Decentralization and Participatory Rural Development: A Literature Review

Most of the developing nations are still struggling for efficient use of their resources. In order to overcome physical and administrative constraints of the development, it is necessary to transfer the power from the central government to local authorities. Distribution of power from improves the management of resources and community participation which is considered key to sustainable development. Advocates of decentralization argue that decentralized government is source to improve community participation in rural development. Decentralized government is considered more responsive towards local needs and development of poor peoples. There are many obstacles to expand the citizen participation in rural areas. There are many approaches for participatory development but all have to face the same challenges. Current paper highlights the literature about Decentralization and participatory rural development. Concept and modalities of Decentralization, dimensions of participation, types of rural participation and obstacles to participation are also the part of this paper

Local Government Systems and Decentralization: Evidence from Pakistan’s Devolution Plan

The discourse of governance and development practitioners continues to embrace community participation and community empowerment as an elementary means of building local capacity for poverty reduction, development and change at the local level. This article is a review of the decentralization initiatives of local government systems after the announcement of the devolution plan in Pakistan. It evaluates the initiatives’ participatory methods to ascertain the extent to which they have improved the process of community development at the local level. This article also measures the impact of community empowerment on the sustainability of community-driven projects implemented under the decentralization initiative through community-based organizations known as Citizen Community Boards (CCBs). Document analysis and literature review methodologies were employed to gain further insight into the decentralization phenomenon in Pakistan. The results describe human development, improvements in community empowerment and the sustainability of local projects; however, the sense of community has yet to be translated into shared benefits for rural communities. The fundamental goal of decentralization seems to be elusive because only power was transferred to the local level, whereas there is little support for community capacity building and community access to resources and the elites still control the electoral process. It is argued that community development initiatives in Pakistan require continuous support from local governments to boost local rural economies. Likewise, community-local government participatory development strategies can lead to strong local ownership and empowerment in rural communities

Efektivitas Penurunan Tarif PPH Final Atas PHTB Pada Penerimaan Pajak Di KPP Cikarang Utara

This study aims to provide a clear picture regarding the effectiveness of reducing final income tax rates for the transfer of land and building rights to tax receipts at the North Cikarang Tax Service Office (KPP). The type of research used descriptive qualitative research. Data collection was carried out using observation, interview, and documentation techniques. The data obtained was then analyzed qualitatively by studying the data, studying key words, writing down the 'model' found, and coding. The results of the study show that the effectiveness of reducing the final PPh rate on the transfer of land and building rights at KPP Pratama Cikarang Utara has been running effectively where when the policy was first implemented in 2016 there was an increase in reporting because there was an increase in land and building transfer transactions by the community or business entity. In practice, the amount of reporting has increased well even though in terms of tax revenue it has decreased. This shows the enthusiasm of taxpayers carrying out their obligations, in which case there is certainly an increase in complianc

Association between proton pump inhibitor therapy and clostridium difficile infection: a contemporary systematic review and meta-analysis.

Abstract Introduction Emerging epidemiological evidence suggests that proton pump inhibitor (PPI) acid-suppression therapy is associated with an increased risk of Clostridium difficile infection (CDI). Methods Ovid MEDLINE, EMBASE, ISI Web of Science, and Scopus were searched from 1990 to January 2012 for analytical studies that reported an adjusted effect estimate of the association between PPI use and CDI. We performed random-effect meta-analyses. We used the GRADE framework to interpret the findings. Results We identified 47 eligible citations (37 case-control and 14 cohort studies) with corresponding 51 effect estimates. The pooled OR was 1.65, 95% CI (1.47, 1.85), I2 = 89.9%, with evidence of publication bias suggested by a contour funnel plot. A novel regression based method was used to adjust for publication bias and resulted in an adjusted pooled OR of 1.51 (95% CI, 1.26–1.83). In a speculative analysis that assumes that this association is based on causality, and based on published baseline CDI incidence, the risk of CDI would be very low in the general population taking PPIs with an estimated NNH of 3925 at 1 year. Conclusions In this rigorously conducted systemic review and meta-analysis, we found very low quality evidence (GRADE class) for an association between PPI use and CDI that does not support a cause-effect relationship

Antecedent of Event Management Intention Toward Sustainable Practices: A Theoretical Framework

