Accounting for Impact of Environmental Degradation in Agriculture of Indian Punjab

Having witnessed a fast growth, the agriculture in Punjab has reached a plateau. To sustain even the existing level, the costs are increasing and natural resources are being depleted due to overuse. This study has examined the use of certain resources and its impact on the cost of production. The data have been collected from different primary and secondary sources. The fast increase in area under rice and wheat appears to be unsustainable due to the fast decline in water table. Therefore, the cost of pumping out water with electricity has been going up, shortage of electric power has resulted in increase in the number of electric and diesel tubewells, further escalating the cost of production. The replenishment of soil health due to depleting macro and micronutrients and increased pesticide-use have also been observed to increase the cost. Thus, the cost on account of these factors together has gone up by Rs 63/t in wheat and Rs 189/t in rice. The varietal diversity of wheat has decreased and that of rice crop has increased during the past two and a half decades. The policy measures to minimize excessive use of natural resources requires suitable input pricing, particularly for water resource, improving input-use efficiency and revamping market forces to encourage diversification of state agriculture from rice to alternative crops.Agricultural and Food Policy,

Optimal Drinking Water Distribution System Designing using Network Analysis and Geospatial Technology

- Water distribution systems are complex combination of the water pipes mains valves hydrants service lines and storage facilities This infrastructure is expensive but longlived Because it is largely out of sight distribution infrastructure tends not to be a top priority in the management and financing of water systems But as populations shift and pipes corrode substantial ongoing investments are necessary Water pipe line design of PMC area using geo-spatial technology has been done to provide the drinking water 24 7 at the consumer end By incorporating the GPS location of the overhead tank in ARC GIS 9 3 and the details of the tank such as their pumping capacity date of installation and their distribution pattern in the ward help to make an upgraded information about the existing water distribution The pumps are not running to their full capacity after using new pipes 2 lpcd is achieved increase of running hours of pumps The shortest path analysis has been exercised to find the shortest path between the pump to the consumer tap as well as it will be proved conducive to reduce the cost of the pipin

Irrigation and drainage in the new millennium

Presented at the 2000 USCID international conference, Challenges facing irrigation and drainage in the new millennium on June 20-24 in Fort Collins, Colorado.Includes bibliographical references.The introduction of canal irrigation in the semi-arid regions of the Haryana State of India underlain with saline ground water in early sixties led to the rise in water levels at an annual rate of 0.3 to 1.0 m and secondary salinization adversely affecting crop production. To develop feasible technologies for the reclamation of such areas, a pilot study on sub-surface tile drainage systems was undertaken in an area at the Haryana Agricultural University Farm having shallow water levels and high salinity. The drains with three spacings (24, 48, 72 m) were placed at a depth of 2.5 m. The water levels, drainage rates and soil salinity data from the study area growing vegetable crops (eggplant, tomato and potato) were used to calibrate the Field Agricultural Irrigation and Drainage Simulation (FAIDS) model for the period 1985-1989 and validate it for the period 1989-93. A number of simulations were also carried out to finalize optimum drain configuration (spacing x depth) under existing agrohydrological conditions. The drain configurations of 75 m x 2 m (1st option) and 100 m x 2.5 m (2nd option) performed equally well based on salinity in the root zone and crop performance. In both the options, relative evapotranspiration (ETa/ETp) of 0.81 was attained during the third year of operation of the drainage system under normal rainfall conditions. The occurrence of a maximum one-day rainfall event (1 in 10 years) during the fifth year resulted in the failure of one out of three crops in both the options in that year indicating the necessity of integration of a surface drainage system with the subsurface drainage under abnormal rainfall events. The existing inland basin drainage conditions did not permit the disposal of drainage effluent. The reuse system was therefore, integrated with the drainage system. A model RESBAL was coupled with the calibrated and validated model FAIDS and run for eight years to optimally design a series of connected reservoirs for the disposal of drainage effluent from an area provided with a subsurface drainage system. The possibility of the reuse of the disposed water for irrigation, aqua culture and salt harvesting was also studied comprehensively in order to maintain proper salt balance in the root zone. On the basis of this study, subsurface drainage systems coupled with surface drainage systems are being extended in Haryana to over 2000 ha of the farmers' land severely affected with waterlogging and soil salinity using a tile-laying trenching machine

