Land acquisition and compensation in Singur : what really happened?

This paper reports results of a household survey in Singur, West Bengal concerning compensation offered by the state government to owners of land acquired to make way for a car factory. While on average compensations offered were close to the reported market valuations of land, owners of high grade multi-cropped (Sona) lands were undercompensated, which balanced over-compensation of low grade mono-cropped (Sali) lands. This occurred owing to misclassification of most Sona land as Sali land in the official land records. Under-compensation relative to market values significantly raised the chance of compensation offers being rejected by owners. There is considerable evidence of the role of financial considerations in rejection decisions. Land acquisition significantly reduced incomes of owner cultivator and tenant households, despite their efforts to increase incomes from other sources. Agricultural workers were more adversely affected relative to non-agricultural workers, while the average impact on workers as a whole was insignificant. Adverse wealth effects associated with under-compensation significantly lowered household accumulation of consumer durables, while effects on other assets were not perceptible. Most households expressed preferences for non-cash forms of compensation, with diverse preferences across different forms of non-cash compensation depending on occupation and time preferences

Estimation of Measles Immunization Coverage in Guwahati by Ranked Set Sampling

In order to study the efficacy of the ranked set sampling (RSS), as an alternative procedure, for estimation of the proportion of children aged 12–23 immunized against measles vaccine, a study is conducted in slum and non-slum regions of Guwahati, the capital of Assam, India. The RSS-based approach in the cases of both perfect and imperfect rankings is compared with its counterpart simple random sampling (SRS). The results revealed that estimates based on RSS with set size (4) are very close to Census report for Assam (2012) and has less variability than the SRS estimator. RSS-based estimates for different choices of probability of ranking error (ρ) are not only more accurate but are more precise and efficient than the SRS procedure, and also suggest that a the procedure of RSS better than the classical SRS

Nuptiality Patterns in Uttar Pradesh-India

In this paper Indian Nuptiality Patterns oversuccessive NFHS rounds are captured through threeparameter marriage model. The Coale’s model wasfirst to capture similarity in the schedules of firstmarriage frequencies in population belonging todifferent cultures. The data on ever married sample fromthree rounds of NFHS was used to fit the standardnuptiality schedule for Uttar Pradesh. Findings aresuggestive of the slowing marriage rates compared tothe Swedish Standard. The age at entry into marriages isstill quite low in Uttar Pradesh compared toInternational Standard

The Child Health Scenario in India: An Application of Bayesian Approach

Background: The child mortality rate of a place is an indication of the basic health facility prevalent there. A place with better medical facility records low child mortality. The child mortality rate reduction is not as expected in many developing countries. In last two decades the child death rate has not been reduced significantly in India. The aim of this work is to explore the child death rate in different Indian states. Materials and Methods: The Bayesian approach has been applied to control the over dispersion due to presence of zero (i.e. no-death count) in the data set. The Zero Inflated Poisson (ZIP) has been applied to control the presence of over the Zero Inflation Distribution. The data set has been considered from Indian National Health and Family Survey (NFHS-3) conducted during 2005-2006. The women having at least one living child of age less than five years has been selected as study subjects

Learning from Singur: land acquisition and compensation in India

A recent paper by Maitreesh Ghatak, Sandip Mitra, Dilip Mookherjee and Anusha Nath calls for well-informed and flexible ways of compensating displaced landowners to ensure fast growth along with an equitable distribution of its benefits in India

