Status of Common Service Center Program in India: Issues, Challenges and Emerging Practices for Rollout

The Common Service Centre is a 1.2 billion USD initiative by the Government of India. It is an integral pillar of the Government’s National e-governance Plan. The project was started in the year 2004 with the vision to develop these centres as the front-end delivery points for government, private and social sector services to rural citizens of India in an integrated manner. However as on 31st May, 2010, six years after the initiation of the project, only about 50 percent of the States had reported success in achieving 70 percent rollout status of these centres. Even the successful States were being plagued by issues which were hindering the operation and threatening the sustainability of these centres. In this paper we have discussed the current status of implementation of the CSCs across the nation and the pertinent issues that are being faced by the various stakeholders in the project. It was interesting to find out that though the country wise rollout had not yet reached the cent percent mark there were some states that were doing well, compared to others, despite the fact that some of these failing states were the first to initiate the exercise.We have also conducted field studies in the states of Jharkhand,Uttar Pradesh and Meghalaya in order to understand the ground level issues and challenges hampering the implementation of these centres. This paper is an attempt to understand the various challenges and bottlenecks that are being faced in making these common service centres sustainable. Given that the CSCs are designed to provide the last mile linkage to G2C and B2C services, the importance and impact of these centres are immense and the program has the potential to overturn the issues related to accessibility that pulls back the sizeable percentage of the populace. It is however, noteworthy that these perceived benefits to the citizens from this project can only be accrued when these centres are operational. Thus it becomes imperative to study the factors that are hindering the setting up and the functioning of these centres. The study also reveals that there was lack of fool-proof planning at the government’s end in terms of having no structured framework for roll out and no risk mitigation plan in place for a project of this dimension. Moreover, the study shows that there has been a substantial evolution in the business model (based on PPP) that was being used initially across various states in the country to a business model (based on PPP) that is emerging to be more successful and sustainable than what was initially planned for.

Linearized Holographic Isotropization at Finite Coupling

We study holographic isotropization of an anisotropic homogeneous non-Abelian strongly coupled plasma in the presence of Gauss-Bonnet corrections. It was verified before that one can linearize Einstein's equations around the final black hole background and simplify the complicated setup. Using this approach, we study the expectation value of the boundary stress tensor. Although we consider small values of the Gauss-Bonnet coupling constant, it is found that finite coupling leads to significant increasing of the thermalization time. By including higher order corrections in linearization, we extend the results to study the effect of the Gauss-Bonnet coupling on the entropy production on the event horizon.Comment: V2 and v3 are the same! version 4 is ne

Holographic energy loss in non-relativistic backgrounds

In this paper, we study some aspects of energy loss in non-relativistic theories from holography. We analyze the energy lost by a rotating heavy point particle along a circle of radius $l$ with angular velocity $\omega$ in theories with general dynamical exponent $z$ and hyperscaling violation exponent $\theta$. It is shown that this problem provides a novel perspective on the energy loss in such theories. A general computation at zero and finite temperature is done and it is shown that how the total energy loss rate depends non-trivially on two characteristic exponents $(z,\theta)$. We find that at zero temperature there is a special radius $l_c$ where the energy loss is independent of different values of $(\theta,z)$. Also at zero temperature, there is a crossover between a regime in which the energy loss is dominated by the linear drag force and by the radiation because of the acceleration of the rotating particle. We find that the energy loss of the particle decreases by increasing $\theta$ and $z$. We note that, unlike in the zero temperature, there is no special radius $l_c$ at finite temperature case.Comment: 16 pages, major revision of finite temperature analysi

