In the Vacuum of Public Action Social Security in Orissa: A Long Way to Go

This paper is part of a large study on the Social Protection in Rural India and China. In this paper, we attempt at a critical appraisal of the historical development and experience of social security initiatives in Orissa, India. Unlike in the context of Kerala, an unfavourable dynamics of historical conjunction of ecological, economic, social, and institutional conditions in Orissa has worked itself out to contribute to the high level of insecurity there. We argue that the failure of Orissa was in its inability to develop the forces of organization and mobilization into its logical end of participatory development process for a secured life on account of some unfavourable historical conjunction. It is also attempted in this paper to categorize the on-going social security schemes according to the definitional framework of our study, that is, in terms of the definitional division of social security into basic and contingent social security.Social security; Orissa; Development; Contingency

Evolution of Social Security in the Lap of Public Action: Recounting the Experience of Kerala

This paper is part of a large study on the Social Protection in Rural India and China. In this paper, we attempt at a critical appraisal of the historical development and experience of social security initiatives in Kerala, India. We situate the development experience of Kerala in a conceptual framework of participatory development, which we interpret in a broad context of organization and mobilization of people at specific junctures of historical progress of a society. Thus participatory development, in our view is participation in the progressive process of realization of human rights and thus in development; that is, public action, with an effective public demand and a wiling public supply, conditioned by the legitimate function of the state. It is also attempted to categorize the on-going social security schemes according to the definitional framework of our study, that is, in terms of the definitional division of social security into basic and contingent social security.Social security; Kerala; development; contingency

Social Security in India: The Long Lane Treaded and the Longer Road Ahead Towards Universalization

This paper is part of a large study on the Social Protection in Rural India and China. In this paper, we attempt at a critical appraisal of the historical development and experience of social security initiatives at the all India level. Based on the findings of the review, we visualize a road map to a more comprehensive and participatory initiatives in provision of social security by the state, while stressing the role of the civil society, non-governmental organizations and mass organizations. It is also attempted to categorize the on-going social security schemes according to the definitional framework of our study, that is, in terms of the definitional division of social security into basic and contingent social security.Social security; India; poverty; development; contingency

Poverty alleviation as advancing basic human capabilities : Kerala's achievements compared

This paper is complementary to my earlier paper on Public Intervention and Poverty Alleviation: Declining Incidence of Rural Poverty in Kerala (published in 1995). The objective of this paper is to go beyond the notion of income-poverty and consider the achievements in advancing basic human capabilities. Written for an Asian audience, the paper highlights Kerala’s achievements in advancing basic human capabilities to an extent that is far above than would be warranted by its per capita income. For this reason, the experience of Kerala, along with a few other countries, has received considerable attention in the development literature. This paper highlights Kerala’s achievements by comparing them with six Asian countries’ performance. These countries are: India, China, Thailand, Malasia, Indonesia and Sri Lanka. After examining the significance of Kerala’s achievements, the paper discusses Kerala’s record in relation to the selected six Asian countries. In addition, the paper also briefly deals with Kerala’s achievements in relation to all-India since the Indian experience in general is one of slow progress and the task ahead is quite considerable both in absolute terms as well as in relation to most other countries. Emphasis has been given to public action by which Kerala has achieved considerable reduction in poverty. Here I have identified education as the central process through which other changes in society, especially for the poor, were brought about. In this process, the importance and impact of historical factors in poverty alleviation have been highlighted. Finally an attempt has been made to draw some lessons from the Kerala experience by focusing on the role of public action. JEL Classification: I 30, I 31, I 32 Key Words: Education, health status, human capabilities, human deprivation, Human Poverty Index, income-poverty, mobilisation, poverty alleviation, public action

The welfare fund model of social security for informal sector workers : the Kerala experience

This paper examines the evolution of the institution of ‘Welfare Funds’ for informal sector workers in the State of Kerala in India. The Kerala experience, which is now thirty years old, reflects what the workers in the informal sector could achieve in countries like India given the contemporary political context and the democratic political framework of the State. But it required sustained collective action on the part of the workers. The paper finds that while the Welfare Fund Model of collective care arrangements for the informal sector workers in Kerala showed considerable innovation in its design and organisation, its functioning is embedded in the bureaucratic system giving rise to a number of problems. Even then the Model offers a minimum of social security to the informal sector workers who are unprotected. Therefore the question of replicating this Model with suitable modifications to other States in India as well as to other countries, where there are no social security arrangements for informal sector workers, is worth pursuing. JEL Classification : I 30, I 38, J 50 Key words : collective care, informal sector workers, Kerala, social security, welfare funds

