Risk of Financing Agriculture in the North-Eastern Hill Region of India with Special Reference to Meghalaya

The study pertains to the economic issues of risk and uncertainties associated with financing hill agriculture from the twin angles of risk of farmers to utilize the credit and of bankers to disburse the agricultural loan. The issues discussed are: first, why the financial institutions are reluctant to lend agricultural advances? Second, whether the farm income or rate of return on equity and non-equity capital is sufficient to repay the loan? Third, what are the major sources and the magnitude of risks and uncertainties associated with hill farming? Fourth, nature of agricultural marketing situation and how it affects the farm income in this region and finally, the possibilities have been explored, where and how the agricultural lending can be stepped up with positive economic return? The study has revealed that agricultural farming in north-east region of India is severely constrained by high risk and uncertainty arising out from various factors. Under the prevailing condition the expectation of a steady and assured income from agriculture is quite limited; hence, the hill farming fails to attract considerable private investment. The prevailing risk and uncertainty situation compels them to operate at low-input and low-output subsistence farming with low volume of marketable surplus. It has been found that the financial institutions face difficulty in financing the hill agriculture in view of low repayment performance and increasing non-performing assets for agricultural loan. Also, the absence/poor performance of crop insurance scheme (presently only Meghalaya and Sikkim are implementing the National Agricultural Insurance Scheme) increases the risk of hill farming considerably. Non-availability of reliable agricultural database (time series as well as cross section) on area, production and yield, cost of cultivation has been found the major impediments for implementing the crop insurance scheme efficiently. The agricultural situation in this region is highly heterogeneous; variability is extremely high even within a few kilometres of area. It has been suggested that suitable methodologies followed by a wide database be developed to estimate the yield and cost of production of horticultural crops which will help policymakers to formulate right policy to protect the interest of farmers as well as smooth functioning of all stakeholders — entrepreneurs, private investors, bankers and crop insurance implementing agencies.Agricultural and Food Policy,

Universal conductance fluctuations in non-integer dimensions

We propose an Ansatz for Universal conductance fluctuations in continuous dimensions from 0 up to 4. The Ansatz agrees with known formulas for integer dimensions 1, 2 and 3, both for hard wall and periodic boundary conditions. The method is based solely on the knowledge of energy spectrum and standard assumptions. We also study numerically the conductance fluctuations in 4D Anderson model, depending on system size L and disorder W. We find a small plateau with a value diverging logarithmically with increasing L. Universality gets lost just in 4D.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures submitted to Phys. Rev.

A Web GIS Based Simulation Tool For Coastal Urban Flood Prediction

Flooding in urban areas due to heavy rainfall coupled with high tides is a major concern affecting development of coastal cities all over the world. There is a spectrum of models such as 2D distributed flood models to simplified storage cell models using analytical expressions. All such models demand a high level of skill to handle geospatial data making it difficult for decision makers. Thus development of web GIS based hydrological application becomes essential. Traditionally, most web GIS based applications have used conceptual model because of low data requirements and parameter calibrations. In this paper web GIS based integrated flood model has been presented. Both the web GIS server and the associated hydrological model have been indigenously built. The web GIS server has been built using Java, Java Servlet Page, JQuery, HTML and XML technologies while the associated hydrological model has been built in MATLAB language and both are stored on the server side. The data input to the model is from the client-side through web browser. The model is capable of simulation 1D overland flow using mass balance approach, 1D diffusion wave based channel flow model and quasi 2D raster based floodplain model. The study presents a web GIS based urban flood simulation tool for a coastal urban catchment of Navi Mumbai, India. The three main outputs from the tool are a) generation discharge and stage hydrographs at any point along the channel; b) Water level profile plot at any hour of the simulation and c) Flood map animation in case of flooding in channel. The results of the model application indicate that the model can be used as an effective coastal urban flood simulation tool

Non-perturbative effects in a rapidly expanding quark-gluon plasma

Within first-order phase transitions, we investigate the pre-transitional effects due to the nonperturbative, large-amplitude thermal fluctuations which can promote phase mixing before the critical temperature is reached from above. In contrast with the cosmological quark-hadron transition, we find that the rapid cooling typical of the RHIC and LHC experiments and the fact that the quark-gluon plasma is chemically unsaturated suppress the role of non-perturbative effects at current collider energies. Significant supercooling is possible in a (nearly) homogeneous state of quark gluon plasma.Comment: LaTeX, 7 pages with 7 Postscript figures. Figures added, discussions added. Version to appear in Phys. Rev.

Nucleation versus Spinodal decomposition in a first order quark hadron phase transition

We investigate the scenario of homogeneous nucleation for a first order quark-hadron phase transition in a rapidly expanding background of quark gluon plasma. Using an improved preexponential factor for homogeneous nucleation rate, we solve a set of coupled equations to study the hadronization and the hydrodynamical evolution of the matter. It is found that significant supercooling is possible before hadronization begins. This study also suggests that spinodal decomposition competes with nucleation and may provide an alternative mechanism for phase conversion particularly if the transition is strong enough and the medium is nonviscous. For weak enough transition, the phase conversion may still proceed via homogeneous nucleation.Comment: LaTeX, 10 pages with 7 Postscript figures, more discussions and referencese added, typos correcte

Photon interferometry and size of the hot zone in relativistic heavy ion collisions

The parameters obtained from the theoretical analysis of the single photon spectra observed by the WA98 collaboration at SPS energies have been used to evaluate the two photon correlation functions. The single photon spectra and the two photon correlations at RHIC energies have also been evaluated, taking into account the effects of the possible spectral change of hadrons in a thermal bath. We find that the ratio $R_{side}/R_{out} \sim 1$ for SPS and $R_{side}/R_{out} <1$ for RHIC energy.Comment: text changed, figures adde

Particle density fluctuations

Event-by-event fluctuations in the multiplicities of charged particles and photons at SPS energies are discussed. Fluctuations are studied by controlling the centrality of the reaction and rapidity acceptance of the detectors. Results are also presented on the event-by-event study of correlations between the multiplicity of charged particles and photons to search for DCC-like signals.Comment: Talk presented at Quark Matter 2002, Nantes, Franc