Dynamics Of Flood Flow In Red River Basin

In recent decades, flooding has become a major issue in many areas of the Upper Midwest. Many rivers and streams in the region had considerable increases in mean annual peak flows during this period, which was driven by a combination of natural factors including discharge synchrony with the spring thaw, ice jams, glacial lake plain, and a decrease in gradient downstream. The Red River of the North is a prominent river in the United States and Canada\u27s Upper Midwest. It flows from its headwaters in Minnesota and North Dakota to Lake Winnipeg in Manitoba. The river is well-known for its spring floods, which can cause havoc on communities along its banks. There is an increasing need to improve the characterization and identification of precursors in the Red River basin that affect the hydrological conditions that cause spring snowmelt floods and improve predictions to reduce Red River flood damage. This dissertation has developed different research that concerns the dynamics of floods in the Red River basin by integrating hydrological, hydraulic, and machine-learning models. The primary objectives were to improve flood prediction accuracy by deriving the parameters of the Muskingum Routing method using discharge measurements obtained by an Autonomous Surface Vehicle, to predict scour potential of the river through HEC-RAS modeling, and to provide an estimate of the flood progression downstream based on the flow characteristics. The study also compared the effectiveness of Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (SARIMA), Random Forest (RF), and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) algorithms for flood prediction. Additionally, the research investigated the surface water area variation and response to wet and dry seasons across the entire Red River basin, which can inform the development of effective flood mitigation strategies. The results of this study contributed to a better understanding of flood control strategies in the Red River Basin and helped to inform policy decisions related to flood mitigation in the region. Ultimately, this research aimed to understand the complex dynamics of the RRB and derive hydrological and hydraulic models that could help to improve flood prediction. The first research developed a linear and nonlinear Muskingum model with lateral inflows for flood routing in the Red River Basin using Salp Swarm Algorithm (SSA). The distributed Muskingum model is introduced to improve the accuracy and efficiency of the calculations. The study focuses on developing a linear and nonlinear Muskingum model for the Grand Forks and Drayton USGS stations deriving the parameters of the Muskingum Routing method using discharge measurements based on spatial variable exponent parameters. The suggested approach minimizes the Sum of Square Errors (SSE) between observed and routed outflows. The results show for an icy river like Red River, the Muskingum method proposed is a convenient way to predict outflow hydrographs caused by snowmelt. The second study improved flood inundation mapping accuracy in flood-prone rivers, such as the Red River of the North, by using simulation tools in HEC-RAS for flood modeling and determining Manning\u27s n coefficient. An Autonomous Surface Vehicle (ASV) was used to collect bathymetry and discharge data, including a flood event with a 16.5-year return period in 2022. The results showed that Manning\u27s n-coefficient of 0.07 and 0.15 for the channel and overbanks, respectively, agreed well with the observed and simulated water level values under steady flow conditions. The study also demonstrated the efficiency of using ASVs for flood mapping and examined the scour potential and any local scour development in the streambed near the bridge piers. The third study of this dissertation used hourly level records from three USGS stations to evaluate water level predictions using three methods: SARIMA, RF, and LSTM. The LSTM method outperformed the other methods, demonstrating high precision for flood water level prediction. The results showed that the LSTM method was a reliable choice for predicting flood water levels up to one week in advance. This study contributes to the development of data-driven forecasting systems that provide cost-effective solutions and improved performance in simulating the complex physical processes of floods using mathematical expressions. This last study focused on the spatiotemporal dynamics of surface water area in the Red River Basin (RRB) by using a high-resolution global surface water dataset to investigate the changes in surface water extent from 1990 to 2019. The results showed that there were four distinct phases of variation in surface water: wetting (1990-2001), dry (2002-2005), recent wetting (2006-2013), and recent drying (2014-2019). The transition from bare land to permanent and seasonal water area was observed during the wetting phase, while the other phases experienced relatively little fluctuation. Overall, this study contributes to a better understanding of the spatiotemporal variation of surface water area in the RRB and provides insights into the impact of recent wetting and drying periods on the lakes and wetlands of the RRB

An ecocritical reading of Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener"

This research is an ecocritical reading of Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener". Melville's treatment of the environment is described and analyzed with regard to Augé's theory of non-Places. The examples of non-place in Melville's Wall Street story include the compartmentalized office, the urban labyrinth, artificial and natural greeneries and oriental landscapes. The motif of compartmentalization forms the binary of insider and outsider. A close attention to the binaries in this story reveal Melville's critical attitude towards urban culture that threatens the American identity and mocks the American predilection for mobility in open spaces. This story reveals the way social institutions of an urban culture can determine the tragic fate of an out of place individual. Melville, in this story, reveals the consequences of marginalizing nature and indicates his ecological concerns in mid-nineteenth century America. He mourns the fading out of biocentric view of nature and warns against the domination of the anthropocentric worldview which is brought about by modernity, enlightenment and capitalism

