Science Communication in India: Policy Framework

141-151Science and technology in modern India cannot be discussed without referring to the discourse that is rooted in the debate initiated by the first Prime Minister of India, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru (1947-1964). The science and technology policy documents that followed and articulated the vision of India, were Scientific Policy Resolution (SPR-1958), Technology Policy Statement (TPS-1983), Science and Technology Policy (STP-2003) and Science, Technology and Innovation Policy (STI-2013). These documents envisioned, articulated and codified aspirations, objectives and strategies to mark the role of science and technology in the nation building. The notion of ‘scientific-temper’, as proposed through the Indian constitution, has to be fostered relentlessly to keep the social ethos in sync with modern scientific knowledge. The policy frame-work of science and technology in India, enunciated from time to time has continuously empowered the stakeholders to intensify science popularisation

Science Communication in India : Policy Framework

Science and technology in modern India cannot be discussed without referring to the discourse that is rooted in the debate initiated by the first Prime Minister of India, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru (1947-1964). The science and technology policy documents that followed and articulated the vision of India, were Scientific Policy Resolution (SPR-1958), Technology Policy Statement (TPS-1983), Science and Technology Policy (STP-2003) and Science, Technology and Innovation Policy (STI-2013). These documents envisioned, articulated and codified aspirations, objectives and strategies to mark the role of science and technology in the nation building. The notion of ‘scientific-temper’, as proposed through the Indian constitution, has to be fostered relentlessly to keep the social ethos in sync with modern scientific knowledge. The policy frame-work of science and technology in India, enunciated from time to time has continuously empowered the stakeholders to intensify science popularisation

Impact of COVID-19 on Rural Economy in India

‘They will go to die there, where there is life ’. COVID-19 lockdown flooded streets with migrant labourers which were marching to their villages to find warmth and empathy. Many reached their homes but several failed and died on streets and railway tracks. The current study offers insights on the plight of migrant labourers and impact of COVID-19 on rural economy in India. The major finding of the study suggests 400 million workers in India in the informal economy are at the risk of falling deeper into poverty during the crisis. The low reporting of COVID-19 cases due to low testing will result in community spread. The reverse migration will create excess pressure on the agriculture and rural economy which will result in a significant number of people to fall into abject poverty. COVID-19 will have both short and long-run effect on the rural economy in India. The government economic package contains majorly long-term measures whereas short-term measures such as cash incentive and wage subsidy should be given to save migrant labourer and marginal farmers. Above all, mass corruption in the system is the biggest challenge in the effective implementation of plans

PDS: A Review of its Functioning and Effectiveness, Since Independence

There is too much criticism of PDS came in the recent times. This paper is basically focused to examine the effectiveness of PDS on the front of price rise, poverty alleviation and hunger. Some critical issues related to PDS are discussed in the later sections. The malfunctioning of PDS is really a critical issue and there is urgent need to check these leakages in order to save public money, and provide exclusive benefit to the people who deserve it

The Political Economy of Indigo farming in India and Champaran Satyagraha

The study examines the political economy of indigo farming in Champaran, British India. The nexus of Zamindars and planters gave birth to the draconian law of Teenkathiya settlement. Falling returns on natural indigo and tuff competition from synthetic indigo made peasants more vulnerable. Gandhi Satyagraha, the abolition of Teenkathiya settlement and socio-political impact of the movement is also analysed in the study

Group Affect Prediction Using Multimodal Distributions

We describe our approach towards building an efficient predictive model to detect emotions for a group of people in an image. We have proposed that training a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) model on the emotion heatmaps extracted from the image, outperforms a CNN model trained entirely on the raw images. The comparison of the models have been done on a recently published dataset of Emotion Recognition in the Wild (EmotiW) challenge, 2017. The proposed method achieved validation accuracy of 55.23% which is 2.44% above the baseline accuracy, provided by the EmotiW organizers.Comment: This research paper has been accepted at Workshop on Computer Vision for Active and Assisted Living, WACV 201

A rare case of Meckel Gruber syndrome

Meckel Gruber syndrome (MGS) is a rare lethal autosomal recessive disorder.  It is characterized by triad of features having occipital meningoencephalocele, polycystic kidneys and post-axial polydactyly. We report an antenatal patient detected with occipital meningoencephalocele in foetus on early anomaly scan at 15 weeks of gestation followed by foetal MRI which revealed the typical triad features strongly suggestive of MGS. The patient opted for medical termination of pregnancy and the abortus was autopsied, with the permission of the patient, for detailed evaluation of anomalies which were consistent with MGS. This case highlights the importance of a detailed foetal evaluation antenatally to detect anomalies which are incompatible with life and proper diagnosis as it has bearing on patient’s future obstetric outcome

Re-estimation and comparisons of alternative accounting based bankruptcy prediction models for Indian companies

Background: The suitability and performance of the bankruptcy prediction models is an empirical question. The aim of this paper is to develop a bankruptcy prediction model for Indian manufacturing companies on a sample of 208 companies consisting of an equal number of defaulted and non-defaulted firms. Out of 208 companies, 130 are used for estimation sample, and 78 are holdout for model validation. The study reestimates the accounting based models such as Altman EI (Journal of Finance 23: 19189-209, 1968) Z-Score, Ohlson JA (Journal of Accounting Research 18:109-131, 1980) Y-Score and Zmijewski ME (Journal of Accounting Research 22:59-82, 1984) X-Score model. The paper compares original and re-estimated models to explore the sensitivity of these models towards the change in time periods and financial conditions. Methods: Multiple Discriminant Analysis (MDA) and Probit techniques are employed in the estimation of Z-Score and X-Score models, whereas Logit technique is employed in the estimation of Y-Score and the newly proposed models. The performance of all the original, re-estimated and new proposed models are assessed by predictive accuracy, significance of parameters, long-range accuracy, secondary sample and Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) tests. Results: The major findings of the study reveal that the overall predictive accuracy of all the three models improves on estimation and holdout sample when the coefficients are re-estimated. Amongst the contesting models, the new bankruptcy prediction model outperforms other models. Conclusions: The industry specific model should be developed with the new combinations of financial ratios to predict bankruptcy of the firms in a particular country. The study further suggests the coefficients of the models are sensitive to time periods and financial condition. Hence, researchers should be cautioned while choosing the models for bankruptcy prediction to recalculate the models by looking at the recent data in order to get higher predictive accuracy