Economic Reforms and Development Strategy in Gujarat

The paper examines the development strategy followed by Gujarat state government during the nineties. It has followed the strategy focussed on industrialisation and urbanisation with an open door policy eversince its inception in 1960. Economic reform measures at the Centre with an explicit emphasis on trade and industry considerably benefited Gujarat making its economic performance outstanding. The state government only facilitated the growth of private enterprise since its strategy was already consistent with the changes in the policy reforms at the Centre. Since mid-nineties, however, when the reform process at the Centre slowed down, the state government in Gujarat started taking major initiative to liberalise and reform its policies further. In this process, the focus of the development strategy seems to have shifted away from the organised manufacturing to the unorganised sectors and giving protection to the SMEs. It is argued that Gujarats performance would again pick up as the national reform process gets back on the track.

Measurement Issues in Comparing Fiscal Performance of States

Interstate comparison of fiscal performance requires use of appropriate concepts and proper measurement of state income, fiscal deficit and debt. GSDP at market prices and a comprehensive concept of debt consistent with the fiscal deficit of a state government are the right concepts to use for the purpose. The rating agencies and the Finance Commissions have not used the right concepts so far. Illustrative estimates for Gujarat show that it can lead to misleading target setting and wrong perceptions about the fiscal performance of the states. CSO, RBI and the rating agencies have to ensure that right concepts are used in interstate comparison.

Regional Sources of Growth Acceleration in India

Gujarat, West Bengal, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Kerala and Tamil Nadu were the major contributors to the growth acceleration in India after 1991-92. Although the Regional Disparity may increase temporarily, causality test provides support to the hypothesis about spread effects. The Regional growth targets assigned by the 11th Plan in India seem to rely on the spread effects of economic growth acceleration in the better off states to achieve its 9 percent growth target and reduce regional disparity in the long run. To strengthen spread effects, the domestic economy should be further integrated and interlinked with free flow of goods, services and factors of production.

Exports of Agri-Products from Gujarat: Problems and Prospects

Agri-products are defined to include products of agriculture & allied activities, fishing, forestry, and manufacturing industries, like food & food products, tobacco, textiles, paper, furniture, etc. Gujarat has a revealed comparative advantage in the exporting activity over the other states since, as per GITCO Study (November 2001), more than one-fifth of the exports of the country originate from Gujarat. Gujarat has the revealed comparative advantage in ground-nuts, oilmeals, castor oil, poultry & dairy product, spices, sesame & niger seeds, processed food & vegetables & fruits, cotton yarn & fabric, man-made textiles, handicrafts, and cotton raw including waste. Fresh fruits & vegetables, floriculture, and fish are not the areas of strength for Gujarat so far. Based on the large sample survey conducted by GITCO (November 2001), several features of the exports originating from Gujarat are also examined. Exports of agri-products originating from Gujarat represent excess supply rather than exclusive supply to the foreign markets. The prospects of the domestic demand and production of the agricultural sector in Gujarat are examined. The dismal picture of the declining real income in Gujarat agriculture during the late nineties is not supported by several other evidences. On the contrary, Gujarat has a very vibrant and responsive agricultural sector. It has an achievable potential to grow at 4.5% to 5% p.a. over the next 8 to 10 years. The paper concludes by identifying some areas for further research.

Stabilized parametric Cooper-pair pumping in a linear array of coupled Josephson junctions

We present an experimentally realizable stabilized charge pumping scheme in a linear array of Cooper-pair boxes. The system design intrinsically protects the pumping mechanism from severe errors, especially current reversal and spontaneous charge excitation. The quantum Zeno effect is implemented to further diminish pumping errors. The characteristics of this scheme are considered from the perspective of improving the current standard. Such an improvement bears relevence to the closure of the so-called measurement triangle (see D. Averin [Nature 434, 285 (2005)]).Comment: Title changed, other corrections and modifications requested from Phys. Rev. Let

Consistent Measurement of Fiscal Deficit and Debt of States in India

There are differences in the definition of debt used by different bodies like the state governments, Reserve Bank of India, the Office of Comptroller and Auditor General of India and the Eleventh Finance Commission. Moreover, none of these definitions satisfy the criterion that fiscal deficit in a given year should equal the sum of increase in debt and monetisation. This paper attempts to estimate debt in a theoretically consistent and appropriate manner for 15 non special category states and 10 special category states for the period 1989-90 to 2003-04, which are then used to obtain effective interest rates for these states. We observe that non-special category states have a significantly greater probability of fiscal sustainability than the special category states. Moreover, when the trends in the proportion of debt of each state in the aggregate of all states is compared with trends in similar proportions of fiscal transfers from the centre and that in primary deficit on own account, we find that certain states have benefited by largesse from the centre despite a consistent bad performance while certain performing states have been penalized by reduced fiscal transfers.

