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2757 items in total found

Working Papers | 2003

Transformation from rule bound government agency to a Customer centric service facility: The case of Indian Passport Offices

Bahuguna Doorva and N. Ravichandran

This paper documents the existing systems, procedures and performance of regional passport offices in India. The system today is administered by rules and procedures. The average (response) time to obtain a passport by an applicant is 147 days as against a target time of 25 days. By systematic analysis, a number of suggestions are made to improve the system response time. The suggestions relate to facilities, process, procedures, resource allocation, manpower deployment, performance measures, technology usage, elimination of activities and change in the managerial approach and orientation. In order to facilitate the implementation of these changes, the suggestions are grouped into four broad groups. It is hoped, eventually this important civil service would transform itself from a rule bound procedure oriented culture to a customer centric, operationally efficient world class service quality organization.

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Working Papers | 2003

An Online Magazine for and by Children: A Quasi Experimental Study

Shelat Manisha and Nande Kaustubh

The objective of the study was to help children conceptualise and develop an on-line magazine and observe changes in their skills and confidence as communicators due to their experience of developing this online magazine. A single group Post-test Post-test design was used for this study. A natural sample consisting of 23 students studying in standard six of Amrit Vidyalaya, Kalol, India was selected. The data collection was organized in three phases: Conducting the pre-tests, administering the treatment, conducting the post-tests. Paired samples t-tests were computed with the pre-test and the post-tests scores. Other statistics like measures of central tendency, correlation coefficients and range were computed for all the three tests. An evaluation questionnaire consisting of six questions was administered to 24 students of class sixth of Baroda High School, Alkapuri, Vadodara after the launch of the magazine on www.amritvidyalya.org website. The effect of the treatment has been positive in all the tests, however statistically only the Computer Test-1 showed significant change. Moreover, there is a direct indication from students' writings that they have had an enriching learning experience and the treatment has had a positive impact on them.

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Working Papers | 2003

Scheduling Partially Ordered Jobs Under Resource Constraints To Optimize Non-Regular Performance Measures

Dhavale N P, Sanjay Verma, and Bagchi Amitava

We describe a general best-first tree search scheme that schedules a set of partially ordered jobs under resource constraints to optimize a non-regular performance measure. The scheme has been implemented for two categories of problems. In the first category, jobs have individual duedates, and the objective is to minimize the total weighted earliness-tardiness penalty. Algorithms currently available for solving problems of this type lack the full generality of the scheme proposed here. In the second category, jobs have associated cash flows, and the objective is to maximize the Net Present Value (NPV). Our methods have been implemented in C both on a Linux-based Pentium PC and on a UNIX-based DEC ALPHA workstation, and successfully tested on problem instances derived from benchmark sets such as the PROGEN set and the Patterson set. For the NPV problem, it has been compared experimentally with the existing method of Icmeli and Erenguc. A theoretical proof of optimality is also provided.

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Working Papers | 2003

A Probabilistic Tabu Search Algorithm for the Generalized Minimum Spanning Tree Problem

Diptesh Ghosh

In this paper we present a probabilistic tabu search algorithm for the generalized minimum spanning tree problem. The basic idea behind the algorithm is to use preprocessing operations to arrive at a probability value for each vertex which roughly corresponds to its probability of being included in an optimal solution, and to use such probability values to shrink the size of the neighborhood of solutions to manageable proportions. We report results from computational experiments that demonstrate the superiority of this method over the generic tabu search method.

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Working Papers | 2003

An Institutional Economics Approach to the Problems of Small Farmer Credit in India.

Samar K. Datta

This paper applies the tools of institutional economics-especially those pertaining to informational asymmetry and transaction costs - for studying the credit problems of small farmers in India, who, in spite of a vast network of credit institutions developed over a long period of time under government ownership and/or control, are alleged as not getting a share of formal sector credit commensurate with their statistical dominance. It uses data collected by the Agro-economic Research Centers and Units under the Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India from a carefully selected sample of 700 borrower households across the country over a period of three years (1997-1998 to 1999-2000) to provide a preliminary explanation of the various dimensions of a credit package in terms of variation in borrower's village, household and other loan attributes.

