Groundwater Marketing in Nalanda District of Bihar State: A Socio-economic Appraisal

The cost and marketing of groundwater have been assessed in the Nalanda district, which is one of the most agriculturally advanced districts of the Bihar state. For the study, 60 farmers have been randomly selected from the district. It has been found that small and marginal farms use their tubewells mainly for hiring, whereas, large and medium farms use them mainly for their own purposes during the main crop seasons, i.e. kharif and rabi. The average installation cost on a tubewell has been found highest on large size of holdings (Rs 33,130), followed by medium (Rs 27,240), small (Rs 23,850), and marginal (Rs 19,610) holdings. The capital budgeting techniques, viz. net present value (NPV), benefit-cost ratio (B:C ratio) and internal rate of return (IRR) have been used for evaluating the investment on tubewells. The NPV has been found positive (Rs 1440) and B:C ratio more than one (1.05:1). The IRR has been estimated to be more than the capital cost (10.95%). But, the tubewells have failed to generate income flow equal to the investment by marginal farms. Farm size-wise analysis has revealed that the owner-seller farms category predominates in the water market in the study area. The participation in water market has been found to decline with increase in the size of farms. Financial analysis has revealed that the installation of tubewells is financially viable on large and medium farms but not on small and marginal farms. However, with the development of water market in the area, adoption of modern technologies in crop production and cultivation of cash crops would make the installation of tubewells on marginal and small size of farms financially viable.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

An Investigation of Factors for Changing Land Use Pattern in Bihar with a Piercing Insight on Current Fallow Lands

In the present study, an effort has been made to analyze the factors responsible for changes in land use pattern especially increasing current fallow lands, shrinking net sown area and shifting of lands for non-agricultural purposes in the state. The categories of land such as barren land, culturable waste land and permanent pastures and grazing land have shown declining trend. Further, declining trend in net sown area and other fallow lands has been noticed. Current fallows reduced over the period till 2000s but it began to rise since 2000s afterwards. The rainfall and road length did have significant impact on the level of current fallows. Erratic monsoon and scarcity of labour during the study period of present century resulted/led to accumulation of current fallow lands. It was further observed that the non-agricultural use of land was identified as the dominant factor for changes in common lands as it affected the current fallows negatively. It is a challenging task for policy makers to maximize the income of farming community from continuous decline in net sown area, deteriorating climatic condition (erratic monsoon) as well as labour scarce conditions thus finally resulting in aggregation of current fallows. In order to discourage/ arrest the rising tendency in current fallows or put the current fallows under profitable cultivation, cheap source of irrigation is needed to be made available to cultivators

Shrinking Net Sown Area: An Analysis of Changing Land Use Pattern in Bihar

Land is vital natural resource for any developmental activity. The judicious use of land is an earnest demand of time as the increasing demand for food and shelter is rapidly increasing with the burgeoning population. Bihar shares about 8.63% of the total population in the country while the share in total land area of India is only 2.86%. There are about 1.61 crore farm holdings of which 91% is marginal still about 68 percent of population earns their livelihood from agriculture and allied sector. Agriculture holds a vital role in food and nutrition security of the state in addition to overall development. Land is an important input for the agriculture sector. Hence, any change or changes in land use pattern has significant implication in food security for the state in particular and nation in general. This paper is based on secondary data published by Government of Bihar. An attempt has been made to investigate agro-climatic zone wise land use of the state and state as a whole. The study reveals that the net sown area has declined both on zonal level and also at state level. Decline in net sown area in agro-climatic zone-III is more pronounced than that of zone-I & zone-II. Being centre of the state, urbanization has taken place in faster way in the zone-III. The other reasons for changes undergoing in land use pattern may be increasing population, fragmentation of land holdings and declining water table in this region. Zone-I & zone-II come under flood prone area, farmers put their land as current fallow due to devastating flood threat causing damage to their crops. Land under trees and groves have also witnessed positive percentage change over the decade and also in growth rate, this may be the other reason for decline in net sown area in the state. Shrinking of net sown area is of great concern to feed the up warding growth of population. Motivating farmers to increase productivity to protect growing population and serving their demand for food and nutritional security, we have to make such kind of strategies which may lead to enhance the income of the cultivators as well as fulfill the food demand of growing population, keeping in mind the fast changing climatic conditions all over the world and protecting wasteful and careless use of natural resources for betterment of coming generation