The incidence of rising global temperature, extreme weather, depletion of finite resources, and other environmental impacts has shown as one of the most crucial issues to deal with. The situation to create low-carbon communities and sustainable systems through sustainable event management—that is, the switch from conventional event management concept to more environmentally friendly and socially responsible practices among the event company by engaging with various stakeholders. Recent studies suggested that evidence on sustainable intentions concerning events in Malaysia is still limited. Therefore, this study aims to explore the relationship between attitude, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, environmental consciousness and economic benefit toward sustainable capabilities. This paper will contribute to future literature regarding understanding what drives the event management intention toward sustainability contributing to the existing green behavior and body of literature. It will increase stakeholder awareness and policymakers to be more innovative in reducing environmental impact. This paper is expected to better understand company behavior toward adopting ecologically ethical and socially accountable methods. More research needs to be done to validate and reinforce the proposed theoretical framework. Therefore, future research should concentrate on both qualitative and quantitative research designs by examining the relationship between the antecedents and intention. Ideally, insights from practitioners and academicians are highly encouraged in substantiating the proposed theoretical framework

An improved flower pollination solution for economic dispatch with valve point effect

The economic dispatch is used to find the best optimal output of power generation at the lowest operating cost of each generator, to fulfill the requirements of the consumer. To get a practical solution, several constraints have to be considered, like transmission losses, the valve point effect, prohibited operating region, and emissions. In this research, the valve point effect is to be considered which increases the complexity of the problem due to its ripple effect on the fuel cost curve. Economic load dispatch problems are well-known optimization problems. Many classical and meta-heuristic techniques have been used to get better solutions.  However, there is still room for improvement to get an optimal solution for the economic dispatch problem. In this paper, an Improved Flower Pollination Algorithm with dynamic switch probability and crossover operator is proposed to solve these complex optimization problems.  The performance of our proposed technique is analyzed against fast evolutionary programming (FEP), modified fast evolutionary programming (MFEP), improved fast evolutionary programming (IFEP), artificial bee colony algorithm (ABC), modified particle swarm optimization (MPSO) and standard flower pollination algorithm (SFPA) using three generator units and thirteen thermal power generation units, by including the effects of valve point loading unit and without adding it. The proposed technique has outperformed other methods in terms of the lowest operating fuel cost

Hybrid ABC–K Means for Optimal Cluster Number Determination in Unlabeled Data

This study presents the ABC K Means GenData algorithm, an enhancement over traditional K Means clustering that integrates the Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) optimization approach. The ABC K Means GenData algorithm addresses the issue of local optima commonly encountered in standard K Means algorithms, offering improved exploration and exploitation strategies. By utilizing the dynamic roles of employed, onlooker, and scout bees, this approach effectively navigates the clustering space for categorical data. Performance evaluations across several datasets demonstrate the algorithm's superiority. For the Zoo dataset, ABC K Means GenData achieved high Accuracy (0.8399), Precision (0.8089), and Recall (0.7286), with consistent performance compared to K Means and Fuzzy K Means. Similar results were observed for the Breast Cancer dataset, where it matched the Accuracy and Precision of K Means and surpassed Fuzzy K Means in Precision and Recall. In the Soybean dataset, the algorithm also performed excellently, showing top scores in Accuracy, Precision, Recall, and Rand Index (RI), outperforming both K Means and Fuzzy K Means.. The comprehensive results indicate that ABC K Means GenData excels in clustering categorical data, providing robust and reliable performance. Future research will explore its application to mixed data types and social media datasets, aiming to further optimize clustering techniques.

Analyzing the Impact of External Debt on Capital Formation in Nigeria: An Autoregressive Distributed Lag Approach

This study aimed at examining the impact of external debt to the growth and development of capital formation in Nigeria. Time series data was utilized for a period from 1980 to 2013, employing the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) modelling. The result of stationarity tests reported a mixed integration at both I(0) and I(1) hence warranting the use of the ARDL. The ARDL estimation also showed the presence of long run relationship amongst the variables. It was also proved that the variables were independently related in the long run. The impact of external debt on capital formation has been established to be negative and statistically significant while savings came out as the only variable with a bidirectional causal relationship amongst the variables. Interest rate was found to be statistically significant even though weak. The other variables were found to be of unidirectional casual effects. Short-run dynamics of the relationship between the variables have also been examined using ARDL error correction modelling. It was established that the disequilibrium in the previous period will be adjusted within the current period by 68 percent showing a speedy adjustment rate. The coefficient of ECM term has the expected sign and significant at one percent. Going by these findings therefore savings should be giving priority and encouraged internally in order to boost the speed of the growth of capital formation in the economy. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2016.v7n1p17