Institutional Factors behind Effectiveness of Irrigation: A Study in the Brahmaputra Valley in Eastern India

As the adverse consequences of the policies of input subsidy and increasing food-grain procurement prices became prominent in Indian agriculture, researchers and policy makers documented the need for policy changes. For sustaining production of rice, there are now calls for shift of emphasis from large farmers in Green Revolution areas in Northwest India to small and marginal farmers in Eastern and rain-fed areas, where returns to both labor and capital are high and potentials for exploiting the existing technology are yet largely untapped. A major constraint on exploiting such potentials in parts of Eastern India such as the Brahmaputra Valley is paucity of irrigation. While investment for expanding irrigation capacity is needed, it is equally important to put necessary institutions in place to ensure that the installed capacity is effectively utilized. This study based on survey of 172 farms from three agro-climatic zones of the Brahmaputra Valley has found that farmers control over management and operation of irrigation system is crucial in determining their success in effectively using irrigation in terms of level and intensity of productivity increasing practices associated with irrigation. The study hence suggests that to improve effectiveness, and thereby reap higher social returns on public investment on irrigation, involvement of farmers in operation and management of public sector irrigation systems should be secured. In view of the effectiveness of small-scale private tube-wells and the abundance of ground water reserves in the Brahmaputra valley, facilitation of private investments in such sys tems is recommended for expanding total irrigation capacity.Effectiveness of irrigation, institutions, stake holding farmers, regulations, Brahmaputra Valley, Institutional and Behavioral Economics, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Gender inequalities in India’s new service economy: a case study of the banking sector

PhDThis study explores women’s experiences of work and employment in the banking sector in India, addressing the paucity of research in this area. The research assesses how the assumptions of theories on gender, work and employment, primarily based on empirical experiences from the Global North can be interpreted in the Indian context. It argues that experiences of gender inequalities are geographically reconfigured in the Indian banking sector through the interplay between gendered organisational practices, local cultural discourses on femininity, institutional factors, particularly government laws and organisational structures. The research draws upon a case study of the banking sector in the National Capital Region (NCR), one of India’s largest consumer financial centres, combining a questionnaire survey of 156 female bank employees with 74 qualitative interviews with female and male bank employees in three types of banks. The study uncovers how gender discrimination, albeit covertly, is widespread in Indian banks. Gendered organisational practices create universal constraints for Indian women’s career development. This study, however, reveals how local cultural discourses on femininity, emphasising respectability and family values lead to distinctively Indian patterns of gender inequalities in the banking sector serving to highlight the intersection of gender with class identities. Crucially, the comparison of government-owned, foreign-owned and Indian private banks demonstrates that local cultural norms and gendered organisational practices are mediated through different organisational structures to create varied experiences of gender discrimination for women in the different banks. Finally, the study provides new conceptual perspectives for addressing the limitations of existing theorisations on gender, work and employment. It develops the concept of ‘family-based femininity’ highlighting the influence of the family in shaping the nature of gender inequalities in the workplace. Where previous typologies focused on resistance in the workplace, this research introduces the notion of ‘compliance in the workplace’, whereby women passively conform to gendered organisational practices, with little intention to create change.University of London Central Research Fun

Heterologous expression of the mammalian microtubule associated proteins (MAPs) tau, MAP2c and MAP4 in the fission yeast, Schizosaccharomyces pombe

