Ensuring Rural Infrastructure in India: Role of Rural Infrastructure Development fund

Inclusive economic growth is the most talked about issue in India. This is due to the fact that the impacts of the recent spectacular growth have not been able to percolate down to various segments of population, most importantly to the rural population. Rural infrastructure in India have still remained far from satisfactory and amongst others, lack of funds is one critical reason for this. In order to ensure smooth flow of funds for the development of infrastructure in rural India, rural infrastructure development fund (RIDF) was introduced in the budget of 1995-’96. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governs this fund through NABARD with corpus from the commercial banks. This paper is an attempt to critically examine some of the issues that arise in the context of utilization of the fund by different states of India. The study finds that many projects remain incomplete even after receiving funds under RIDF and certain measures are necessary to ensure proper utilization of funds as well as to reduce intra rural disparity in India.Key Words: Rural Infrastructure Development Fund, Corpus, RIDF Tranche

A New Computational Schema for Euphonic Conjunctions in Sanskrit Processing

Automated language processing is central to the drive to enable facilitated referencing of increasingly available Sanskrit E-texts. The first step towards processing Sanskrit text involves the handling of Sanskrit compound words that are an integral part of Sanskrit texts. This firstly necessitates the processing of euphonic conjunctions or sandhi-s, which are points in words or between words, at which adjacent letters coalesce and transform. The ancient Sanskrit grammarian P??ini’s codification of the Sanskrit grammar is the accepted authority in the subject. His famed s?tra-s or aphorisms, numbering approximately four thousand, tersely, precisely and comprehensively codify the rules of the grammar, including all the rules pertaining to sandhi-s. This work presents a fresh new approach to processing sandhi-s in terms of a computational schema. This new computational model is based on P??ini’s complex codification of the rules of grammar. The model has simple beginnings and is yet powerful, comprehensive and computationally lean

Remarkable Hydrogen Storage on Beryllium Oxide Clusters: First Principles Calculations

Since the current transportation sector is the largest consumer of oil, and subsequently responsible for major air pollutants, it is inevitable to use alternative renewable sources of energies for vehicular applications. The hydrogen energy seems to be a promising candidate. To explore the possibility of achieving a solid-state high-capacity storage of hydrogen for onboard applications, we have performed first principles density functional theoretical calculations of hydrogen storage properties of beryllium oxide clusters (BeO)$_{n}$ (n=2 -- 8). We observed that polar BeO bond is responsible for H$_{2}$ adsorption. The problem of cohesion of beryllium atoms does not arise, as they are an integral part of BeO clusters. The (BeO)$_{n}$ (n=2 -- 8) adsorbs 8--12 H$_{2}$ molecules with an adsorption energy in the desirable range of reversible hydrogen storage. The gravimetric density of H$_{2}$ adsorbed on BeO clusters meets the ultimate 7.5 wt% limit, recommended for onboard practical applications. In conclusion, beryllium oxide clusters exhibit a remarkable solid-state hydrogen storage.Comment: This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of a Published Work that appeared in final form in JPCC, copyright American Chemical Society after peer review and technical editing by the publisher. To access the final edited and published work see , see http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jp410994

The Changing Pattern of Undernutrition in India: A Comparative Analysis across Regions

calories, consumption, poverty, India

Competition and Collusion in Grain Markets: Basmati Auctions in North India

Many small wholesale grain markets in India are characterized by large numbers of sellers, and a relatively small number of buyers, thereby lending the price formation process open to manipulation through collusion. Government intervention limits the extent of such manipulation by instituting regulated markets where the rules of exchange are clearly spelled out. The key institutional features of these markets are (a) sales through open ascending auctions; (b) the presence of "commission agents" representing both buyers and sellers. We present simple models of noncooperative and collusive behavior in auctions incorporating the above, and some more market specific, assumptions. We exploit data from a primary survey of a market for basmati paddy in North India. The main findings are (i) the collusive model explains the data better; (ii) the incentives of sellers and a subset of the large buyers are aligned; (iii) this, along with a Principal-Agent slack between millers and commission agents who buy for them, facilitates the form that collusion takes, and (iv) due to (ii) and (iii), the impact of collusion on market prices is not necessarily adverse. Insofar as the features of the market we study are common to grain markets in North India, we believe that these findings may be of much wider significance.

IDEAS project - Data Informed Platform for Health feasibility study in Uttar Pradesh

The IDEAS project sought to improve the health and survival of mothers and babies through generating evidence to inform policy and practice. This data collection contains topic guides and other research tools used to assess the feasibility of introducing a Data Informed Platform for Health (DIPH), in order to bring together key data from the public and private health sector on inputs and processes that may influence maternal and newborn health. The DIPH was intended to promote the use of local data for decision-making and priority setting at local health administration level, and for programme appraisal and comparison at regional and zonal level