Blame it on the community, immunize the state and the international agencies: An assessment of water supply and sanitation programs in India

National and international agencies focus on "on-site" water supply and sanitation interventions targeting households to share costs, and showcase their commitment to the MDGs. This paper reveals that "on-site" interventions in India have exposed millions to mass poisoning and drowned the country in sewage waters. While "on-site" interventions are favoured, they fail to consider the integrated nature of the water supply, sanitation and sewerage systems; and burden households with additional social and economic costs. Failures in the programs are often blamed on the communities, while immunising the approach of the development agencies that fail to consider the integrated water infrastructure

Dancing to the tune of democracy: Agents negotiating power to decentralise water management

The current debate on decentralisation offers a partial and polarised view on the sharing of power to manage water. Drawing New Institutionalism as applied in the social and ecological sciences, the paper argues that decentralisation represents a complex adaptive process, wherein agents draw upon the activities of multiple actors and their rules to negotiate and renegotiate their unequal power relations. Examining a watershed in the Indian Himalayas as a case study, the paper demonstrates the incremental and cumulative integration of statutory and socially-embedded rules in facilitating the agents' negotiation process. It reveals the cunning and adaptive behaviour of the agents to decentralise water resource management. The paper argues that though the contemporary decentralised reforms offered opportunities for these agents to negotiate, they do not ensure resource use efficiency, equity, accountability and participation of stakeholders in management of water. The paper identifies the significance of authority, information, scope and pay-off rules to facilitate decentralisation reforms. It recommends the conventional state-centric regulation to strengthen these rules for more informed management of water resources

Integration of policies in framing water management problem in the Indian Himalayas: Analysing policy processes using a Bayesian network

While there is growing realization that IWRM policy packages are exploited by various actors, there is inadequate understanding of the integration of these in shaping and reshaping water management. This paper contributes to this understanding by analyzing this policy process using Bayesian network tool from a case study in the Indian Himalayas. The analysis reveals that multifaceted governance arrangement influencing water management. The paper reveals that in such regime, policies are never implemented, but integrated through the negotiation of diverse other policies and socio-cultural settings in shaping water resource management. In such an regime, the paper calls for policies to lay-out broad principles for multiple actors to debate and negotiate diverse other policy packages for an informed decision

New approximate fixed point results for rational contraction mappings

In this paper, we investigate approximate fixed point results for ratio[1]nal contraction mappings in a metric space. This manuscript’s inten[1]tion is to demonstrate approximate fixed point results and the diam[1]eter of the approximate fixed point results on metric spaces. Particu[1]larly, we use some rational contraction mappings, which were mainly discussed in Dass and Gupta [1975] and Jaggi [1977]. A few ex[1]amples are included to illustrate our results. Also, we discuss some applications of approximate fixed point results in the field of mathe[1]matics rigorously

Semantically Secured Non-Deterministic Blum–Goldwasser Time-Based One-Time Password Cryptography for Cloud Data Storage Security

The security level of outsourced data is significant in cloud storage. Few research works have been designed for secured cloud data storage. However, the data security level was lower because the authentication performance was not effective. In order to overcome such drawbacks, a Semantically Secured Non-Deterministic Blum–Goldwasser Time-Based One-Time Password Cryptography (SSNBTOPC) Technique is proposed. The SSNBTOPC Technique comprises three steps, namely key generation, data encryption and data decryption for improving cloud data storage security with lower cost. Initially, in SSNBTOPC Technique, the client registers his/her detail to the cloud server. After registering, the cloud server generates the public key and secret key for each client. Then, clients in cloud encrypt their data with the public key and send the encrypted data to the cloud server for storing it in the database. Whenever the client needs to store or access the data on cloud storage, the client sends the request message to the cloud server. After getting the requests, cloud server authenticates the clients using their secret key and Time-based One-Time Password (TOTP). After the verification process, SSNBTOPC Technique allows only authorized clients to get data on cloud storage. During data accessing process, the client data is decrypted with their private key. This helps for SSNBTOPC Technique to improve the cloud storage security with a minimal amount of time. The SSNBTOPC Technique carried outs the experimental evaluation using factors such as authentication accuracy, computational cost and data security level with respect to a number of client and data. The experimental result shows that the SSNBTOPC Technique is able to increases the data security level and also reduces the computational cost of cloud storage when compared to state-of-the-art works

Certain Investigation of Real power flow control of Artificial Neural Network based Matrix converter-Unified Power Flow Controller in IEEE 14 Bus system

The power consumption is rapid increased due to ASD (Adjustable Speed Drives) and automation in industries and large consumption of electricity in domestic regions increased the concern of the power quality. The quality of the power received in the Distribution system is altered because of the losses in the transmission system. The losses in the transmission system is mitigated using the FACTS (Flexible AC Transmission System)controller among these controllers UPFC (Unified Power Flow Controller) plays a vital role in controlling the shunt and series reactive powers in the bus of the power system. The conventional topology of the UPFC consists of AC-DC converter and energy stored in the DC link and DC-AC converter injected a voltage in series to the bus which as to be controlled. Whereas a new topology based on matrix converter can replace the dual converters and perform the required task. The construction of 2-bus, 7-bus and IEEE-14-bus power system is designed and modeled. MC-UPFC (Matrix Converter Based Unified Power Flow Controller) is designed and constructed. The MC-UPFC is the rich topology in the FACTS which is capable of controlling both the transmission parameters simultaneously with the switching technique of Direct power control by the smooth sliding control which gives less ripple in the injecting control parameters such as control voltage [Vc] and voltage angle [α]. By implementing MC-UPFC the real and reactive power can be controlled simultaneously and independently. The control techniques were designed based on the Proportional Integral derivative(PID) with sliding surface power control, FLC (Fuzzy Logic Controller) and ANN (Artificial Neural Network)  and  the performance of  Vc and α of the controllers are investigated. Hence the sliding surface and relevant control switching state of the MC can be controlled by the FLC which gives the robust and autonomous decision making in the selection of the appropriate switching state for the effective real power control in the power system. The work has been carried out in the MATLAB Simulink simulator which gives the finest controlling features and simple design procedures and monitoring of the output

Water management across space and time in India

This paper attempts to give a spatial and temporal overview of water management in India. It traces how people and the successive regimes made choices across space and time from a wide range of water control and distribution technologies. The paper divides the water management in India into four periods: (i) the traditional system of water management before colonial times; (ii) response from the colonial rulers to manage the complex socio-ecological system; (iii) large scale surface water development after independence; and (iv) finally, the small-scale community and market-led revolution. Hence an attempt has been made to describe the water management over the four periods, which has transformed the irrigation and water management scenario in India. Moreover the paper shows how development of water management and its practices are linked with the social, religious, economic development with the rise and fall of the ruling regime. While these different periods attempts to manage water in different ways, the paper reveals a gap in research towards understanding the ability of community to integrate by default these diverse technologies to achieve their social goal of survival