An Investigation of Factors for Changing Land Use Pattern in Bihar with a Piercing Insight on Current Fallow Lands

In the present study, an effort has been made to analyze the factors responsible for changes in land use pattern especially increasing current fallow lands, shrinking net sown area and shifting of lands for non-agricultural purposes in the state. The categories of land such as barren land, culturable waste land and permanent pastures and grazing land have shown declining trend. Further, declining trend in net sown area and other fallow lands has been noticed. Current fallows reduced over the period till 2000s but it began to rise since 2000s afterwards. The rainfall and road length did have significant impact on the level of current fallows. Erratic monsoon and scarcity of labour during the study period of present century resulted/led to accumulation of current fallow lands. It was further observed that the non-agricultural use of land was identified as the dominant factor for changes in common lands as it affected the current fallows negatively. It is a challenging task for policy makers to maximize the income of farming community from continuous decline in net sown area, deteriorating climatic condition (erratic monsoon) as well as labour scarce conditions thus finally resulting in aggregation of current fallows. In order to discourage/ arrest the rising tendency in current fallows or put the current fallows under profitable cultivation, cheap source of irrigation is needed to be made available to cultivators

Numerical Investigation of Effect of Ring-Type Spacer Grid on the Thermal Hydraulics Aspects of 5 X 5 Rod Bundles

AbstractThe fuel assemblies of the Pressurized Water Reactors (PWR) are constituted of rod bundles set in a regular square configuration by spacer grids placed along its length. With the remarkable progress in the computer processing power, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methodology can be useful for investigating the thermal–hydraulic characteristics phenomena in the nuclear fuel assembly. A methodology for the simulation and analysis of single-phase coolant flows around one or a row of spacers is presented. It is based on the multidimensional single-fluid mass, momentum and energy balance equations and use of proper turbulence models. This investigation presents results of flow simulations performed with the CD-Adapco code Star-CCM+ in a PWR 5 X 5 rod bundle part with a ring type spacer grid.A typical k-ɛ model has been used as a turbulence model and the symmetry condition is set as boundary conditions. It is confirmed that the turbulence in the sub-channel is drastically promoted by spacer and mixing devices. However, their effects quickly decayed to a fully developed level after passing about 10 times the hydraulic diameter downstream of the spacer. The static pressure of the fluid in the flow direction drops rapidly, then in a very short distance rises up, followed by a decrease near to the linear slope downstream. The simulations have also been compared with those performed by [1]

Role of Women in Agricultural Sector of Bihar: A Socio-Economic Mapping

The multi-dimensional role of women in agriculture cannot be denied as they contribute in every agricultural operation-from sowing to harvesting of crops and are also active in allied sectors like cattle management, dairying, beekeeping, goat rearing mushroom production and poultry etc. Participation of women in total workforce was assessed 27.44 % as against 72.56 % by male workforce in 2011. Share of women agricultural workforce in total workforce was computed to be 16.57% in 2001 which declined to 6.23% in 2011. Causes of decline may be their participation other sectors with improvement in their literacy rate which rose to 51.50% in 2011 as compared to 33.57% in 2001. The male-female sex ratio has registered a decline of 0.11% as compared to 2001 census. Women holding land account for only 13.31% as against 87.27% by men Bihar. Share of women agricultural workforce in total agricultural workforce was estimated to be 19.32% as per census 2011. Operation wise contribution of women in agricultural activities was assessed to be 35.94% during 2013-14. Women’s contribution in agriculture is significant and plays diverse role, still their wages were found 7.04% less than their male counterparts during 2015-16. To strengthen women’s participation in agriculture and allied sectors and to improve their access to land, loan and other facilities, Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare has policy provisions like joint leasing for both domestic and agricultural land under National policy for farmers. Under credit facility provisions government has framed policy for issuing Kisan Credit Cards to women for creating livelihood through livestock practices and agricultural processing. For empowering women government made provision of Home Science wing in every Krishi Vigyan Kendra. Beside all efforts, there is still a wide gender gap in the state which may be addressed properly for overall development of women and the society in particular and state and nation in general. The paper tries to analyze the role women play in agricultural development of Bihar and the issues confronting them