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Working Papers | 2003

Property Rights, Incentives and Performance of Cooperative Training Institutes In India

Ravindra H. Dholakia, Samar K. Datta, and Vijay Paul Sharma

The paper attempts to find determinants of variation in performance of the 19 institutes of cooperative management (ICM) representing the in-housetraining facilities within the cooperative sector in India by examining the distribution of property rights and incentives. The property rights are so distributed that there is a mismatch between the rights of residual claimants and of residual controllers. As a result, there is a clear efficiency loss and under-utilisation of capacity across ICMs. The performance of ICMs is measured through two indicators of demand and two indicators of supply of training. The paper finds that the supply of training in the ICM system in India is largely governed by the availability of training equipments like the number of PC, OHP, library books, and the qualitative aspects of labour input such as the average research papers, cases, and notes produced by faculty, and number of sessions conducted by guest faculty. The demand for training is not determined by the felt need of cooperatives, but by clients' perception of the training infrastructure, facilities and capability of ICMs as well as the image and experience of ICMs in conducting paid programmes.

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Working Papers | 2003

The Marginal Unit Shadow Price and its relationship to the Average Shadow Price

Saral Mukherjee and Chatterjee Ashis K

The economic significance of the average shadow price for integer and mixed integer programming problems has been established by researchers (Kim and Cho 1988), (Crema 1995). In this paper we introduce the concept of the marginal unit shadow price to deal with the integer programs where the right hand side resource availability can only be varied in discrete steps. We show that for integer programs, a sufficient condition for the marginal unit shadow price to equal the average shadow price is that the Law of Diminishing Returns should hold. The polyhedral structures that will guarantee this equivalence have been explored. Identification of the problem classes for which the equivalence holds greatly simplifies the existing procedure for determining shadow price for such integer programs.

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Working Papers | 2003

Productivity and efficiency at public and private sector banks in India

T. T. Ram Mohan and Ray Subhash C

India public sector banks (PSBs) are compared unfavourably with their private sector counterparts, domestic and foreign. This comparison rests, for the most part, on financial measures of performance, and such a comparison provides much of the rationale for privatisation of PSBs. In this paper, we attempt a comparison between PSBs and their private sector counterparts based on measures of efficiency and productivity that use quantities of outputs and inputs. Efficiency measures a firm's performance relative to a benchmark at a given point in time; productivity measures a firm's performance over time. Both measures are relevant in attempting a comparison between the private and public sectors. We employ three measures: Tornquist total factor productivity growth, Malmquist efficiency and revenue maximisation efficiency. We attempt these comparisons over the period 1992-2000, comparing PSBs with both domestic private and foreign banks. Out of a total of six comparisons we have made, there are no differences in three cases, PSBs do better in two, and foreign banks in one. To put it differently, PSBs are seen to be at a disadvantage in only one out of six comparisons. It is difficult, therefore, to sustain the proposition that efficiency and productivity have been lower in public sector banks relative to their peers in the private sector.

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Working Papers | 2003

Motivation For and Cost of HACCP

Satish Y. Deodhar

To remain quality competitive in the post-WTO regime, Indian food processing firms would have to adopt a food safety management system - Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP). It is necessary to understand, therefore, in what way the system benefits firms, and, what are the costs of HACCP implementation. This paper does that. Data on reasons for and cost of HACCP implementation was generated through questionnaire survey of food processing firms. Analysis was performed using factor analysis, contingency tables and chi-square tests. While quality and production related factors motivate firms to employ HACCP, trade associations are not at all instrumental in promoting the system. Set-up cost and operating cost vary with the type of food sub-sector and the size of firm. Government and trade associations may facilitate sector specific concessional loans for HACCP implementation and initiate training programmes. Economies of scale are important in HACCP adoption, hence Indian firms may want to go for horizontal and/or vertical integration.

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Working Papers | 2003

Health insurance and third party administrators: Issues and challenges

Bhat Ramesh and Babu Sumesh K

With the growth of private voluntary insurance in the unregulated healthcare market, costs of healthcare are likely to go up. Managed care organisations in many developed countries play important role in containing costs. The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA) has paved the way for insurance intermediaries such as third part administrators (TPAs) which are going to play pivotal role in setting up managed care systems. TPAs have been set -up with the objective of ensuring better services to policyholders and mitigate some of the negative consequences of private health insurance. However, given the demand and supply side complexities of private health insurance and health care markets, insurance intermediaries face challenging tasks to achieve these objectives. Right in the early stages of its development IRDA has defined the role of TPAs to manage claims and reimbursements. Their role in controlling costs of health care and ensuring appropriate quality of care remains less defined.

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