Recent Evidence on Farm Size and Land Productivity: Implications for Public Policy

Agricultural productivity is low in most of the developing countries including Pakistan. Moreover, slow and meandering agricultural growth is unable to keep pace with the fast and persistently growing population pressure in these countries. That in turn, has, continued to result in malnutrition and recurrent famines [Cornia (1985)]. Worse than this are the results of an ILO (1977) study, which has shown that food consumption inequalities have actually increased overtime not only in the food deficit countries but also in countries experiencing rapid agricultural growth. This points to the ever-hanging shadows of food deficiency and resulting malnutrition over the countries characterised by slow or negative growth in per capita food production and perverted income distribution [Cornia (1985)]. The only choice with these countries is to enhance food production and provide better access to food consumption for the poor masses. In order to achieve this objective policy-makers consider various options including increased use of modern inputs—mechanical and biological technologies, and removal or reform of the prevalent socio-economic power structure in agriculture that is considered to be an impediment to growth. It may not be desirable to apply these options separately in order to achieve the objective of reducing rural poverty [Cornia (1985)]. Growth in agriculture—that is sustainable and appropriate, is possible when all factors of production are accessible to all strata of the farming community. This is particularly so in the case of access to land. In this regard, land redistribution accompanied by increased input supply is the preferred policy option.

Recent Evidence on Farm Size and Land Productivity: Implications for Public Policy

Agricultural productivity is low in most of the developing countries including Pakistan. Moreover, slow and meandering agricultural growth is unable to keep pace with the fast and persistently growing population pressure in these countries. That in turn, has, continued to result in malnutrition and recurrent famines [Cornia (1985)]. Worse than this are the results of an ILO (1977) study, which has shown that food consumption inequalities have actually increased overtime not only in the food deficit countries but also in countries experiencing rapid agricultural growth. This points to the ever-hanging shadows of food deficiency and resulting malnutrition over the countries characterised by slow or negative growth in per capita food production and perverted income distribution [Cornia (1985)]. The only choice with these countries is to enhance food production and provide better access to food consumption for the poor masses

USCID fourth international conference

Presented at the Role of irrigation and drainage in a sustainable future: USCID fourth international conference on irrigation and drainage on October 3-6, 2007 in Sacramento, California.Includes bibliographical references.The irrigation network of this study consists of three branch canals (the Machai Branch Canal, the Pehure High Level Canal (PHLC) and the Maira Branch Canal) connected to each other in such a way that the Machai Branch and the PHLC feed the Maira Branch Canal for providing a reliable irrigation service. The Machai Branch Canal has limited and erratic discharges and cannot fulfill the peak water requirements of the Maira Branch Canal and therefore any deficiency in the supplies to the Maira Branch Canal is automatically compensated by the PHLC. PHLC is an automatic canal and has been equipped with Proportional Integral Derivative (PID) discharge controllers at its head whereas the Machai Branch Canal has fixed supply based operations. The Maira Branch Canal is also an automatically downstream controlled irrigation canal, which is operated according to crop water requirements using Crop Based Irrigation Operations (CBIO) model. Under this scheme of operations the flows remain changing most of the time following the crop water requirements curve. The frequent changes in discharges keep the canal in unsteady state conditions, which affect the functioning of automatic discharge and water level regulation structures. Efficient system operation is a prerequisite for getting better water productivity and the precise understanding of the behavior of the structures and canal's hydrodynamics against such changes is a key for getting effective system operations. In this paper the canal's hydrodynamic behavior and the automatic structures' functioning have been assessed and suggestions have been provided to fine tune the automatic discharge controllers in order to avoid the oscillatory and abrupt hydrodynamic behavior in the canal. The guidelines have been provided for the operation of the secondary system for achieving smooth and sustainable operations of the canals. In addition to this the effects of any discharge variation in the Machai Branch Canal on the automatic discharge controller's behavior also has been assessed

Parallel framework for earthquake induced response computation of the SDOF structure

