Water management and tribals in India: opportunities, barriers and strategies

In Los pueblos indigenas y el agua: Desafios del siglo XXI; Indigenous groups and water: Challenges for the 21st century. San Luis Potosi, Mexico: El Colegio de San Lui

Residual Claims in Co-operatives: Design Issues

This paper examines issues in the design of a co-operative member's contractual relationship with the other agents (including the remaining members) using organizational economics. The paper assumes that the central defining characteristic of a co-op is the residual claim specification. Agency theory identifies certain inherent problems of the co-op form, the horizon problem, common property problem, and non-transferability. Non-transferability both reduces the incentive to monitor and imposes limits on portfolio diversification. This paper argues that features such as claim incompleteness and non-transferability are not inherent to the co-op but may be transaction-cost economizing. The paper also argues that the pre-emptive payoff feature by which the residual claimants (the co-op members) also become fixed payoff agents can affect the risk of other agents, and is an important determinant of co-op risk. A co-op may have more than one potential residual claim base. Five generic design choices are available for handling possible multiple claim bases: battleground, pre-specified allocation, limited return, alignment, and fixed payoff. The paper uses the design of residual claims in sugar co-ops to show how a co-op can partly overcome some of the problems identified by agency theory. This illustration ties together the issues of claim incompleteness and non-transferability, pre-emptive payoff, and multiple claim bases. Copyright CIRIEC, 2003.

India needs sanitation policy reform to enhance public health

We investigate the impact of 100 newly built toilets in villages across Dahod District (Gujarat State, India) by a non-government agency during 2005-2007. The toilets significantly reduced not only the cost of medical treatments but also the loss of wages induced by sanitation-related diseases. Money saved from sanitation illnesses for one person for a period of two years could cover the cost of a toilet. It costs USD 200 to build a cost-effective toilet, but the Government of India's 25% subsidy since January 2009 covers only USD 50. We recommend increasing the subsidy for toilets so that future health care to treat sanitation illnesses can be significantly reduced.sanitation reform, toilet, society, health, economy, India,