Length–weight relationships of five catfish species (Siluriformes) from the Ganga River,India

Knowledge of the length–weight relationships (LWRs) of fish is an important tool to understand fish body form, growth pattern, stock management and their conservation. The present study focused on investigating the length–weight relationships for five catfish species, Pachypterus atherinoides (Bloch, 1794), belonging to family Horabagridae; Batasio batasio (Hamilton, 1822) family Bagridae; Bagarius yarrelli (Sykes, 1839), family Gogangra viridescens (Hamilton, 1822); and Sisor rhabdophorus (Hamilton, 1822) belonging to family Sisoridae. Specimens were collected from the middle stretch of the Ganga River in India from November 2016 to May 2018. A total of 174 specimens of five fish species were collected, and their total lengths were measured to the nearest centimetre and the body weight to the nearest gram. The value of the parameter slope (b) of LWRs of the five species ranged from 2.86 (B. yarrelli) to 3.16 (G. viridescens), with a mean value of 2.99. The results of the present study documented the new maximum total length (TL) for P. atherinoides and S. rhabdophorus. The present study also provides the first reference regarding LWRs for S. rhabdophorus.     

Project to develop school education services in Delhi, India

There are many ways in which quantitative decision models can be applied in project management. The introduction of a project evaluation review technique network model to the development of a school education service in the city of Delhi, India, is described. The reasons for choosing this method, its advantages and limitations are discussed. Examples of the information obtained from the model are presented and explained.     

Application of Differential Evolution for Irrigation Planning: An Indian Case Study

The present paper demonstrates the applicability of population based search optimization method, namely, Differential Evolution (DE) to a case study of Mahi Bajaj Sagar Project (MBSP), India. Ten different strategies of DE are employed to assess the ability of DE for solving higher dimensional problems as an alternative methodology for irrigation planning. The parameters considered in DE are population size, crossover constant and weighting factor. Linear Programming (LP) is utilized as a comparative approach to assess the ability of DE. Comparison of results of LP and the 10 DE strategies for the given parameters indicated that both the results are comparable even for high dimensional problems. Extensive sensitivity analysis studies, performed for 3,600 combinations of above parameters for the 10 DE strategies suggested that DE/rand-to-best/1/bin strategy is the best strategy giving maximum benefits taking minimum CPU time. It is concluded that DE can be utilized for efficient planning of any irrigation system with suitable modifications.     

Scientific basis for establishing country greenhouse gas estimates for rice-based agriculture: An Indian case study

A comprehensive scientific assessment of CH₄ budget estimation for Indian rice paddies, based on a decade of measurements in India, is presented. Indian paddy cultivation areas contain soils that have low to medium levels of soil organic carbon. The average seasonally integrated CH₄ flux (E _sif) values calculated from these measurements were 15.3 ± 2.6 g m^–2 for continuously flooded (CF), 6.9 ± 4.3 g m^–2 for intermittently flooded (IF) single aeration (SA) and 2.2 ± 1.5 g m^–2 for IF multiple aeration (MA) rice ecosystems. For CF and IF (MA) rice ecosystems having high soil organic carbon, without organic amendments, the CH₄ flux (E _sif) may be increased by 1.7 times relative to low soil organic carbon, whereas it may enhance by 5.3 for CF if amended organically. Organic amendment and high soil organic carbon paddy areas do not alter the methane budget estimates for India (3.6±1.4 TgY^–1) much, due to their small paddy harvested area. Methane estimated using average emission factors (E _sif) for all paddy water regimes, which include harvested areas having soils with high organic carbon and organic amendments, may give a budget of 5 TgY^–1 for India.     

The continuity of underperforming ICT projects in the public sector

There is a growing body of research on the successes and failures of information and communications technology (ICT) projects in the public sector. However, this literature has rarely addressed the question of why some projects persist and continue despite functioning poorly in several areas. In this paper, we suggest that the notions of institutional logics and status differences provide useful insights into the structure and trajectory of this type of continuity. We build our arguments through an in-depth qualitative case study of a public information and communications technology (PICT) project in India. From our findings, we develop a process model of PICT project continuity. We explain how the employment of bureaucratic posturing – a manifestation of bureaucratic logic – as a tactic by high status groups could lead to poor performance on several fronts. The paper elaborates on two levels of continuity: policy-level continuity, which in our case was enabled by the logics of decentralization and technocracy, and operational-level continuity, which was achieved when groups with contrasting status-related motivations supported the project.     

Internet Studies and Development Discourses: The Cases of China and India

This paper investigates Internet studies in two leading developing countries (i.e. China and India) and finds that the Chinese scholarly community relies on the discourse of liberation from the state as a form of critique, whereas Indian Internet studies question the discourse of modernization to contemplate about the success and failure factors of information and communication technologies in development. The difference generally reflects the academic responses to the development discourses embraced by the two governments. We suggest that Internet studies should not only respond to the realities but also transcend the contextual constraints to direct attention to the often neglected dimensions of development, which are to make actual impacts through allowing the people and the communities to define their own development discourses as well as building research institutions that are oriented to influence policy-making.     

中印贸易互补性实证分析

以比较优势理论和产业内贸易理论为依据,利用近58来的贸易统计数据,计算显示比较优势、Brulhart指标、贸易特化系数（TSC）的测度指数值及其变动趋势．分析结果表明,中印两国具有很强的产业间贸易互补性,但产业内贸易互补性不强,推动中印贸易的主要是产业间贸易,产业内贸易所占比重较少,并预测出中印贸易互补性有增强趋势．     

Are we Building a Better World with ICTs? Empirically Examining this Question in the Domain of Public Health in India

As social scientists engaged in Information Technologies for Development (IT4D), a question we need to necessarily engage with is “are we building a better world with Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs)?” This question, first posed by Professor Geoff Walsham in the IS field, was the topic of my plenary discussion at the IFIP 9.4 meeting in Jamaica 2014, and had now been further developed to this “view from practice” paper for this journal. A first step in this paper has been the reformulation of the question which Professor Walsham raised: “What distortions and obstacles are created by the historical, material, and institutional conditions, and how these shape our efforts of ICTs creating a better world?” This reformulation is done to bring in more explicitly the political dimension into the question, and to nuance the technological deterministic argument implied in the question of technology (always) creating a better world. Taking an empirical example of an ICT intervention from the public health sector in India, deliberately chosen to emphasize distortions typically seen is similar Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) projects, the analysis focuses on understanding the conditions of distortions, why they occur, and what can be done differently to contribute to our notion of a better world.     

Factors determining informal tanker water markets in Chennai,India

Many developing world cities have seen the emergence of informal markets where private tanker truck operators transport water extracted from peri-urban wells to urban consumers. This study adopted a systems-modelling approach to analyzing the informal tanker market in India. The results indicate that the demand for tanker supply was caused by lack of groundwater availability in private wells as well as unreliable piped supply. The study shows that two groundwater factors are relevant: depth to water and aquifer productivity. Together, these could explain the difference in spatial, temporal and consumer-specific variations in tanker dependence.