How Participatory is Participatory Irrigation Management (PIM)? A Study of Water User Associations (WUAs) in Andhra Pradesh

It is argued that the reason for the ills of irrigation management is the alienation of farmers from the process of planning and implementation. Often 'lack of political will' is identified as the main reason for the tardy progress in irrigation reforms at the state level. Andhra Pradesh has demonstrated the political will by initiating widespread irrigation reforms through legislation. This paper, based on the situation after six years of WUAs in existence, makes an attempt to provide a comprehensive view on the status and functioning of the Water Users' Associations in the State. It is argued that while substantial amounts of money were spent on the reform process, the money was used mainly for improving the ailing irrigation systems rather than strengthening the formal institutional structures. Though some benefits in terms of increased area under irrigation in canal systems and improved quality of irrigation is evident, the sustainability of these benefits is rather uncertain in the absence of efficient institutional structures. Despite the fact that WUAs are promoted as non-political institutions, 'elite capture' and political involvement dominate their functioning. And the present trend appears to be towards further politicization of these institutions. More importantly, even after six years of their existence devolution of powers to WUAs has not taken place, as most of the important functions like assessment, collection of water charges, sanctioning of works, etc., are still in the hands of the irrigation department. In the absence of devolution of powers the WUAs are aiming for political gains rather than improving the systems. It is argued that political will is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for making the WUAs autonomous and self-sufficient. Restructuring and reforming of the State irrigation departments and the bureaucracy is critical for effective and sustainable irrigation institutions.participatory, Irrigation Management, water, Andhra Pradesh

Superconductivity in doped FeTe1-xSx (x= 0.00 to 0.25) single crystals

We report self flux growth and characterization of FeTe1-xSx (x= 0.00 to 0.25) single crystal series. Surface X-ray diffraction (XRD) exhibited crystalline nature with growth in (00l) plane. Micro-structural (electron microscopy) images of representative crystals showed the slab-like morphology and near stoichiometric composition. Powder XRD analysis (Rietveld) of single crystals exhibited tetragonal structure with P4/nmm space group and decreasing a and c lattice parameters with increase in x. Electrical resistivity measurements (R-T) showed superconductivity with Tconset at 9.5K and 8.5K for x =0.10 and x =0.25 respectively. The un-doped crystal exhibited known step like anomaly at around 70K. Upper critical field Hc2(0), as calculated from magneto transport for x =0.25 crystal is around 60Tesla and 45Tesla in H//ab and H//c directions. Thermal activation energy [U0(H)] calculated for x =0.10 and 0.25 crystals followed weak power law, indicating single vortex pinning at low fields. Mossbauer spectra for FeTe1-xSx crystals at 300K and 5K are compared with non superconducting FeTe. Both quadrupole splitting (QS) and isomer shift (IS) for S doped crystals were found to decrease. Also at 5K the hyperfine field for x =0.10 superconducting crystal is decreased substantially from 10.6Tesla (FeTe) to 7.2Tesla. For x =0.25 crystal, though small quantity of un-reacted Fe is visible at room temperature, but unlike x =0.10, the low temperature (5K) ordered FeTe hyperfine field is nearly zero.Comment: 20 Pages Text + Figs: Accepted Mat. Res. Exp, Mat. Rex. Exp. (2018

BER degradation of MC-CDMA at high SNR with MMSE equalization and residual frequency offset

Multicarrier Code Division Multiple Access (MC-CDMA) is an attractive technique for high speed wireless data transmission in view of its advantages over orthogonal frequency division multiplexing. In this paper, we analyze the performance of fully loaded downlink MC-CDMA systems with minimum mean square error (MMSE) equalizer in the presence of residual frequency offset (RFO) in multipath Rayleigh fading channels. We first show that as the SNR is increased beyond a value, referred as threshold SNR, the performance degrades. We then analyze the cause for this behavior and propose a remedy to prevent the degradation by regularizing the coefficient(s) of the equalizer, and use the regularized equalizer for SNRs beyond the threshold value. We suggest two methods for estimating this SNR, one gives close to the true value but requires the knowledge of RFO and the channel state information (CSI), while the other gives an approximate value but requires only CSI. We show that the regularization based on the approximate value also prevents the degradation, but the performance at higher SNRs is slightly poorer compared to that with the better estimate. Numerical and simulation results are provided to support the analysis

Body Area Networks

Recent technological advances in integrated circuits, wireless networks, and physiological sensing have enabled miniature, lightweight, low power, intelligent monitoring devices to be integrated into a Body Area Network (BAN). This new type of technology hold much promise for future patient health monitoring. BANs promise inexpensive, unobtrusive, and unsupervised ambulatory monitoring during normal daily activities for long periods of time. However, in order for BANs to become ubiquitous and affordable, a number of challenging issues must be resolved, such as integration, standardisation, system design, customisation, security and privacy, and social issues. This paper presents an overview of many of these issues and indeed the background and rationale of body area networks