Clientelistic politics and pro-poor targeting: rules versus discretionary budgets

https://people.bu.edu/dilipm/wkpap/wbrulesdisc.pdfFirst author draf

Study of environmental and genetic factors determining warfarin toxicity

Background: Warfarin is widely used anticoagulant in treatment and prevention of thrombosis. Despite its common use, warfarin can be associated with bleeding complications because of its narrow therapeutic index. A review of many studies show average yearly rates of warfarin related bleeding as high as 0.5% , 4.9% , 15% for fatal, major, minor bleeding complications. The study is to determine age, gender, pharmacogenetics, drugs influencing warfarin toxicity in Indian patients.Methods: Observational and cross-sectional study was conducted over period of 1 year after obtaining institutional ethics committee permission. Written and informed consent was taken from patients admitted in tertiary care hospital who fulfilled inclusion and exclusion criteria.Results: Most common age for Warfarin toxicity in our study was between 30 to 39 years (22.5%) with mean of 42.9 years. Bleeding risk was higher in elderly with 14 out of 26 patients with age >50 years had bleeding manifestations. Toxicity was more prevalent in female (60%). 40% patients were on drugs interacting with warfarin; NSAIDS (Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatary Drug) and antibiotics were the most common interacting drugs. In our study, 17.5% patients had acute liver disease and one patient had deranged creatinine (2.6). 40% of patients had VKORC1 variants and 35% of patients had CYP2C9 variants. Maximum patients developed toxicity within 15-30 days of initiation of warfarin.Conclusions: Warfarin toxicity has multifactorial cause. Drugs and Genetic variation are most common factors influencing warfarin toxicity. Warfarin toxicity has low mortality rate, although it increases with (International Normalised Ratio) INR>10 and with increasing age

Cooking rice with minimum energy

Detailed experimental studies on procedures of reducing “On-stove time” and cooking with minimum Energy (Heat) using new energy efficient cooking techniques have been carried out. The total minimum amount of heat, Qm (after subtracting radiation losses), to be delivered to the pot, the sensible heat required for cooking, hs, and on-stove time t1 required to cook 1 kg of dry rice, using a new technique (Technique I) of cooking with a stove of effective power, Peff, 626610W are found as 56066 kJ, 46565 kJ, and 911610 s, respectively; while conventional method with pressure cooker (Technique II) required Qm¼824610 kJ heat and 1357 6 16 s on-stove time. The corresponding energy and time without a pressure cooker (Technique III) were 1.5 MJ and 2640 s, respectively. When compared with other published works, our method gives the lowest energy to cook 1 kg of dry rice. The efficiencies of the cooking method for different techniques are evaluated. The Clean Development Mechanism potentials of the new cooking method are also evaluated. The results obtained are expected to help develop new cooking apparatus to cook with the lowest amount of energy and thus conserve food nutrient energy and protect environment by minimizing CO2 and other toxic emissions associated with all kinds of stoves/ovens. Discussion is made how to apply Technique I in solar cooker to reduce the cooking tim

Time-to-death approach in revealing chronicity and severity of COVID-19 across the world

Background The outbreak of coronavirus disease, 2019 (COVID-19), which started from Wuhan, China,in late 2019, have spread worldwide. A total of 5,91,971 cases and 2,70,90 deaths were registered till 28th March, 2020. We aimed to predict the impact of duration of exposure to COVID-19 on the mortality rates increment. Methods In the present study, data on COVID-19 infected top seven countries viz., Germany, China, France, United Kingdom, Iran, Italy and Spain, and World as a whole, were used for modeling. The analytical procedure of generalized linear model followed by Gompertz link function was used to predict the impact lethal duration of exposure on the mortality rates. Findings Of the selected countries and World as whole, the projection based on 21st March, 2020 cases, suggest that a total (95% Cl) of 76 (65–151) days of exposure in Germany, mortality rate will increase by 5 times to 1%. In countries like France and United Kingdom, our projection suggests that additional exposure of 48 days and 7 days, respectively, will raise the mortality rates to 10%. Regarding Iran, Italy and Spain, mortality rate will rise to 10% with an additional 3–10 days of exposure. World’s mortality rates will continue increase by 1% in every three weeks. The predicted interval of lethal duration corresponding to each country has found to be consistent with the mortality rates observed on 28th March, 2020. Conclusion The prediction of lethal duration was found to have apparently effective in predicting mortality, and shows concordance with prevailing rates. In absence of any vaccine against COVID-19 infection, the present study adds information about the quantum of the severity and time elapsed to death will help the Government to take necessary and appropriate steps to control this pandemic