Parallel computing briskly diminishes computation time through simultaneous use of multiple computing resources. In this research, parallel computing techniques have been developed to parallelize a program for obtaining a response of single degree of freedom (SDOF) structure under earthquake loading. The study uses Distributed Memory Processors (DMP) hardware architecture and Message Passing Interface (MPI) compilers directives to parallelize the program. The program is made parallel by domain decomposition. Concurrency in the program is created by dividing the program into two parts to run on different computers, calculating forced response and free response of the first half and the second half. Parallel framework successfully creates concurrency and finds structural responses in significant lesser time than sequential programs

Effects of hospital facilities on patient outcomes after cancer surgery: an international, prospective, observational study

Background Early death after cancer surgery is higher in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs) compared with in high-income countries, yet the impact of facility characteristics on early postoperative outcomes is unknown. The aim of this study was to examine the association between hospital infrastructure, resource availability, and processes on early outcomes after cancer surgery worldwide.Methods A multimethods analysis was performed as part of the GlobalSurg 3 study-a multicentre, international, prospective cohort study of patients who had surgery for breast, colorectal, or gastric cancer. The primary outcomes were 30-day mortality and 30-day major complication rates. Potentially beneficial hospital facilities were identified by variable selection to select those associated with 30-day mortality. Adjusted outcomes were determined using generalised estimating equations to account for patient characteristics and country-income group, with population stratification by hospital.Findings Between April 1, 2018, and April 23, 2019, facility-level data were collected for 9685 patients across 238 hospitals in 66 countries (91 hospitals in 20 high-income countries; 57 hospitals in 19 upper-middle-income countries; and 90 hospitals in 27 low-income to lower-middle-income countries). The availability of five hospital facilities was inversely associated with mortality: ultrasound, CT scanner, critical care unit, opioid analgesia, and oncologist. After adjustment for case-mix and country income group, hospitals with three or fewer of these facilities (62 hospitals, 1294 patients) had higher mortality compared with those with four or five (adjusted odds ratio [OR] 3.85 [95% CI 2.58-5.75]; p<0.0001), with excess mortality predominantly explained by a limited capacity to rescue following the development of major complications (63.0% vs 82.7%; OR 0.35 [0.23-0.53]; p<0.0001). Across LMICs, improvements in hospital facilities would prevent one to three deaths for every 100 patients undergoing surgery for cancer.Interpretation Hospitals with higher levels of infrastructure and resources have better outcomes after cancer surgery, independent of country income. Without urgent strengthening of hospital infrastructure and resources, the reductions in cancer-associated mortality associated with improved access will not be realised

Role of sediment transport in operation and maintenance of supply and demand based irrigation canals : application to Machai Maira Branch canals; Dissertation, Wageningen University and UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education, Delft.

Majority of the irrigation canals in Indus Basin Irrigation System (IBIS) are upstream controlled with supply based operation and now gradually moving towards demand based operation. The irrigation canals under study are automatically downstream controlled with demand based operation. Sedimentation is a major operation and maintenance problem in IBIS canals. Various techniques are applied to manage sediments which start with the silt exclusion, silt ejection, canal design and operation and finally end with the removal of deposited sediments. The story of sediment management becomes more complicated for downstream controlled demand based irrigation canals. In demand based operation the irrigation canals cannot run always at full supply discharge like in supply based irrigation canals, but instead the discharge keeps on changing depending upon the crop water requirements in the canal command area. Such type of canal operation is not always favourable for sediment transport as at small discharges, flow velocities fall quite low which lead to excessive sediment deposition in the canal prism. This study has been designed to investigate the hydrodynamic relationships which can prevent sediment deposition in downstream controlled demand based irrigation canals, while catering the crop water requirements of the command area. It has been found that the maintenance needs can be minimized by managing sediment transport through better canal operation and management

Interpersonal problems, optimism and copying styles among Women with conversion disorder: A correlational study.