Determinants of Export Performance of Indian Firms – A Strategic Perspective

Macroeconomic policy reforms initiated in India since 1991 have brought about a significant improvement in the export performance of Indian firms. This paper examines the export performance of firms with the help of balance sheet data of 557 firms for the years 1980-81 to 1995-96. Applying panel Tobit model, it explains the improved export performance through changes in various firm level variables as well as economic environmental factors derived from existing literature on experiences of different countries. The paper also draws certain strategic and policy implications likely to be relevant for emerging economies from its findings on India.

Identification of Top Performing Economies

Using seven indicators of the economic performance of 187 countries, the paper identifies the top 50 performers during the decades of 1981-90 and 1991-2000. Five of these indicators are the trend rates of growth over a decade in imports, FDI, capital formation, per capita income and forex reserves. Average inflation rate and HDI are the remaining indicators. Comparison of top performers of the 1980s and the 1990s suggest that high performance in inflation and HDI are the precondition for consistency of high overall performance over time. The paper also examines the interrelationship among the indicators over time.

Statistical study of magnetic non-potential measures in confined and eruptive flares

Using the HMI/SDO vector magnetic field observations, we studied the relation of degree of magnetic non-potentiality with the observed flare/CME in active regions. From a sample of 77 flare/CME cases, we found a general relation that degree of non-potentiality is positively correlated with the flare strength and the associated CME speeds. Since the magnetic flux in the flare-ribbon area is more related to the reconnection, we trace the strong gradient polarity inversion line (SGPIL), Schrijver's R value manually along the flare-ribbon extent. Manually detected SGPIL length and R values show higher correlation with the flare strength and CME speed than the automatically traced values without flare-ribbon information. It highlights the difficulty of predicting the flare strength and CME speed a priori from the pre-flare magnetograms used in flare prediction models. Although the total, potential magnetic energy proxies show weak positive correlation, the decrease in free energy exhibits higher correlation (0.56) with the flare strength and CME speed. Moreover, the eruptive flares have threshold of SGPIL length (31Mm), R value ($1.6\times10^{19}$Mx), free-energy decrease ($2\times10^{31}$erg) compared to confined ones. In 90\% eruptive flares, the decay-index curve is steeper reaching $n_{crit}=1.5$ within 42Mm, whereas it is beyond 42Mm in $>70$% confined flares. While indicating the improved statistics in the predictive capability of the AR eruptive behavior with the flare-ribbon information, our study provides threshold magnetic properties for a flare to be eruptive.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures, accepted in Ap

Formation and eruption of sigmoidal structure from a weak field region of NOAA 11942

Using observations from Solar Dynamics Observatory, we studied an interesting example of a sigmoid formation and eruption from small-scale flux canceling regions of active region (AR) 11942. Analysis of HMI and AIA observations infer that initially the AR is compact and bipolar in nature, evolved to sheared configuration consisting of inverse J-shaped loops hosting a filament channel over a couple of days. By tracking the photospheric magnetic features, shearing and converging motions are observed to play a prime role in the development of S-shaped loops and further flux cancellation leads to tether-cutting reconnection of J-loops. This phase is co-temporal with the filament rise motion followed by sigmoid eruption at 21:32 UT on January 6. The flux rope rises in phases of slow (v$_{avg}$ = 26 km~s$^{-1}$) and fast (a$_{avg}$= 55 ms$^{-2}$) rise motion categorizing the CME as slow with an associated weak C1.0 class X-ray flare. The flare ribbon separation velocity peaks at around peak time of the flare at which maximum reconnection rate (2.14 Vcm$^{-1}$) occurs. Further, the EUV light-curves of 131, 171\AA~have delayed peaks of 130 minutes compared to 94\AA~and is explained by differential emission measure. Our analysis suggests that the energy release is proceeded in a much long time duration, manifesting the onset of filament rise and eventual eruption driven by converging and canceling flux in the photosphere. Unlike strong eruption events, the observed slow CME and weak flare are indications of slow runway tether-cutting reconnection where most of the sheared arcade is relaxed during the extended post phase of the eruption.Comment: Accepted for Publication in The Astrophysical journal on 19 February, 2019. It has 17 pages including 12 figure