Can postcolonial feminism revive international relations?

International relations must distance itself from its Eurocentric and masculine moorings if it is to address its increasing irrelevance in the modern world and become more “international” and truly inclusive. The theoretical position of postcolonial feminism gives the discipline the best chance of doing so. The effect of conflict on women in Kashmir and the North East illustrates how a postcolonial feminist perspective enriches an understanding of the issue and enables international relations to reflect the lived reality of the people

Studies in Indian informal sector

This dissertation contributes to the literature in two ways. It explores the link between the trade liberalization policies and the informal sector wages, and examines the economy of the self-employed sector of India. Specifically, this dissertation (i) develops a general equilibrium model incorporating the self-employed sector as a separate informal sector and demonstrates the connection between the trade liberalization policies and the informal sector wages; (ii) presents a system analysis for the economy of the self-employed sector; (iii) highlights the distinctive characteristics of the self-employed sector and generates a better understanding of the difference between the self-employed and the wage-working sectors. There are a number of studies focusing on the impact of the changing policy environment in the developing countries on the informal sector. While most of them are in agreement that the size of the informal sector has grown post-trade reforms in the developing countries, there is still no consensus about the impact of the reforms on the terms of informal work, particularly the wages. The theoretical model developed in this dissertation shows that the current understanding changes significantly when the self-employed sector is incorporated into the analysis. The extent of self-employment plays a crucial role in determining the link between the trade liberalization policies and the informal sector wages. This model emphasizes that the growing self-employment and informalization of the formal sector workers in India can result in non-increasing informal sector wages. The analysis of the economic system of the self-employed sector generates important insights about the production relationships prevailing in this sector. A microcosm of self-employed occupations of India is developed and the occupations are categorized according to location, gender and types of products. The system of production is analyzed to find out the difference of this sector with other wage-working sectors. The extra-legal and extra-capitalist nature of production highlights the inadequacy of the abstract modeling in capturing the economic characteristics of this sector. The Kinship Associations build the informal institutions and determine the terms of input valuations. This dissertation also demonstrates the importance of maintaining the community ties in helping the productive capacity of the self-employed sector

Improved and Formal Proposal for Device Independent Quantum Private Query

In this paper, we propose a novel Quantum Private Query (QPQ) scheme with full Device-Independent certification. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time we provide such a full DI-QPQ scheme using EPR-pairs. Our proposed scheme exploits self-testing of shared EPR-pairs along with the self-testing of projective measurement operators in a setting where the client and the server do not trust each other. To certify full device independence, we exploit a strategy to self-test a particular class of POVM elements that are used in the protocol. Further, we provide formal security analysis and obtain an upper bound on the maximum cheating probabilities for both the dishonest client as well as the dishonest server.Comment: 33 pages, 2 figure

Government finances and economic growth: a policy perspective on the developing economy of Sri Lanka

In this paper, we analyse the fiscal policy orientation of the developing economy of Sri Lanka in the context of the growth performance of the economy during the period 1975-2000, using an integrated input-output and macroeconometric model. The paper draws upon the Government’s policy approach towards faster economic growth. The empirical findings show that the Government’s budget deficits are not primarily the result of an excess of consumption over revenue. Rather, other current expenses, such as Government transfers and interest payments, have been the main cause of the country’s mounting public debt. The proportion of Government investment in total Government outlays has declined over time. This could be a major obstacle to economic growth. At the same time, the Government’s recurring budget deficits have led to an escalating national debt, and the monetization of deficits has created inflationary pressures. In order to arrest these trends and encourage economic growth, reducing the current deficits in the Government budgets is imperative. Domestic private investment, foreign direct investment and Government investment have to be combined as complementary forces to ensure rapid economic growth in the country.

A Trust Based Fuzzy Algorithm for Congestion Control in Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks (TFCC)

Network congestion has become a critical issue for resource constrained Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), especially for Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks (WMSNs)where large volume of multimedia data is transmitted through the network. If the traffic load is greater than the available capacity of the sensor network, congestion occurs and it causes buffer overflow, packet drop, deterioration of network throughput and quality of service (QoS). Again, the faulty nodes of the network also aggravate congestion by diffusing useless packets or retransmitting the same packet several times. This results in the wastage of energy and decrease in network lifetime. To address this challenge, a new congestion control algorithm is proposed in which the faulty nodes are identified and blocked from data communication by using the concept of trust. The trust metric of all the nodes in the WMSN is derived by using a two-stage Fuzzy inferencing scheme. The traffic flow from source to sink is optimized by implementing the Link State Routing Protocol. The congestion of the sensor nodes is controlled by regulating the rate of traffic flow on the basis of the priority of the traffic. Finally we compare our protocol with other existing congestion control protocols to show the merit of the work.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, conference pape