Objective: To explore the relationship between interpersonal problems, optimism and copying styles among women with conversion disorder. Methods: Co-relational study was conducted from August to October 2017 at different hospitals of Lahore city in Pakistan. Translated interpersonal problem (IPP-32), brief cope, life orientation revised questionnaires were administered on sample population to assess relationship of optimism, interpersonal problems, pessimism and copying styles. Statistical package for social sciences was used for data analysis. Results: 50 women with conversion problem approached, 98% responded. Among them, 12(26.7%) most of the participants belonged to very lower socio economic class as well as most of the participants 17(37.8%) belonged to lower socio economic class. Overall mean age of the subjects was 24.44+55 years. Subjects were classified on qualification basis most of them were uneducated. Conversion problem was more common among adolescence age group females (M=88.78, SD=18.21). Inverse relationship found between interpersonal problems and optimism variables. Self-blaming copying style was significantly correlated among conversion women. Other copying ways such as use of emotional support, social inhibition, pessimistic tendency and interpersonal problem of behavioral disengagement were also having positive relationship with each other among conversion women. However, no highly significant relationship was found among all variables. Conclusion: A considerable proportion of study indicated that social inhibition, emotional support most commonly self-blaming kind of non-adaptive ways pessimism, optimism and interpersonal problem of behavioral disengagement all were associated with each other among women with conversion disorder

Water saving and environment friendly canal operations in high water allowance canals

NWFP is a rich province in water resources and therefore irrigation canals have water allowances higher than any other province in Pakistan. If these canals are operated according to existing supply based operation then it would lead to water logging of fertile land and would cause severe water losses as well. To avoid this situation, there is a need to devise such canal operation plans which can prevent these adverse effects of increased irrigation supplies. In this situation, the water should not be let unjustifiably to the irrigators, otherwise they would over-irrigate their lands and will cause waterlogging. This can be tackled by adopting a semi-demand based canal operations approach which has two-tiered benefits of water saving and preventing waterlogging. Crop Based Irrigation Operations (CBIO) is a canal operations strategy which can achieve these objectives, if implemented in true sense. In this paper the development, implementation and benefits of CBIO have been discussed, while implementing it on Machai-Maira irrigation canals

Effect of transboundary water agreements on water and food security of downstream riparian communities: a case study of Indus Waters Treaty

Paper presented at the National Conference on World Water Day, Pakistan Engineering Congress, Lahore, Pakistan, 28 March 2009Transboundary water conflicts are awfully crucial in their nature as they not only endanger the food and water security of the riparian communities but also jeopardize the security and existence of the conflicting nations. Any inappropriate action done by upper riparians directly affects the existence of lower riparians. Therefore they need special care to be dealt with. There are 261 international rivers, covering almost one-half of the total land surface which are shared between two or more nations. The management of international waters has been poorly defined in the international arena. In 1947, after the independence of subcontinent, the Indus Basin was divided into two parts between India and Pakistan. Soon after independence India started to halt the river supplies to Pakistan and closed all supplies to the canals which were crossing the India-Pakistan border. India agreed to restore some of the supplies to Pakistan in May 1948, when quite a pro-Indian temporary agreement was signed. It was, however, generally realized that Pakistan could not live without restoration of the full supplies and on this question there could be no compromise. Direct negotiations between the parties failed to resolve the dispute. Negotiations under the World Bank commenced in May 1952. The World Bank planned to divide Indus Basin Rivers into two parts the eastern rivers, under completely Indian control and the western rivers for unrestricted use by Pakistan. Pakistan was not fully convinced and refused to sign until 1958 but ultimately the Treaty was formalized in 1960 after some necessary modifications. Pakistan, on one hand, was deprived a substantial amount of its waters in the Indus Waters Treaty, but on the other, it also got the right of unrestricted use of western rivers. Pakistan also received some assistance (grants and loans) from the World Bank for construction of replacement works for some water storage and diversions. It is evident that the closure or diversion of river flows in the upstream reaches not only affect the downstream river ecology but also puts the downstream irrigated agriculture at stake. This paper highlights the effects of the IWT on water availability and irrigated agriculture in Pakistan. Study finds that though there are some deprivations of surface waters availability to the Pakistan under the IWT but at the same time there are also some improvements in canal water diversions, which are mainly due to the construction of water storage reservoirs. An increase in the cropped area and crop production also has been observed which owes to many other social, economical and technical factors but all this was not possible without reliable irrigation water supplies