The mammalian microtubule associated proteins (MAPs) tau, MAP2c and MAP4 were subcloned and expressed in the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe using the thiamine repressible pREP1 vector. Tau, MAP2c and MAP4 have similar C-terminal microtubule binding domains, but unique N-terminal projection domains. At the start of this study, there were no known MAPs in S. pombe and therefore this appeared to be a unique in vivo system to both study the roles of the three mammalian MAPs and to further define the function of microtubules. All three MAPs inhibited growth of wild type cells at 36°C over a range of temperatures. However each MAP produced distinct phenotypes in fission yeast, indicating that their effect was specific for that MAP. Tau expression resulted in a weak phenotype of long, multiseptate or branched cells. The MAP2c-induced phenotype was stronger, and resulted in long cells with bulbous ends, whilst MAP4 expression produced bent or hammer shaped cells. The MAPs tau and MAP2c accelerated and slowed entry into mitosis, respectively, of G2-arrested cdc25.211 cells. Expression of tau and MAP2c in tea1 cells (which plays a role in directing the cell to grow along a perfectly opposed longitudinal axis) and tea2 cells (which codes for a kinesin) result in distorted shapes and loss of the original phenotype. Immunofluorescence studies showed that each MAP had a unique effect not only on the cell phenotype but also on microtubule organisation of the cell. Tau caused microtubule bundling and displacement towards the cell periphery, MAP2c resulted in short microtubules around the nucleus, whilst MAP4 caused total depolymerisation of interphase microtubules. Both tau and MAP2c appeared to bind to microtubules, but MAP4 was seen distributed throughout the cell. Similarly, MAP2c caused the formation of short microtubules in teal cells, but tau had very little effect. tea2 control cells have short microtubules, and tau expression resulted in even shorter microtubules near the nucleus. MAP2c expression in tea2, however, resulted in microtubule depolymerisation, and assymetrical distribution towards one end of the cell. Tau and MAP2c also appeared to rescue the combined sensitivity of fission yeast to the cold and the microtubule depolymerisation agent, thiabendazole (TBZ). This observation was used as a strategy to isolate possible S. pombe MAPs by expressing an S. pombe cDNA library subcloned in pREP. Eight clones were isolated, and sequence analysis of two of those clones revealed that they coded for fatty acid synthetase (lsd1+) and the ribosomal protein L19

Food Security: Issues and Policy Options- A Discussion in Light of India’s National Food Security Act

From its initial drafting to its eventual passage in the Indian Parliament and beyond, the National Food Security Bill has been extensively debated with a lot of animation by activists, economists, politicians and even corporate leaders. This article presents a brief summary of the debate in the backdrop of a discussion of the general issues related to food security and India's past record of food grain management. Since the Bill has now been turned into an Act, it is suggested that the focus of attention should now shift to its implementation mechanism and suitable measures to mitigate the apprehended undesirable consequences of the proposed nationwide food security programme

Assessment of prescription pattern of cataract patients in the ophthalmology department at a tertiary health care institution

Background: Evaluation of the current prescription pattern of cataract patients in the Ophthalmology Department to find out utilization of drugs per prescription that reflects possibilities of drug interaction and patient compliance and to suggest measures for rational prescriptions.Methods: The study was carried out in the Ophthalmology Department at Gauhati Medical College and Hospital, Guwahati for a period of 6 months after obtaining permission from the Institutional Human Ethics Committee. This was a retrospective, observational hospital based study. The present study included patients of any age group and both the sexes (male/female) who were diagnosed as having cataract and who were prescribed different categories of drugs. A total of 156 prescriptions were collected, analysed and classified during the study period (both outdoor and indoor patients).Results: Our study found that maximum numbers of patients were encountered in the age group of 45-65 years and around 48.4% of cases for IOL implantation were having immature senile cataract. Topical eye drops are most commonly used account for 56.3% in preoperative cases. Overall 564 drugs were prescribed on discharge in 156 prescriptions; So on an average 3.6 drugs were prescribed per prescription. Overall antimicrobials (51.80%) are most commonly prescribed group followed by anti-inflammatory (25.10%), anxiolytic, steroid etc.Conclusions: Our study showed a significant awareness to avoid polypharmacy by keeping average number of drugs per prescription as low as possible to avoid increased cost of the therapy, therapeutic failure, and adverse drug reactions and hence for better patient compliance

Revisiting Development Disparities across the Indian States: In Quest of Evidence of Resource Curse

Despite a large number of studies going into the issue of income and developmental disparities across states in India, the possibility of resource curse being at the root of some states persistently lagging in development has rarely been probed. The present paper is aimed at filling this void in the literature. Economic common sense and writing of some eminent development economists suggest that regions endowed with resources should be in the advantaged position to grow fast and develop quickly. In reality, however, regions endowed richly with natural resources have often tended to lag– a phenomenon that has given rise to the resource curse hypothesis. Countries/regions rich in natural resources can be cursed if the easy and abundant resource revenue breeds moral hazards causing institutional weaknesses that allow rent-seeking and other anti-developmental processes to flourish. In the Indian context, persistent lagging behind of the resource-rich states of Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Assam, Jharkhand, and Bihar hints at resource curse casting a spell over these states. Using panel data on 17 major Indian states at decennial intervals from 1981 to 2011, evidence for probable resource curse has been explored while controlling for some common determinants of development. Results confirm evidence in support of resource curse dragging overall development attainment in most of the resource-rich states. On a positive note, however, it has been found that development attainment across India has advanced progressively, especially in the post-reform decades. &nbsp

