The Preparedness of the Indonesian Garment Exporters in the Post-MFA Scenario: An Analysis from the Survey

The clothing or garments industry has developed rapidly during the past some decades and has contributed to the economic growth of many nations, both developed and developing countries. This industry has been very much regulated by many bilateral agreements such as Multi Fiber Arrangement (MFA), a quota arrangement made by the importing countries. As MFA (quota regime) comes to an end by 2005 and integrates into the WTO regime, it will bring opportunities to highly competitive and proactive garment exporting countries whereas the challenges will be faced more by the less competitive countries. Issues related to environment and social compliance, technology requirements etc. have been brought into surface by the importing countries, which may worsen the condition. Under the above scenario, it is imperative that certain proactive measures be taken. Thus, the broad objective of this study is to analyze the response of the garment exporters from Indonesia towards the emerging issues related to environmental and social compliance, technology requirements etc. The present study is a questionnaire-based study. The samples have been selected from the Directories of largest exporters in the country. With reminders and persuasion, the final number of useable responses has been 115 Indonesian garment exporters. Seven factors of the emerging issues were identified by using factor analysis. In addition, factors of competitiveness, and the strategies adopted by the exporters have also been analyzed. The findings show that the overall perceptions of the Indonesia garment exporters indicate that Indonesia is less competitive as compared to other competing countries

Liquefaction Analysis of a Bridge Site in Assam (India)

A rail-cum-road bridge with approach embankments is to be constructed on the Brahmputra river near Bogobil in Assam (India). The project site is located in Brahmputra’s alluvial plain and lies in an area of very high seismic hazard (zone V of Indian seismic zone map as per IS: 1893-1984) and traverse through the liquefiable ground. A two-level earthquake design criterion has been used: safety-evaluation ground motion of PGA of 0.6g, and a functional-evaluation ground motion of 0. lg. The liquefaction analysis has been carried using a “simplified procedure” originally developed by Seed and Idriss and progressively revised, extended and refined by others. The soil stratigraphy beneath the embankment consists of about 10m of recent alluvium of very loose to medium dense sand and silty soil overlying up to about 30m of medium to very dense deposits of sand and silty sand. Below this layer a dense to very dense sandy layer is encountered. The liquefaction assessment has been carried out for maximum embankment height of 2 lm which is to be constructed on the existing ground surface. The analysis indicated that the liquefaction is not likely to occur for functional evaluation motion. Soil strata under the embankments are liable to liquefy due to ground motion with PGA of 0.6g up to depths of about 14-18m with a total soil settlement of up to about 260 mm. Embankment stability has also been considered when the soil strata underlying the embankment undergo liquefaction. For this analysis, liquefiable soil layers have been assigned only the residual strength. For static case (i.e., no earthquake), the factor of safety ranges from 1.18 to 1.39. The bridge and abutments are founded on well foundations seated at about 55m below the river bed, conforming to minimum scour depth and grip length requirements. The average and normalized N-values at the bridge foundation levels are 86 and 39, respectively and, therefore, the bridge foundations are not susceptible to liquefaction

Geotechnical Damage Due to Bihar Earthquake of August 1988

The Bihar-Nepal earthquake of August 21, 1988 (magnitude 6.6) caused significant loss of life and property. Besides the epicentral area, two distant places (Munger in India and Bhaktapur in Nepal) suffered significantly. This was also the case in the 1934 earthquake (magnitude 8.4) and is due to peculiar geology of the area. Geotechnical damage in the affected area includes liquefaction, cracking and subsidence of embankments, and cracks in bridge abutments and wing walls. Besides, in the hilly regions of Sikkim, landslides and rockfalls disrupted road network significantly. Extensive damage took place in the eastern Nepal also. This paper describes the geotechnical damage to the Indian areas only

Search and Render Algorithm for Three-dimensional Terrain Visualisation of Large Dataset

There exists a wide class of algorithm for 3-D modelling and visualisation of terrain. These techniques are not very useful for flight simulation application. A very large terrain has to be modelled for flight simulators and primitive techniques do not support large data handling. The terrain keeps on changing rapidly, so in flight simulator application, rendering of each frame must be very fast. This paper describes an algorithm which handles very large dataset and can generate 3-D frames quickly. A flight simulator application can be designed using this technique

Analysing the feasibility of financial rewards for mentors engaged in entrepreneurial mentoring

In the domain of entrepreneurship, mentors are considered as volunteers and philanthropists yet their value is undermined, the purpose of this paper is to explore the feasibility of financial rewards for mentors, which could help in understanding the perspective of mentors towards the opportunity cost associated with mentoring. This study uses a survey to explore the viability of different types of financial reward models based on the responses of mentors engaged in the mentoring of entrepreneurs. The results are analysed using multivariate techniques, followed by post hoc analysis; a combination of both approaches helps to increase the validity of findings in an exploratory study. The findings of this study show that there is a need to restructure the mentoring system in the entrepreneurship domain, wherein the findings reveal that mentors are more professional in today’s competitive business environment, with intentions to receive financial rewards for the long term showing a possible link between mentor growth and the growth of mentees. The pattern found in this study describes a new approach for mentoring in entrepreneurship and for this reason more research is needed to confirm the emerging pattern underlined in this research. This study is first of its kind that reviews the financial opportunities for mentors, especially in context of India, and develops groundwork for future empirical research in this area