Search

Adequate shelter for all is one of the most pressing challenges faced by developing countries. India is currently facing a shortage of 17.6 million houses. Construction sector represents the most pressing need, viz, shelter. Technologies, which are sustainable environmentally, are another important issue in developing countries, who are on their path to development. Earlier researchers have indicated that construction activity contributes 17% to the carbon dioxide emission in India. In this paper, we have tried to interweave various issues and propose a construction strategy for the Indian housing sector. Affordability of a house and availability of building materials for its construction are the main determinants of access to shelter. This demands efficient use of resources at low cost. This paper analyzes whether it is possible to provide a housing solution at affordable cost by adopting technologies which are less emitting. A policy instrument, energy tax, is designed in this paper that would enforce a switch in technology and promote those technologies, which are well known as least cost but less adopted. An optimization framework developed by Tiwari et al. (1999) and Tiwari (2001) for technology evaluation in house construction based on design codes for India, is used in this paper. Recent government housing policy statements have indicated that an annual supply of two million new houses would be required to meet the current shortage of housing in India. This model is applied to the construction of two million houses. The construction technologies that we evaluate are the commonly used construction technologies as well as the low-cost techniques. It is asserted that by a proper selection of such techniques and material, the costs and emissions can be reduced substantially and at the same time employment can be generated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on implementing an intelligent decision‐making automated device for providing safety to all individuals. In India, during every year it has been observed that an average of 36% of the people is dying due to road accidents in highways. Till now, there are no intelligent devices to monitor the above‐mentioned conditions. Even if the devices are available the distance of installation is observed to be small and as a result cost of installation is higher. Therefore, the monitoring devices are not integrated in proper position and the safety units which are divided and placed in highways for providing indication to the drivers are not appropriate. To provide higher safety to each individual in highways, the proposed method incorporates a Minimized Cluster Rate for partitioning the highway patterns and for understanding the congestion problem to identify appropriate highway lanes with Enhanced Level protocol for proper operation in emergency conditions. Also, this new flanged model is monitored using Thing speak and for real‐time analysis the results are plotted in MATLAB. Moreover, it has been observed that the projected method provide more safety to each individual with minimization of cost and error in control process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: The concept of green computing is a step toward advanced information technology‐related data computations. There is an urgent need to develop sustainable mobile telecommunication networks subscribed by Telecommunication Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). This paper aims at deploying major recommendations and directions in computing systems directed by regulating authorities. Green computing–based power‐saving policies include virtualization technique, power‐saving method, and recycling technique‐type solution components that we tried to embed in existing systems. The energy‐efficient green computing reserves the reliability and power of information‐driven technology. This research paper provides a comprehensive approach toward applying green mechanism by spotting the difference between energy consumption of current academic scenario and after embedding power‐saving policies of green computing. Moreover, an account has been maintained about the amount of energy preservation. The extraordinary energy‐ and cost‐saving features of green computing make environment sustainable and lively for future generations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Access to finance is seen as a binding constraint on the growth of household enterprises in developing countries. We develop a principal agent model of a household enterprise and show that limited access to finance and monitoring costs constrain the firm size via both a direct and indirect effect. Although greater access to finance has a positive direct effect on the hiring of paid labour, firms may not choose to expand and use paid labour via an indirect route that operates through the monitoring costs of employing paid workers. We use large nationally representative surveys of household enterprises in Indian manufacturing and find support for the predictions of our theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India's national nutrition and health programmes are largely designed to provide evidence ‐ based nutrition ‐ specific interventions, but intervention coverage is low due to a combination of implementation challenges, capacity and financing gaps. Global cost estimates for nutrition are available but national and subnational costs are not. We estimated national and subnational costs of delivering recommended nutrition ‐ specific interventions using the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) costing approach. We compared costs of delivering the SUN interventions at 100% scale with those of nationally recommended interventions. Target populations (TP) for interventions were estimated using national population and nutrition data. Unit costs (UC) were derived from programmatic data. The cost of delivering an intervention at 100% coverage was calculated as (UC*projected TP). Cost estimates varied; estimates for SUN interventions were lower than estimates for nationally recommended interventions because of differences in choice of