of livestock in contributing to poverty reduction, and poverty reduction being a public good, there is strong rationale for direct action by the government as opposed to regulatory, monitoring and market enhancing role. Accordingly, most governments in South Asia have developed large networks of publicly supported service providers backed by free or heavily subsidized input supply. A series of studies undertaken to assess the distributional outcomes of the above policy have however raised questions about the desirability of such a policy and the need to fine tune service delivery systems including creating space for other non-government service providers. These studies make a reasonably strong case for reducing the subsidies in the form of free services and putting this money into services such as disease prevention, reporting, control, awareness education and so on, for these are the services that are currently neglected due to fiscal pressures and are likely to generate a larger social good than simple treatment services. The question then is that if policy choices are so clear, why animal health policy in the region continues to encourage ‘pervasive direct action by the government’ in livestock service delivery instead of a more facilitating role. To address that question the paper shares the experience of one such attempt to understand and influence animal health policy in one of the southern states of India. Based on that experience, the paper argues that policies are an outcome of a process of complex interactions between economic logic, formal and informal power structures, legacies of trust and mistrust, and communication narratives. While significant investment is often made in clarifying the economic logic of alternative policy prescriptions and outcomes, very little thought and investment goes into managing and broad-basing policy processes. The process leading to ‘wider buy-in’ can often be far more important and needs equal, if not more, attention than economic analysis. This requires greater emphasis on socio-political studies of ‘policy processes’ and a long term strategy of investment in ‘relationship building’.

Scope and Space for small scale poultry production in developing countries

In recent years there has been growing recognition among the development community of the role of small scale commercial poultry production in accelerating the pace of poverty reduction and reaching out to the poorest of the poor. There is also growing evidence to demonstrate the role of small scale poultry in enhancing the food and nutrition security of the poorest households and in the promotion of gender equality. At the same time, the market and production context of poultry production has been changing rapidly over the last two decades. Rapid economic growth and urbanization in developing countries has resulted in fast expansion of industrial large scale, vertically integrated, poultry production units, specially in Asia. Opportunities have also expanded for small scale poultry enterprises due to improved market access infrastructure and a preference structure that might still favour free range birds and eggs. As a result, there has been increased market orientation even among small scale poultry enterprises. These changes have brought large and small production systems in overlapping competitive space which has created both challenges and opportunities. These changes have raised concerns about the sustainability of small scale poultry production systems due to (i) intensified competition from large scale producers who can exercise significant control over the poultry value chain (including concentrated holding of genetic stock of industrial poultry by a few multinational corporations), and (ii) the public perception that small units of production may be dangerous reservoirs of diseases, specially in the wake of recent outbreaks of HPAI. In the light of that background, this paper attempts to summarize the nature of small scale poultry production across nations and brings together some evidence on the viability of small scale poultry production in the wake of expanding large scale production systems with substantial economies of scale, well organized and integrated supply chains and the ability to respond to various types of risks. The paper argues that the main challenge for small-scale/rural poultry is organizational, not technical. Based on a review of available evidence, the paper concludes that it is important to continue to promote village poultry to contribute towards household nutrition security and livelihood support but concerted efforts must be made to find organizational solutions to minimize public health risks and provide appropriate extension support on issues like disease prevention, predation, improving hatchability, etc. Unfortunately most government extension programs in the developing countries are not oriented towards addressing the needs of poor households. While some private sector organizations (such as Kegg Farm in India) have invested significantly towards developing fast growing and more productive birds without requiring significant additional inputs, and have also made sufficient investment for developing the distribution network for birds, extension and public health support systems continue to be the weak point, making them vulnerable to exogenous shocks. This requires a well orchestrated public policy response in support of small scale poultry production.

