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2757 items in total found

Working Papers | 2007

Man and Woman Talk: Grammatical and Syntactical Similarities and Disparities

Asha Kaul and Nandan Debmalya

Multiple research studies on grammar and syntax used by men and women stress disparities stemming from gender specific styles of "talk". Borrowing from the existing literature, we analyzed transcripts of 107 employees in an Indian organization to study variations, if any, in grammar and syntax across genders at the middle management level. Our study was based on an analysis of reported speech of a critical incident of upward influence in the organization. We classified the transcripts into two clusters, viz., male and female. A frequency count for some grammatical and syntactical forms was taken. Frequency count of the grammatical forms revealed no significant disparity in language used by males and females in same and mixed sex groups. The reasons for this finding are as follows: 1. Use of language is not gender specific. More specifically, sentential constructs are not governed by gender. 2. The content and context, if similar, yield similar results. 3. Evolution of a language pattern that is "organizationally fit" rather than gender governed. Significant variations in use of tags and hedges were identified. Based on the above findings, we attribute the variations in syntactical forms to aspects other than those related to "male" or "female" concepts of style, proposed by earlier researchers-for a study of the concept of style will require a framework which studies the linguistic form and the social functions in sync.

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Working Papers | 2007

Chikungunya Fever: A Killer Epidemic in Ahmedabad City, India

Dileep Mavalankar, Shastri Priya, Parmar Jeram, and K. V. Ramani

Background The Chikungunya virus is an alphavirus native to tropical Africa and Asia and is transmitted to humans by the bite of infected Aedes mosquitoes. The symptoms of Chikungunya include sudden onset of fever, severe arthralgia, and maculopapular rash. Thirty percent of the population on the French Réunion Island was afflicted with Chikungunya in the past year. They reported 237 deaths. India on the other hand reported 1.39 million cases of Chikungunya but no deaths. Methods Mortality data from 2002-2006 was obtained from the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC). Actual mortality rate of 2006 was compared to the mortality rate of 2002-05 and its statistical significance tests were carried out. Findings Mortality data obtained from the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) suggests that 3112 excess deaths occurred in August-November (epidemic period) compared to the average deaths in the same months during the previous four years. These differences in deaths were found to be highly statistically significant. A peak in excess mortality is seen in the month of September when 1489 additional deaths were recorded. Case fatality rates for Ahmedabad also turn out to be much higher than that of the Reunion Island. Interpretation The Chikungunya epidemic was raging when the excess deaths occurred. There were no other adverse events or other epidemics that took place could explain this excess mortality. Government authorities, WHO and other international public health agencies should take these findings of excess mortality seriously and investigate into this occurrence of excess deaths to understand this reemerging disease and prevent future epidemics and mortality.

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Working Papers | 2007

Productivity of Rural Credit: A Review of Issues and Some Recent Literature

Sriram M S

The policy intervention in agriculture has been credit driven. This is even more pronounced in the recent interventions made by the State, in doubling agricultural credit, providing subvention and putting an upper cap on interest rates for agricultural loans, the package announced for distressed farmers. We use existing literature and data to argue that the causality of agricultural output with increased doses of credit cannot be clearly established. We argue that Indian agriculture is undergoing fundamental change wherein the technology and inputs are moving out of the hands of the farmers to external suppliers. This, over a period of time may have resulted in the de-skilling of farmers and without adequate public investments in support services and without appropriate risk mitigation products has created a near-crisis in agriculture. Thus, we argue that policy interventions have to be necessarily patient and holistic. Looking specifically at the rural financial markets, using some primary data we argue that it is necessary to understand the rural financial markets from the demand side. We conclude the paper by identifying some directions in which the policy intervention could move, keeping the overall rural economy in view rather than being unifocal about agriculture.

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Working Papers | 2007

Bringing about Changes at a Large Engineering College: Lessons for Designers and Implementers of Large Scale Change Efforts

Neharika Vohra and Nisha Nair

This paper outlines a change management program undertaken at Maritime Engineering Institute in India. The intervention came in the form of a focused three month effort where the first author, a professor of OB at a leading management school in India was invited to stay on the campus of the institute to familiarize herself with the organization and the processes, and suggest necessary changes. The paper presents the change management process in detail. The events and happenings during this intervention are discussed in terms of the dilemmas it posed for the consultant and in retrospect for exploring why the change process could not be institutionalized. Lessons from the intervention are offered to help deal with the less obvious and critical issues that can emerge as stumbling blocks in the successful implementation of any change process.

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Working Papers | 2007

The Case of OD in an NGO in India

Nisha Nair and Neharika Vohra

This organizational development exercise was carried out in a prominent NGO that works in the area of rights and advocacy in the state of Jharkand in India. The OD exercise was part of the Applied Behavioral Science course of the first author's graduate program which required the application of behavioral science theory to a live organization under the supervision of her guide, the second author. The intervention proved to be quite an educative one, both because it was in the developmental sector posing a different set of challenges than conventional organizations and also because the organization itself was in a state of flux at the time of the intervention. The entire exercise was spread over a period of four months. This paper discusses some of the issues and improvement areas that emerged through interviews with senior management and also reflections on some of the key lessons learnt during the process of intervention, with implications for OD in developmental organizations.

