The Changing Facets of Corporate Governance and Corporate Social Responsibilities in India and their Interrelationship

CG and CSR can be described as two sides of the same coin. Better governance leads the corporates to behave responsibly for the wellbeing of all the stakeholders. CSR is the medium through which corporates address the large group of stakeholders. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) moving far ahead from its age old domain of philanthropy and charity has now reached to a new hallmark of Corporate responsiveness and action to social issues and demand for sustainability in order to advance further towards a new era of collective future action for factoring the sustainable business strategy for good governance and development of the society and its people. The recent changing in the laws in India related to CSR and CG practices in India triggers this study to determine the relationship between them and also measure the influence of governance attributes on CSR practices of Indian corporates. The BSE SENSEX companies in India are the leaders in good governance practices and also the flag bearers in carrying out major CSR activities even when the CSR was not mandatory in India. The influence of corporate board attributes like Board Size, Board independent, Chairman-CEO duality, Female representative in corporate board, multiple directorships, and Promoter and directors shareholding on Corporate Social Responsibility measured through multiple regression analysis. The results revealed that chairman-CEO duality and the present of female directors in corporate board significantly influence of CSR contribution. Before generalization of the result of study further research could be undertaken taking a large group of Indian companies and wider corporate governance variables

Assessing the Role of CSR Practices of Commercial Banks in Enhancing Financial Inclusion: A Study on Banking Sector in Bangladesh

Financial inclusion is currently a high priority policy goal for developing and developed countries in order to ensure stable and equitable economic growth. This study aims to assess the role of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives of commercial banks in enhancing financial inclusion in Bangladesh. The study also focuses on the benefits of financial inclusion and overall financial inclusion scenario of banking sector in the country. The study is based on secondary data extracted from the selected commercial banks for the period of 2008- 2012. The analyses show that geographic as well as demographic penetration of banking services in the country has increased significantly during the last five years. Consequently, financial inclusion in terms of total population has increased from 48.86 percent in 2008 to 63.46 percent in 2012. However, the overall financial inclusion through banking services has followed a modest pace. The study also found that the private commercial banks are contributing more in enhancing financial inclusion through CSR practices than state owned commercial banks and foreign commercial banks. The findings of the study might be valuable for the commercial banks to judge their performance in terms of CSR practices among the overall banking sector in the country. The study might also be useful for policymakers to promote more effective policies and guidelines to ensure an equitable financial inclusion for all the people including poor, underserved and underprivileged group of the society.   Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Commercial Bank, Financial Inclusion, Bangladesh  JEL Classifications: G2, M14

Investigation of fuel gas generation in a pilot scale fluidized bed autothermal gasifier using rice husk

The objective of this study was to investigate the process of generating fuel gas through gasification of biomass in a fluidized bed reactor. The experiments were performed in a pilot scale autothermal gasifier developed in the laboratory. Rice husk having 10% moisture (wb) had been taken as the representative biomass and, air was used as the fluidizing and gasifying media. The work included the parametric study of process parameters such as reactor temperature and equivalence ratio which influence the composition of producer gas. The thermodynamic model was developed based on equilibrium constant approach to predict the fuel gas compositions at different operating conditions. The water gas shift reaction and the methanation reaction were considered to be in thermodynamic equilibrium state in this model. Six major components of the product gas as analyzed in the laboratory were H2, CO, CO2, CH4, H2O and N2. It was observed that the concentrations of hydrogen and carbon monoxide were increased with rise in gasification temperature. On the other hand, higher equivalence ratios caused to decrease the concentrations of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, and consequently the heating values of fuel gas. Higher equivalence ratio also resulted in more gas yields due to increase in the exothermic reactions. The model could make a reasonably good prediction for the experimental data as observed for the gas species concentrations. In few cases, particularly for CH4, there were some differences in numerical values of species concentrations and the probable reasons for such deviations have been discussed