An efficient method to avoid path lookup in file access auditing in IO path to improve file system IO performance

One of the biggest challenges in metadata management schemes that sit outside the filesystem layer is their ability to index meaningful path information of files that are being referenced in an external system like a database or in a metadata journal file. Path to a file is a critical requirement that allows both meaningful interpretation of the locality of the file and its metadata and also secondly allows for more efficient user mode services that can transform the file or its metadata. Additionally path information is very essential in compliance systems where audit logs need to tell what happened to a file and where it is located. However when the data path is being audited from layers such as protocols, it becomes harder to reconstruct the entire path information for all the files given that the protocol layers do not directly integrate with the underlying Filesystem. The protocol layers would then need to rely on system cache to get the path data and sometimes this may not be possible making it required for the protocol to actually do an expensive reverse path walk, reconstructing the path. This actually heavily degrades the performance of the system. In this paper we discuss a mechanism that allows us to record enough information about the file using the unique ID of itself and its parent in the protocol layer such that if and when required the path information can be reconstructed based on a reliable reverse lookup in a database or a file based journal system. The idea is to have enough information to reconstruct the path at a later time and outside the system where the information was initially originated from. The paper also talks of keeping this system consistent under all conditions

First record of Polka-dot ribbonfish Desmodema polystictum (Pisces: Trachipteridae) from Indian waters

Polka-dot ribbonfish Desmodema polystictum was recorded for the first time from Indian waters. A single specimen of D. polystictum (107 cm total length and weighing 480 g) was collected from Tharuvaikulam landing centre, north to Tuticorin, on the south-east coast of India during September 2010. The distinguishing characters of the species from other species of the family are discussed. Morphometric and meristic characters of D. polystictum are presented in this paper. With the present report, the distribution area of this species now extends to the Indian waters

Interference Alignment in Regenerating Codes for Distributed Storage: Necessity and Code Constructions

Regenerating codes are a class of recently developed codes for distributed storage that, like Reed-Solomon codes, permit data recovery from any arbitrary k of n nodes. However regenerating codes possess in addition, the ability to repair a failed node by connecting to any arbitrary d nodes and downloading an amount of data that is typically far less than the size of the data file. This amount of download is termed the repair bandwidth. Minimum storage regenerating (MSR) codes are a subclass of regenerating codes that require the least amount of network storage; every such code is a maximum distance separable (MDS) code. Further, when a replacement node stores data identical to that in the failed node, the repair is termed as exact. The four principal results of the paper are (a) the explicit construction of a class of MDS codes for d = n-1 >= 2k-1 termed the MISER code, that achieves the cut-set bound on the repair bandwidth for the exact-repair of systematic nodes, (b) proof of the necessity of interference alignment in exact-repair MSR codes, (c) a proof showing the impossibility of constructing linear, exact-repair MSR codes for d < 2k-3 in the absence of symbol extension, and (d) the construction, also explicit, of MSR codes for d = k+1. Interference alignment (IA) is a theme that runs throughout the paper: the MISER code is built on the principles of IA and IA is also a crucial component to the non-existence proof for d < 2k-3. To the best of our knowledge, the constructions presented in this paper are the first, explicit constructions of regenerating codes that achieve the cut-set bound.Comment: 38 pages, 12 figures, submitted to the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory;v3 - The title has been modified to better reflect the contributions of the submission. The paper is extensively revised with several carefully constructed figures and example

Explicit Construction of Optimal Exact Regenerating Codes for Distributed Storage

Erasure coding techniques are used to increase the reliability of distributed storage systems while minimizing storage overhead. Also of interest is minimization of the bandwidth required to repair the system following a node failure. In a recent paper, Wu et al. characterize the tradeoff between the repair bandwidth and the amount of data stored per node. They also prove the existence of regenerating codes that achieve this tradeoff. In this paper, we introduce Exact Regenerating Codes, which are regenerating codes possessing the additional property of being able to duplicate the data stored at a failed node. Such codes require low processing and communication overheads, making the system practical and easy to maintain. Explicit construction of exact regenerating codes is provided for the minimum bandwidth point on the storage-repair bandwidth tradeoff, relevant to distributed-mail-server applications. A subspace based approach is provided and shown to yield necessary and sufficient conditions on a linear code to possess the exact regeneration property as well as prove the uniqueness of our construction. Also included in the paper, is an explicit construction of regenerating codes for the minimum storage point for parameters relevant to storage in peer-to-peer systems. This construction supports a variable number of nodes and can handle multiple, simultaneous node failures. All constructions given in the paper are of low complexity, requiring low field size in particular.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, in the Proceedings of Allerton Conference on Communication, Control and Computing, September 200