Usability of OPAC in the University Libraries of Haryana (India)

The present study is based on users’ survey on OPAC in different university libraries of Haryana. The maximum of 39.3% users visited the library for getting the documents Xerox in KUK, 89.7% users was aware of OPAC service in CUH, 24.8% users learnt the use of OPAC by making self efforts in MDU, 30% users used the OPAC system weekly, 46.3% users used OPAC for searching the availability of required document in MDU, 82.2% users used simple search method in CUH, 45.2% users found the documents misplaced on the shelves in KUK, 74.1% users observed the library staff members was never available for assistance in KUK, 39.8% users found the OPAC terminals limited in KUK and 49.4% users were satisfied from the present OPAC facilities in MDU

Rainwater Harvesting, Alternative to the Water supply in Indian Urban Areas : the Case of Ahmedabad in Gujarat.

NAgestion de l'eau;développement;récupération de l'eau de pluie;Inde

Changing Needs of Library and Information Science Curricula in India

The history of LIS curricula in India and efforts to reform, modernize, and standardize are discussed. The changing world of information technology and the needs of employers should drive the standardization and updating of LIS curricula. Recommendations include a national accrediting body to articulate norms for LIS education

A New Species and a New Record of the Ant Genus Stigmatomma Roger (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) from India

A new species of the ant genus Stigmatomma Roger, 1859 collected from North-eastern Himalaya is described: Stigmatomma xui sp. n. Another species Stigmatomma awa (Xu & Chu, 2012) is also reported for the first time from India and is formally transferred from Ambylopone to Stigmatomma. A key is provided to distinguish the related species

Designing of Real-time Communication Method to Monitor Water Quality using WSN Based on IOT

Data accuracy has always been the essential and foremost requirement of any communication. A Real-time Water quality-monitoring system (WQMS) needs high-level data accuracy to process the water perfectly for the desired usage in any specific purpose.  Exponential growth in man-made processes, human activities, Industrialization, and economic growth along with depleting safe water resources has made the water pollution issue a foremost threat to human survival and human civilisation as a whole. The Conventional WQMS lacks in providing data accuracy while testing and analysing the water samples at sites due to improper data transmission, human intervention, instrument node working and calibration issues. Therefore, monitoring the quality of the water is essential with a prime focus on data accuracy through proper testing, data analysis and data transmission methods to provide real-time data accuracy. In this research work, an IOT-based wireless sensor network (WSN) is proposed that uses mesh networking to connect the sensor nodes and message queuing telemetry transfer (MQTT) protocol to send the acquired data to a cloud server ADDA Fruit IO. ESP32 standalone microcontroller with in-built Wi-Fi is used as a transceiver on sensor nodes and master nodes. As far as sensor and master node power is concerned, a self-adapting power generation system is incorporated using solar power and water energy harvesting techniques. The sensor nodes are calibrated as per WHO standards using deionized water and buffer capsules. Five random samples are collected from river water, pond water, Borewell water, R.O water and Municipal committee water to analyse the proposed system’s accuracy. The accuracy test and analysis is done using statistical tools on water sample measurements by the proposed sensor node, and the same is compared with the actual certified instrument, hardware manual-based measurement, Laboratory value check and transmitted value on Cloud Server. The proposed WQMS is designed to measure various WQM parameters i.e. Total Dissolve Solid (TDS), pH, Temperature and turbidity and to ensure data accuracy

Usability of OPAC in University Libraries

The present study describes the review of literature on the usability of card catalogue, OPAC and web OPAC such as visit of the Library, awareness and use of OPAC, learning, frequency of use of OPAC, purpose of use, use of various searching options while using OPAC, satisfaction level on the use of OPAC, problems faced while using OPAC, suggestions for the improvement of OPAC System and its various features. Some national and international levels of such studies have been reviewed in this article