Reforms, Growth and Persistence of Gender Gap: Recent Evidence from Private School Enrolment in India

This paper examines the extent of gender gap in private school enrolment in India, an issue that has not been adequately addressed previously. Results based on individual level unit record data shows that a girl is less likely to be sent to private schools holding other factors constant and controlling for selection into school enrollment, and this disadvantage is particularly higher for younger girls in the family. The extent of gender bias in private school enrolment is double that of overall enrollment. Additionally, irrespective of policy reforms and overall economic growth, female disadvantage in rural private school enrolment appears to have increased over the decade 1993-94 to 2004-05. This can partly be attributed to the declining agricultural output as well as labour force participation rates among rural women over much of this period. Our results have important policy implications at a time when policy makers are eager to explore a potential role for private sector in delivering basic education.policy reforms, economic growth, private school choice, gender gap, India

Noise Compression of ECG Signal for Epic Cardio Signal

The electrical activity of the heart called Electrocardiagram (ECG) is a very important diagnostic parameter for the measurement of the heart activity and the health condition of the patient for the treatment purpose, The advance Non- Contact technique for the measure of the cardio ECG signal is EPIC (Electric Potential Integrated Circuit), so for the long term monitoring and analysis of the ECG data, compression techniques are very much important and necessary for the record of large data signals in a space, as small as possible for the storage with the high accuracy while retaining the important diagnostic clinical parameters in case of reconstruction of the original compressed signal. In this paper the results are complied with the compression techniques using Frequency Transformation DCT 2, are proposed for achieving these required conditions based on MATLAB Programming for Standard MIT-BIH Database Record Signal No 100 in association with reference of the work proposed of proposed data in the paper for better results for EPIC ECG signal[1]

Learning from ‘the Outsider Within’: The Sociological Significance of Dalit Women’s Life Narratives

Dalit women have long occupied marginal positions and been excluded from two major Indian social movements: The Feminist Movement and the Dalit Movement. The researcher examines how Dalit women have made creative use of their marginality—their ‘outsider-within\u27 status—and have represented their lived experiences. The study scrutinizes select life narratives of Dalit women writers: Bama\u27s Sangati: Events (2005), Urmila Pawar’s The Weave of My Life (2015), and Baby Kamble’s The Prisons We Broke (2008) to discuss and explore the sociological significance of three characteristic themes in these narratives: (1) the interlocking nature of Dalit women’s oppression, (2) endurance and resilience, (3) their role in the transformation of the Dalit community. Thus, the perspectives of Dalit women writers create new knowledge about their lives, families, and communities. Their perspectives may well provide a preparatory point for the development of the Dalit Feminist Standpoint. This study may help other marginalized sections or social scientists by putting greater trust in the creative potential of their narratives and cultural biographies

“Calling the Question” The Politics of Time in a Time of Polarized Politics

In this paper, we examine the role of time in shaping decision-making processes in a town meeting, a type of legislative body common in many New England towns. Town meetings are one of the oldest and most democratic institutions of local governance in the United States, and they provide a rich arena in which to investigate how large groups of people convene and make decisions together. A mixed-methods approach enabled our team of researchers to gain insight into the processes and dynamics that played out in one town meeting. We analyze the tensions between democratic values of “taking time” vs. “being efficient.” The dynamics are particularly compelling because of an absence of the typical two parties that dominate U.S. political culture. Attitudes toward time closely aligned with voting behaviors. Our study concludes that, even in the context of a culturally and economically homogenous New England town-meeting membership, orientations to temporality are contested and meaningful. Situated historically, these orientations reflect citizens’ embrace or rejection of “timethrift” and suggest implications for participatory democracy

Advancing Women, Changing Lives A Comprehensive Evaluation of the Gap Inc. P.A.C.E. Program

Globally the garment industry is one of the biggest employers of low-skilled women workers. Despite their large numbers in the workforce, relatively few female garment workers advance to higher-level positions as they have limited opportunities to acquire the skills that would enable their professional and personal growth. In response to this need, Gap Inc. initiated the P.A.C.E. (Personal Advancement & Career Enhancement) workplace education program to teach women the managerial, interpersonal, organizational and other practical skills needed to move forward in work and in life. This report summarizes findings from program evaluations conducted by ICRW from 2009 - 2013 at six factory sites where P.A.C.E. is implemented - two in India and one each in Cambodia, Vietnam, Bangladesh and China.Research findings from these robust, multi-country evaluations demonstrate that P.A.C.E. is an effective, sustainable and scalable model that yields high returns for women, their families and the businesses where they work

Poverty nutrition trap in rural India

The contribution of the present paper is threefold. First, we formally test whether the effect of calorie deprivation on wages is more significant/higher for the lower quantiles of workers. In the extant literature this is established through non-linear terms in the wage equation. A more satisfactory method of doing this is through quantile regressions. Second, the quantile regression approach helps us identify the exact group for which the poverty-nutrition trap holds. The extant literature is unable to establish whether there are systematic differences across different quintiles in the response of productivity/wages to nutrition. The present paper addresses this lacuna. Third, we are able to establish a critical wage level for which the PNT trap hypothesis holds. For wages higher than this the hypothesis does not hold. We then argue that this value of the wage rate should set a floor for any minimum wage for agricultural labourers

Micronutrient deprivation and poverty nutrition trap in rural India

We test for the existence of a Poverty Nutrition Trap (PNT) in the case of five important micronutrients- calcium, carotene, iron, riboflavin, and thiamine, for three categories of wages: sowing, harvesting, and other for male and female workers separately. We use household level national data for rural India for the period January to June 1994 and robust sample selection procedures due to Heckman to arrive at consistent and efficient estimates. It is discovered that the PNT exists for calcium for female workers engaged in harvesting. In the case of carotene male workers engaged in harvesting are subject to the PNT, whereas both males and females engaged in harvesting are subject to PNT in the case of iron. In the case of riboflavin female workers engaged in harvesting and sowing and male workers engaged in harvesting are subject to PNT and in the case of thiamine female workers engaged in harvesting and sowing are subject to PNT. Thus micronutrient deficiency is having a significant impact on labour productivity in rural India

An analytical model for performance evaluation of multimedia applications over EDCA in an IEEE 802.11e WLAN

We extend the modeling heuristic of (Harsha et al. 2006. In IEEE IWQoS '06, pp 178-187) to evaluate the performance of an IEEE 802.11e infrastructure network carrying packet telephone calls, streaming video sessions and TCP controlled file downloads, using Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA). We identify the time boundaries of activities on the channel (called channel slot boundaries) and derive a Markov Renewal Process of the contending nodes on these epochs. This is achieved by the use of attempt probabilities of the contending nodes as those obtained from the saturation fixed point analysis of (Ramaiyan et al. 2005. In Proceedings ACM Sigmetrics, '05. Journal version accepted for publication in IEEE TON). Regenerative analysis on this MRP yields the desired steady state performance measures. We then use the MRP model to develop an effective bandwidth approach for obtaining a bound on the size of the buffer required at the video queue of the AP, such that the streaming video packet loss probability is kept to less than 1%. The results obtained match well with simulations using the network simulator, ns-2. We find that, with the default IEEE 802.11e EDCA parameters for access categories AC 1, AC 2 and AC 3, the voice call capacity decreases if even one streaming video session and one TCP file download are initiated by some wireless station. Subsequently, reducing the voice calls increases the video downlink stream throughput by 0.38 Mbps and file download capacity by 0.14 Mbps, for every voice call (for the 11 Mbps PHY). We find that a buffer size of 75KB is sufficient to ensure that the video packet loss probability at the QAP is within 1%