Theoretical Investigation of Static and Dynamic Properties of Zeolite ZSM-5 Based Amorphous Material

Results of molecular dynamics simulations on structural, vibrational and relaxational properties of zeolite ZSM-5 based amorphous solids are presented. The effects of extent of amorphization, measured by an energetic criterion, on properties like distribution of coordination numbers, internal surface area, ring statistics and effective pore size are studied. Ring statistics indicates that upon amorphization not only rings with larger size break down to give rings with smaller size, but that for intermediate degree of amorphization also larger rings are generated. The vibrational density of states was determined for different extents of amorphization. The vibrational modes are analyzed by projecting them on those of the SiO4 and Si-O-Si subunits and individual frequency-dependent contributions of stretching, bending and rotation are discussed. Analysis of low-frequency spectrum show that for higher crystallinity the intensity of the boson peak decreases upon amorphization, whereas the opposite behavior is observed for forms with lower crystallinity. These effects are explained in the framework of Maxwell counting of floppy modes. The modes associated with the boson peak for these materials are found to be mainly optic in nature. Relaxations were studied for temperatures below the critical temperature. At low temperatures the relaxations comprise mainly one-dimensional chains of atoms. The dimensionality of the relaxing centers increases with the temperature due to side branching. The possibility of having reversible jumps decreases with increasing temperature due to a strong drop in the potential energy during aging. There exist very prominent peaks in the van Hove correlation functions as a manifestation of the hopping processes. The dynamics of the oxygen atoms is found to be more heterogeneous than those of the silicon atoms. Ab initio many-body calculations on the strain energy ofW-silica, taken as a model system for edge-sharing tetrahedral SiO2-systems with respect to corner-sharing ones as in a-quartz was performed. Correlation contributions are found to play an important role to determine the stability of edge-sharing units. Our calculation reveal that edge-sharing SiO4 tetrahedra in (partially) amorphous silicate systems are possible at a modest energetic expense

Vintage Ladies in Cubist Exhibitions: Pablo Picasso's Cubist Women and Judith Butler's Performativity

As a prominent figure in the history of painting, Pablo Picasso has bestowed upon the world his uniquely striking paintings in different styles, the most revolutionary of which being his Cubist art. The representation of women occupies a significant space in Picasso’s Cubist works. While the painter’s style is highly revolutionary, rejecting the accepted principles of painting, the subject matter does not change as such: nude women are objectified with a cubist look. Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity which examines the roots of naturalized concepts of gender, has been applied to Picasso’s representations of women in his cubist paintings. This research examines the way naturalized definitions of gender have found their way into Picasso’s paintings.  By applying the Butlerian concept of gender performativity to a number of Picasso’s cubist artworks, we try to indicate how stereotypes of gender linger in the discourse of modernism. Analyses lead to the conclusion that although the cubist style of painting is an experimentation in form, hardly any avant-gardism can be traced in the representation of gendered identities in Picasso

Representations of Girlhood and Girl Stereotypes in Victoria Aveyards’ The Red Queen Collection

Given the fact that girlhood studies is a new area of investigation which intriguingly demonstrates various ways through which girlhood is structured by different social and cultural codes, we intend to examine  girl characters in The Red Queen collection as it was the New York Times Best Selling series. This investigation reveals the way cultural and social norms prescribe specific gender roles and shape different versions of girl characters in this series. To find girl stereotypes in The Red Queen collection, such girlhood theories as Girl Power, Reviving Ophelia, #LIKEAGIRL, Girl Effect and Girl Up have been taken into consideration. Various depictions of girlhood in The Red Queen collection are represented through characters who have different ethnic backgrounds and come from different social classes. This implies that the formation of girl identity has a lot to do with social, economic, political and cultural structures. However, identity formation, as we see in the collection, is an ongoing process and can change in the course of an individual’s self-development. &nbsp