Educational attainments in developing countries : new estimates and projections disaggregated by gender

The authors present new estimates of educational attainment in 71 developing countries for the years 1985, 1990 and 1995. They also project levels of educational attainment through the year 2020 by using the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization's projections of enrollment and the International Labor Organization's projections of population by age and sex. The projections suggest interesting trends: 1) growth of stock in human capital is expected to be highest in the Middle East and North Africa and lowest in sub-Saharan Africa; 2) South Asia -- currently the least educated part of the world is expected to substantially augment its stock of human capital by the year 2020; 3) in most regions, enrollment levels are expected to remain lower for girls than boys; and 4) the gender gap in education may have risen in the past decade, this trend toward a widening of the gender gap may continue unless countries intensify their efforts to educate girls.Teaching and Learning,Earth Sciences&GIS,Scientific Research&Science Parks,Economic Theory&Research,Demographics,Earth Sciences&GIS,Teaching and Learning,Science Education,Scientific Research&Science Parks,Demographics

Regression Analysis of Open Source Project Impact: Relationships with Activity and Rewards

Engagement with open source projects is becoming an increasingly important part of how people work. In this regard, there is a growing interest in how we can better understand the dynamics within an open source project related to project activity, project contributor rewards, and project impact. In this paper, we summarize our work of exploring the relationships between these items

Process, People, Power and Conflict: Some Lessons from a Participatory Policy Process in Andhra Pradesh, India

A large body of empirical literature highlights the need for stakeholder participation within the context of policy change and democratic governance. This makes intuitive sense and may appear to be a straightforward process of managing conflicting interests, building consensus, and lining up support. The reality, however, is often much more complicated and conflictive, even where there is general agreement on the policy objectives. The present paper examines these issues in the context of participatory policy development for the delivery of veterinary services by para-professionals in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. It illustrates the challenges inherent in the politics of participatory policy processes and the potential of ‘agenda hijack’ by influential partners, resulting in missed learning opportunities. It also offers insights on practical steps to counter these dangers, as potential lessons for practitioners and project managers engaged in participatory policy reform processes.

Open Agriculture and the Right-to-Repair Community Movement

Technological changes in the agriculture industry cause shifts in the roles and power relations of stakeholders. As stakeholders vie for control of intellectual property and increased revenue, tensions can be observed through the emergence of open agriculture and the right-to-repair community movements. The goal of this research-in-progress paper aims to explore these tensions and offers a background of current research, providing a road map for our continued work. Research investigating information technology use in agriculture, precision farming, agriculture decision support, and analytics is relevant and important for the Information Systems discipline because it continues to push the investigation of the changing nature of work due to technology

Open Innovation via Open Source: Collaboration of Companies to Infuse Automobiles with Digital Technologies

Open innovation is a process through which companies open their borders and collaborate with external stakeholders like open source communities to bring new ideas and develop novel digital technologies to gain a competitive position. In this paper, we studied an open source project, i.e., Automotive Grade Linux (AGL) – a Linux Foundation project started by automobile manufacturers and technology companies to innovate technologies for automobiles. By analyzing the code contribution of AGL, we show that much of the code contribution is made by external companies supplying technology to automotive companies and later using the open innovation process to benefit from it. We find evidence that automobile manufacturers engage in open source communities for outside-in, inside-out, and coupled open innovation. As such, this paper shows to managers in larger companies the importance of open source as a way to do open innovation

“Something to talk about” Exploring open source design spaces

Open source projects are dynamic environments where individuals and organizations collaborate to accomplish mutually beneficial design tasks. Open source designers utilize different design spaces, including discussion spaces (where conversation happens) and implementation spaces (where work happens) to complete design tasks. To investigate the relationship between discussion spaces, implementation spaces, and the completion of design tasks in open source projects, this research explores design as it occurs in organizational-communal open source projects under the umbrella of the Linux Foundation and focuses on design processes of three projects – Kubernetes, GRPC, and Zephyr. Design tasks - that include discussion spaces linked to implementation spaces - are successfully completed at a higher rate, than those with no link. This research demonstrates that the discussion space - implementation space relationship plays a key role in open source design processes

Phish Finders: Improving Cybersecurity Training Tools Using Citizen Science

Malicious web content includes phishing emails, social media posts, and websites that imitate legitimate sites. Phishing attacks are rising, and human-centered phishing risk mitigation is often an afterthought eclipsed by technical system-centric efforts like firewalls. Training tools can be deployed for combating phishing but often lack sufficient labeled training content. Using signal detection theory, this paper assesses the feasibility of using citizen science and crowdsourcing volunteers to label images for use in cybersecurity training tools. Crowd volunteer performance was compared to gold standard content and prior studies of Fortune 500 company employees. Findings show no significant statistical differences between crowd volunteers and corporate employees\u27 performance on gold standard content in identifying phishing. Based on these findings, citizen scientists can be valuable for generating annotated images for cybersecurity training tools