Review on Parthenium hysterphorus as a potential energy source

Ethyl alcohol, the oldest synthetic organic chemical is rendered one of the most important alternative sources of energy. Efficient production of ethanol is based on optimized processes where utilization of cheap substrates is highly demanding. Utilization of different types of lignocellulosic materials can be considered for production of ethanol. Amongst the various types of lignocellulosic substances Parthenium [Parthenium hysterophorus L. (Asteraceae)] is a potential resource available in many tropical regions of the world. A considerable amount of laboratory work is in progress for bioconversion of various lignocellulosic materials into ethanol using sequential steps of hydrolysis, saccharification and fermentation. However, there is very little reported work for bioconversion of P. hysterophorus into fuel ethanol. A comprehensive review on the availability of Parthenium, its composition and impact on human and other livestock, bioconversion into ethanol, the methods of pretreatment and the chemistry of hydrolysis with dilute sulfuric acid has been attempted in this work. The results of depolymerization for a hypothetical pentamer can be predicted through solution of the governing equations through simple integration technique. The series of reactions interplay during the depolymerization of hemicellulose. The same can be successfully used to predict the yield of xylose when parthenium feedstock is hydrolyzed with dilute sulfuric acid. The present report will stimulate the researchers to adopt a suitable kinetic model to study the reaction mechanism for hydrolysis of P. hystrophorus L. and optimization of different parameters such as temperature, time, acid concentrations, alkali concentrations, etc. during pretreatment processes for achieving higher yield of ethanol

Investigations on the kinetics and thermodynamics of dilute acid hydrolysis of Parthenium hysterophorus L. substrate

Parthenium hysterophorus L. commonly known as parthenium weed, is one of the seven obnoxious weed in the world. Being a lignocellulosic biomass, with a composition (w/w) of cellulose: 27.8%, hemicellulose: 21.01% and lignin: 13.9%; as analyzed in the present work, it may be considered as the potential source of fuel ethanol production through pretreatment, saccharification and fermentation route. Batch hydrolysis of P. Hysterophorus L. with 1–5% sulfuric acid at a temperature range of 150–210 °C for 4–30 min treatment time and 2–6 h soaking period has been conducted to study the xylose yield. It is realized through the kinetic plots and analysis of various parameters that the process undergoes through first order kinetics and consequently follows Arrhenius law. It has also been understood that the reaction rate, the activation energy and the frequency factor of Arrhenius equation as well as all other related thermodynamic parameters depend largely on the treatment temperature during hydrolysis, the concentration of acid medium used and the soaking period of parthenium substrate before the actual hydrolysis reaction. The present investigation demonstrated that maximum xylose yield was 46.1% of original hemicelluloses present in the biomass under the process parameters considered, where higher treatment temperature, higher concentration of acid medium and higher soaking time favors the formation of stable depolymerised products

Performance of secondary radios in spectrum sharing with prioritized primary access

10.1109/MILCOM.2006.302214Proceedings - IEEE Military Communications Conference MILCOM-PMIC

X-ray structural analysis in the crystalline phase of a nematogenic fluoro-phenyl compound

Crystal and molecular structures of a nematogenic compound 4'-(3,4-difluoro pheiyl)-4-propyl-bicylohexyl (3ccp-ff) has been determined by direct methods using single crystal X-ray diffraction data. The compound (C-21 H-30 F-2) crystallizes in the monoclinic system with the space group P2(1)/n and Z= 4. The unit cell parameters are a 16.293(15) angstrom, b = 6.278(7) angstrom, c = 18.306(4) angstrom and beta - 96.84(6)degrees. The two cyclohexyl rings are almost coplanar, so also are the phenyl ring and the propyl chain. The cyclohexyl groups are in chair conformation. Imbricated mode of packing of the molecules is found in the crystalline state which is precursor to the nematic phase structure. Several close van der Waals interactions are found to exist between the neighbouring molecules. Short-range antiparallel type of association is found to exist between the neighbouring molecules in crystalline as well as in nematic phase