Topic-Specific Sentiment Analysis Can Help Identify Political Ideology

Ideological leanings of an individual can often be gauged by the sentiment one expresses about different issues. We propose a simple framework that represents a political ideology as a distribution of sentiment polarities towards a set of topics. This representation can then be used to detect ideological leanings of documents (speeches, news articles, etc.) based on the sentiments expressed towards different topics. Experiments performed using a widely used dataset show the promise of our proposed approach that achieves comparable performance to other methods despite being much simpler and more interpretable.Comment: Presented at EMNLP Workshop on Computational Approaches to Subjectivity, Sentiment & Social Media Analysis, 201

Electricity Bill Act'2003

The Electricity Bill, 2003 passed by Parliament promises to usher in sweeping changes. The Bill seeks to provide a legal framework for enabling reforms and restructuring of the power sector. It simplifies administrative procedures by integrating the Indian Electricity Act, 1910, the Electricity (Supply) Act, 1948 and the Electricity Regulatory Commissions Act, 1998 into a single Act. The Bill has become an Act now after the Presidential assent and notification by the Ministry of Power on June 10, 2003. The Electricity Act, 2003 is based on the principles of promoting competition, protecting consumers’ interests and providing power to all. The Act has freed the generation of electricity from licensing, and has liberalized the captive power policy. Moreover, it provides open access to transmission and distribution network, and has laidout the stringent penalties for power theft. The new legislation can usher in paradigm shifts in the power sector. Competition will be possible not just in generation,but also in every facet of the sector including distribution. Moreover, private sector investment will be facilitated by greater transparency that will come about. The Bill is a consolidation of the laws relating to generation, transmission, distribution, trading and use of electricity and facilitates all measures that are conducive for the development of the sector.Electricity , Bill ,

The Indo-US Summit Partnership in Building India’s Infrastructure—A Summary of Events

While India’s policymakers have increasingly been giving importance to the private sector, as regards the participation and investment in infrastructure, not too many American companies have availed of this opportunity. There have been many issues regarding the regulatory framework, bureaucratic delays etc. All this is set to change. The recent surveys have shown a persistent trend of increasing satisfaction among the overseas investors at the changes that are taking place in India. The situation in the infrastructure sector is not different. The summarized proceedings of the above-mentioned conference are useful in this context, and would serve to update the reader on the developments that are taking place in this important sector. The broad conclusions, as understood by the authors, are reproduced in this article.Infrastructure , India -US

Towards the Development of a Definitive Infrastructure Policy in

The Government of AP , India , needs to rethink its Infrastructure strategy in the light of current state priority. Unless these are in line with state priorities, the strategies will not work and will perpetually be at cross purposes. The current direction taken by the state appears to point towards the development of rural infrastructure,such as irrigation facility and linkages. The paper attempts to assess the need for these linkages and evolve broad policies to be implemented by these strategies.Infrastructure Policy

Transformation in Road Transport System in Bogota: An Overview

This article talks about how the transportation system in Bogota has been changed over the years after the introduction of the services of TRANSMILENIO. With TRANSMILENIO coming into operation, the public transit has been increased because it provides better service to the daily commuters. It talks about how management and operation are being done vis-à-vis how the revenue is being distributed. It is really remarkable to note how Pedestrian in Bogota is an important arrangement having well–defined guiding principles which aim at using Pedestrian as a tourist attraction since best stores and shopping are always on pedestrian streets. The article concludes saying that India must learn the best practices being adopted in the transport system of Bogota.Urban Transport,Infrastructure

Book Review---Privatising Power Cuts? Ownership and Reform of State Electricity Boards in India

This book discusses the functioning of the State Electricity Boards (commonly known as SEBs) of India and the implications of the new liberalized approach. It argues that these institutions have always been effectively under the thumb of the government, no matter what the cosmetic dressing. The real power has always vested with someone who has been appointed by the concerning state government. The book traces the history of the state electricity boards and goes into operational details such as the manpower configurations, thefts, Transmission and Distribution losses (T&D) and other technical aspects. It argues for a re-energization of these institutions and provides a few solutions as to how this can be done. It offers insights into this most complex issue, which must be eventually solved, one way or the other, if the power sector is really to take off and investments from the private sector and multilateral agencies are to be encouraged.State Electricity Boards in India