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Working Papers | 2007

Inference on Categorical Survey Response: A Predictive Approach

Adhya Sumanta, Tathagata Banerjee, and G. Chattopadhyay

We consider the estimation of finite population proportions of categorical survey responses obtained by probability sampling. The customary design-based estimator does not make use of the auxiliary data available for all the population units at the estimation stage. We adopt a model-based predictive approach to incorporate this information and make the estimates more efficient. In the first part of our paper we consider a multinomial logit type model when logit function is a known parametric function of the covariates. We then use it for the prediction of non-sampled responses. This together with sampled responses is used to obtain the estimates of the proportions. The asymptotic biases and variances of these estimators are obtained. The main drawback of this approach is, being a parametric model it may suffer from model misspecification and thus, may lose it's efficiencies over the usual design-based estimates. To overcome this drawback, in the next part of this paper we replace the multinomial logit type model by a nonparametric model using recently developed random coefficients splines models. Finally, we carry out a simulation study. It shows that the nonparametric approach may lead to an appreciable improvement over both parametric and design-based approaches when the regression function is quite different from multinomial logit.

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Working Papers | 2007

Party Autonomy in International Commercial Arbitration

Anurag K. Agarwal

As global business expands, the number of business disputes is also on the rise. It is extremely difficult or rather impossible to get all these disputes resolved through the conventional method of courts. Moreover, for international business disputes issues of jurisdiction, law, language, culture, etc. pose additional problems. As the courts all over the world are loaded with unresolved cases, delay in getting justice is inevitable. In such a scenario, businesses have to search new methods of resolution of business disputes and arbitration is one of them. Arbitration is a private court by a private judge. The decision of the arbitrator is called an award, which is binding on the parties. When the business dispute is international in character and is to be resolved with the help of arbitration, it is known as 'international commercial arbitration.' The arbitration is a creation of contract between the parties. Hence, party autonomy is the heart and soul of each and every arbitration contract. However, this autonomy is not unbridled. The applicable law and public policy provide the boundaries to this autonomy. Rules of arbitral institutions also curtail the autonomy of parties. This research focuses on a catena of judgments of various courts, primarily the U.S. Supreme Court, the House of Lords and the Supreme Court of India in determining the trend towards acknowledging party autonomy as one of the most important aspects of international commercial arbitration. It shall also look into related issues dealt by the New York Convention and the UNCITRAL (United Nations Commission on International Trade Law) Model Law.

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Working Papers | 2007

Database Structure for a Class of Multi-Period Mathematical Programming Models (Revised-May 07)

Goutam Dutta and Robert Fourer

We describe how a generic multi-period optimization-based decision support system can be used for strategic and operational planning in a company whose processes can be described in terms of five fundamental elements: Materials, Facilities, Activities, Times and Storage-Areas. We discuss the issues of interface design, data reporting and updating, and production and profit planning. We also compare the performances of two different types of database structures with respect to optimization. [This paper is a revised version of an earlier working paper (No.2000-01-06)]

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Working Papers | 2007

Towards Reform of Land Acquisition Framework in India

Sebastian Morris and Ajay Pandey

We bring out the fundamental and more important problems with the current framework of land acquisition in India, regulations on land and the functioning of land markets. We argue that reform is overdue and the current framework would be unsustainable in a democracy that is India. Current land prices are highly distorted owing largely to regulatory constraints and the process of takings. Land acquisition more than any other factor is the most important constraint on development and especially in infrastructure development. We bring out the core elements of the reform-the need to define "public purpose" ex-ante for compulsory acquisition of land, the measures that would allow the market price of land to play its correct role, and the approach to valuation. We also argue for an independent valuer when compulsory taking is involved and methods of valuation to ensure that the land owner including the farmer gets the correct value for this land in both compulsory acquisition and in voluntary sale. We also argue the need for a parallel non-compulsory framework for acquisition and develop the key elements of the same. We also bring out alternatives to physical acquisition of land especially in the context of infrastructure development in central places.

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Working Papers | 2007

'Turnaround' of Indian Railways: Increasing the Axle Loading

G. Raghuram and Shukla Niraja

Axle loading had contributed significantly to the 'turnaround' of the Indian Railways (IR) in the two years 2004-06. As the Minister of Railways (MR) stated, "A one ton extra loading per wagon implied additional revenue of Rs 500 crore per annum for IR." The axle loading initiative was a significant step by IR, though sustainability was a concern. This paper focuses on the key driving events, process issues, impact and implications, and sustainability of the initiative of taking the load per wagon from its carrying capacity (CC) to CC+8. Axle loading for a wagon had traditionally been 20.32 tons, except for the mainline versions of steam locomotives. In the early 1980s, the then Chairman of the Railway Board took initiative of increasing axle loading on an experimental basis which after his tenure, could not be sustained on the grounds of safety. In the late 90s, there were initiatives of regularizing the two ton slack normally permitted for excess loading for certain commodities which were usually on a short haul. The railway minister, during inspections in 2004, noticed significant overloading of many wagons in the iron ore and coal routes. This set him thinking on the axle loading initiative. When one of the Zonal Railways (ZR) proposed an increase of up to ten tons per four axled wagon, various directorates in the Railway Board (RB) gave their views, many of which opposed the initiative. The minister, through the RB, directed a variety of processes to bring about inter-departmental alignment, and the initiative was taken forward in a step by step manner over the two years over a large part of IR. The safety and research institutions of IR also had to be taken along. The initiative is still treated as an 'experiment,' with many issues that need resolution and strategizing.

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