Growth Performance and Resource Use Efficiency of Maize in Bihar: An Economic Perspectives

The present investigation was undertaken to evaluate the growth in area, production and productivity and resource use efficiency of maize in various agro-climatic zones of Bihar. The growth pattern in production and productivity were also observed to be positive and statistically significant. The trends in area, production and productivity were also observed positive for both the growth models, linear and compound.The resource use efficiency was evaluated zone-wise and for state as whole levels using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) technique for the block period 2008-09 to 2010-11. Technical efficiencies at state level in maize production were found to be 64% for kharif maize and 71% in rabi maize. Allocative mean efficiencies for kharif and rabi maize were calculated 68% and 65%, indicating that farmers could reduce costs by 32% and 35% by using optimum proportions of inputs considering it’s prices while selecting it’s quantities. Farmers of zone-II of Bihar are well known for large scale production of rabi maize, but still there exist technical inefficiency by 24% and AE by 9%. The value of cost efficiency (CE) emphasizes the reduction of cost by 30% to produce exiting level of output at least cost. The farmers of zone-III are more technically sound as compared to zone-I, zone-II and thus, even at state level too, the TE was observed 88% and 87% for kharif and rabi maize, respectively but AE is very less as compared to other zones i.e. 52% for rabi maiz

Are direct photons a clean signal of a thermalized quark gluon plasma?

Direct photon production from a quark gluon plasma (QGP) in thermal equilibrium is studied directly in real time. In contrast to the usual S-matrix calculations, the real time approach is valid for a QGP that formed and reached LTE a short time after a collision and of finite lifetime ($\sim 10-20 \mathrm{fm}/c$ as expected at RHIC or LHC). We point out that during such finite QGP lifetime the spectrum of emitted photons carries information on the initial state. There is an inherent ambiguity in separating the virtual from the observable photons during the transient evolution of the QGP. We propose a real time formulation to extract the photon yield which includes the initial stage of formation of the QGP parametrized by an effective time scale of formation $\Gamma^{-1}$. This formulation coincides with the S-matrix approach in the infinite lifetime limit. It allows to separate the virtual cloud as well as the observable photons emitted during the pre- equilibrium stage from the yield during the QGP lifetime. We find that the lowest order contribution $\mathcal{O}(\alpha_{em})$ which does \emph{not} contribute to the S-matrix approach, is of the same order of or larger than the S-matrix contribution during the lifetime of the QGP for a typical formation time $\sim 1 \mathrm{fm}/c$. The yield for momenta $\gtrsim 3 \mathrm{Gev}/c$ features a power law fall-off $\sim T^3 \Gamma^2/k^{5}$ and is larger than that obtained with the S-matrix for momenta $\geq 4 \mathrm{Gev}/c$. We provide a comprehensive numerical comparison between the real time and S-matrix yields and study the dynamics of the build-up of the photon cloud and the different contributions to the radiative energy loss. The reliability of the current estimates on photon emission is discussed.Comment: 31 pages, 12 eps figures, version to appear in PR

Photon interferometry and size of the hot zone in relativistic heavy ion collisions

The parameters obtained from the theoretical analysis of the single photon spectra observed by the WA98 collaboration at SPS energies have been used to evaluate the two photon correlation functions. The single photon spectra and the two photon correlations at RHIC energies have also been evaluated, taking into account the effects of the possible spectral change of hadrons in a thermal bath. We find that the ratio $R_{side}/R_{out} \sim 1$ for SPS and $R_{side}/R_{out} <1$ for RHIC energy.Comment: text changed, figures adde

Search and study of Quark Gluon Plasma at the CERN-LHC

The major aim of nucleus-nucleus collisions at the LHC is to study the physics of strongly interacting matter and the quark gluon plasma (QGP), formed in extreme conditions of temperature and energy density. We give a brief overview of the experimental program and discuss the signatures and observables for a detailed study of QGP matter.Comment: 15 pages, Invited article for the volume on LHC physics to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee of the Indian National Science Academy, Edited by Amitava Datta, Biswarup Mukhopadhyaya and Amitava Raychaudhuri (Jan 2009