intervention, target group or unit cost. US$5.9bn/year are required to deliver a set of nationally recommended nutrition interventions at scale in India, while US$4.2bn are required for the SUN interventions. Cash transfers (49%) and food supplements (40%) contribute most to costs of nationally recommended interventions, while food supplements to prevent and treat malnutrition contribute most to the SUN costs. We conclude that although such costing is useful to generate broad estimates, there is an urgent need for further costing studies on the true unit costs of the delivery of nutrition ‐ specific interventions in different local contexts to be able to project accurate national and subnational budgets for nutrition in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Helpman et al. model (HMY), costs of transportation shape the decisions of firms about serving foreign customers by exporting or by doing FDI. The analysis of FDI in IT-related services presents a challenge given the low cost of transportation through telecom networks. This study extends the HMY model by considering uncertainty in product quality. This reverses the ordering of the firms that do FDI. These predictions are tested using Indian data in two industries: chemicals and software. Chemicals represents a conventional setting, and we find that the most productive firms invest abroad. However, in the case of the software industry, where there is uncertainty about product quality and the transportation cost is low, the results are consistent with the predictions of the extended model: less productive firms invest abroad. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To develop data collection methods suitable to obtain data to assess the costs, cost-efficiency, and cost-effectiveness of eight types of HIV prevention programs in five countries.Primary data collection from prevention programs for 2002–2003 and prior years, in Uganda, South Africa, India, Mexico, and Russia.This study consisted of a retrospective review of HIV prevention programs covering one to several years of data. Key variables include services delivered (outputs), quality indicators, and costs.Data were collected by trained in-country teams during week-long site visits, by reviewing service and financial records and interviewing program managers and clients.Preliminary data suggest that the unit cost of HIV prevention programs may be both higher and more variable than previous studies suggest.A mix of standard data collection methods can be successfully implemented across different HIV prevention program types and countries. These methods can provide comprehensive services and cost data, which may carry valuable information for the allocation of HIV prevention resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public policy has often addressed the problems of water supply and sanitation from the supply side to the neglect of demand side aspects in developing countries like India. This policy has not only rendered a large number of projects financially unviable but has also resulted in inadequate coverage of aspects such as population and ecological unsustainability. This article, based on household level information from six villages in a water scarce region of India (Rajasthan state), examines inter- and intra-village variations in water use and the costs, direct and indirect, involved in obtaining water. It also estimates households' willingness and ability to pay for water, using the contingent valuation method (CVM). Using qualitative as well as quantitative methods, it is argued that it is the failure of government policy and of institutions which has led to severe water shortages in harsh environments rather than supply or financial bottlenecks per se. While the estimates of price elasticity of water use indicate the feasibility of water pricing in the rural areas, the willingness to pay estimates question the general assumption that rural households are willing to pay 5 per cent of their income/expenditure for water. Various economic and extra economic factors such as household income, low opportunity costs of women and children, and attitudes towards female labour and public goods are vital in influencing the households' willingness to pay for water. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study attempts to examine the inter-occupational differences in the patterns of cash and in-kind expenditure in rural India on the basis of a special tabulation of The National Sample Survey (NSS), 18th round (February 1963—January 1964) consumer expenditure data. The occupational groups considered here are (i) cultivators, (ii) agricultural labourers, (iii) other agriculture, and (iv) nonagricultural occupations. The analysis is carried out primarily in terms of curves relating item-specific cash/kind expenditure to total cash/total kind expenditure for fifteen selected item-groups of expenditure. For each item-occupation combination, four two-parameter forms of Engel curve together with the log-log-inverse form are estimated and the comparisons across occupation groups are made separately on the basis of each of the two-parameter curve forms which were found to give the best fit for at least one occupation group as well as the log-log-inverse form, using analysis of covariance technique. The results indicate that so far as the cash components of item expenditures are concerned, the pattern of expenditure is considerably influenced by occupational factors. It is observed that cultivators have a cash expenditure pattern different from those of agrictural labourers and of households with non-agricultural activities. The comparison of the kind expenditure patterns does not, however, reflect any clear picture primarily because in most cases the itemwise kind expenditure functions could not be estimated satisfactorily. This analysis also suggests that the specification of itemwise cash and kind expenditure functions employed here may not be the most satisfactory ones in an economy with a high degree of non-monetization and therefore alternative specifications need be examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]