Shape optimization of optical microscale inclusions

This paper describes a class of shape optimization problems for optical metamaterials comprised of periodic microscale inclusions composed of a dielectric, low-dimensional material suspended in a non-magnetic bulk dielectric. The shape optimization approach is based on a homogenization theory for time-harmonic Maxwell's equations that describes effective material parameters for the propagation of electromagnetic waves through the metamaterial. The control parameter of the optimization is a deformation field representing the deviation of the microscale geometry from a reference configuration of the cell problem. This allows for describing the homogenized effective permittivity tensor as a function of the deformation field. We show that the underlying deformed cell problem is well-posed and regular. This, in turn, proves that the shape optimization problem is well-posed. In addition, a numerical scheme is formulated that utilizes an adjoint formulation with either gradient descent or BFGS as optimization algorithms. The developed algorithm is tested numerically on a number of prototypical shape optimization problems with a prescribed effective permittivity tensor as the target

Inequality in the Dynamics of Development: Post-Globalisation Changes and 21st Century Challenges

Following Kuznets’ pioneering works, the growth-inequality nexus was stylised as an inverted U-shaped relation. As per that paradigm, economic inequality initially increases when a nation embarks upon a modern economic development process, but later on, declines as the development process cross a certain threshold. The paradigm roughly bears out the experience of the industrialised countries of Europe and North America from the beginning of the nineteenth century up to the mid-1970s. The inevitability of the pattern came under question when data from a broader range of countries became available by the 1970s. Then the post-globalisation experience of countries around the world virtually negated the falling part of Kuznets inverted U. Most countries which profited from globalisation in the form of upward shifts of their growth trajectories also experienced a rise rather than a decline in economic inequality. The present paper is a survey of the large and interesting literature on the changing nature of inequality before and after globalisation. The survey finds that inequality across countries has actually declined as a result of globalisation whereas inequalities within countries have almost invariably increased. Apart from usual factors such as bequest and skewed distributions of wealth, the new factors that have accentuated post-globalisation inequality are widening wage disparities, inequalities of opportunities, the onslaught of automation and rent-seeking activities of a section of the rich. The survey also notes how inequality has been moderated in some counties through effective taxes and transfer programmes. After summarising the arguments why growing economic inequality cannot be left unattended, the survey concludes with an outline of the policy choices which are being currently discussed in the academic and administrative circles

Report of the Committee under the chairmanship of Shri M.P. Bezbaruah to look into the concerns of the people of the northeast living in other parts of the country

"The Ministry of Home Affairs set up a committee under the Chairmanship of Shri M.P. Bezbaruah, IAS (Retd), Member North East Council to look into various kinds of concerns of the people hailing from North Eastern states of India who are living in different parts of the country especially the Metropolitan cities and to suggest suitable remedial measure which could be taken up by the Government in light of the unfortunate death of Sh. Nido Tania, a student from Arunachal Pradesh"

Thermal and Fluid Flow Analysis of Miller Teeth Shaped Ribbed Solar Air Heater- A CFD Approach

694-698Present simulation work is based on qualitative as well as quantitative study on the thermohydraulic effect on a solar air heater due to a unique shape of repeated rib similar to the shape of Miller teeth over absorber plate. The overall efficiency is assessed by measuring thermohydraulic performance factor at different operating parameters which considers thermal as well as hydraulic performances. Numerical simulation is carried out using ANSYS FLUENT (ver. 18.1) varying the Reynolds number in the applicable range of 3800-18000, while relative pitch ratio (P/e) and relative roughness height (e/D) are within the range of 7.14-35.7 and 0.021-0.042 respectively. The effect of different roughness heights and roughness pitches of miller teeth shaped rib on the heat transfer and fluid flow characteristics of a solar air collector is analysed and detailed justification is presented using different contours derived