Home Menu
icon-menu-close.svg

Faculty & Research

Faculty & Research

Research Productive

Show result

Clear
Search Query :
Area :
Search Query :
3899 items in total found

Journal Articles | 2019

The geography of medical travel in India: Differences across states, and the urban-rural divide

Sandip Chakrabarti and Aruna Divya T

Applied Geography

There is a large body of literature exploring spatial disparity in access to healthcare services, and the resultant geographic inequality in the demand for medical travel. We are, however, unaware of any such study conducted in India in the past. The transportation implications of inequitable healthcare access, therefore, remains unknown to Indian planners and policymakers. We use a unique dataset, the 2014–15 Domestic Tourism Expenditure survey conducted by the National Sample Survey Office, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Government of India, to address this critical gap in the literature. We use trip-making information of 42,547 persons (13,525 urban and 29,022 rural residents) belonging to 28 Indian states in order to analyze the variation in individuals' medical trip destination choice, on average, across states. We analyze overnight trips (i.e., trips involving at least one night stay away from home) made for medical purposes only. Specifically, we isolate and compare the independent influence of state of residence (i.e., the state-effect) on residents' choice of within-district and out-of-state medical care location, after controlling for various personal and household factors that also govern choice. Additionally, we select a sub-sample of individuals who made out-of-state medical trips, and analyze state-level differences in the likelihood of long or >1500 km (vs. short or ≤1500 km) distance medical travel. We analyze urban and rural residents separately, and estimate a pooled model to explore intra-state urban-rural differences in medical trip destination choice. Our analyses reveal significant variation in urban and rural residents' destination choice for medical trips across India's states. We also find within-state urban-rural differences in destination choice to vary significantly across states. Our analysis provides new information on the geography of medical travel in India, underscoring the need for further research on the causes and consequences of the geographic disparity in healthcare access, and targeted action to improve healthcare access equitably across states. We expect our paper to stimulate further research to guide national and state health and transportation policies in India.

Go to link
Read More

Journal Articles | 2019

Pain without gain?: Impact of school rationalisation in India

Ambrish Dongre and Vibhu Tewary

International Journal of Educational Development

Alarmed by declining enrolment in government schools and potentially adverse academic, administrative and fiscal consequences associated with it, policy makers in India have initiated experimenting with closure of government schools with low enrolments (‘small’ schools), an exercise commonly referred to as ‘school rationalisation’. However, the impact of this policy on access to schooling and learning remains empirically unexplored. Utilising ASER 2014 data, this paper asks three key questions: (a) what are the characteristics of villages in which ‘small’ schools are located?, (b) what options would students have if ‘small schools’ were to be closed, and finally (c) what are the differences in characteristics of ‘small’ and non-‘small’ schools? Results indicate that the villages which have ‘small’ schools are more disadvantaged in terms of essential public services such as all-weather roads leading to village, availability of government health facilities or banks and post offices. Additionally, these villages are less likely to have an alternative to the ‘small’ school, either government or private. Results also show that ‘small schools’ are much more likely to have multi-grade teaching. They are less likely to have basic infrastructural facilities. Interestingly, learning levels are unlikely to be different in ‘small’ schools than non- ‘small’ schools even after controlling for child, household and village attributes. Thus, the analysis suggests that school rationalisation can potentially have severe consequences on children’s access to schools without any meaningful impact on learning levels in a ‘business as usual’ scenario.

Go to link
Read More

Journal Articles | 2019

Bilevel optimization based on iterative approximation of multiple mappings

Ankur Sinha, Zhichao Lu, Kalyanmoy Deb, and Pekka Malo

Journal of Heuristics

A large number of application problems involve two levels of optimization, where one optimization task is nested inside the other. These problems are known as bilevel optimization problems and have been studied by both classical optimization community and evolutionary optimization community. Most of the solution procedures proposed until now are either computationally very expensive or applicable to only small classes of bilevel optimization problems adhering to mathematically simplifying assumptions. In this paper, we propose an evolutionary optimization method that tries to reduce the computational expense by iteratively approximating two important mappings in bilevel optimization; namely, the lower level rational reaction mapping and the lower level optimal value function mapping. The algorithm has been tested on a large number of test problems and comparisons have been performed with other algorithms. The results show the performance gain to be quite significant. To the best knowledge of the authors, a combined theory-based and population-based solution procedure utilizing mappings has not been suggested yet for bilevel problems.

Go to link
Read More

Journal Articles | 2019

Supporting and sustaining state-initiated women's empowerment: Learning from a national programme in India

Ankur Sarin and Vijaya Sherry Chand

Journal of International Development

State-led women's empowerment initiatives are usually indifferent to the tensions between the processes of transformation they initiate at the grassroots and the intermediary support structures they create to sustain empowerment. Drawing on the experiences of Mahila Samakhya, a programme initiated by the Indian state in the late 1980s, we argue that the failure of the state to acknowledge the struggles of the intermediary layers to reconcile the social purpose of transformation with the economic logic underpinning organizational survival only leads to reinforcing a new form of ‘neo-liberal compatible’ governance. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Go to link
Read More

Journal Articles | 2019

Downstream electric utility restructuring and upstream generation efficiency: Productivity dynamics of Indian coal and gas-based electricity generators

Anish Sugathan Anish Sugathan, Deepak Malghan, S Chandrashekar, and Deepak K. Sinha

Energy

This paper investigates the producer-level temporal dynamics of total factor productivity and operational performance changes in coal- and gas-based generators during the 2000–20013 period of major structural reforms in the downstream utilities in India. The total factor productivity is estimated using a recently developed improvement in the Stochastic Frontier panel method that controls for time-invariant unobserved heterogeneity, and the productivity change is decomposed into components of changes in technology frontier, efficiency, scale and allocation. A unique dataset of station-level data for coal and gas plants, that represents about two-thirds of all power generation in India during this period, is constructed for the analysis. The study shows that while there is improvement in the coal generator productivity at the mean rate of 0.20% per year that converges towards a point of higher efficiency for most plants, the gas generators show a trend of stagnant efficiency and declining total factor productivity at the mean rate of −0.80% per year. Unbundling and multi-dimensional utility reform indices are significantly associated with improvement in thermal efficiency and capacity utilization for coal generators. In contrast, utility reforms shows no significant positive influence on gas generators, instead a decline in capacity utilization is observed following unbundling.

Go to link
Read More

Journal Articles | 2019

Reverse innovation: a conceptual framework

Suresh Malodia, Shaphali Gupta, and Anand Kumar Jaiswal

Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science

Reverse innovation (RI) has emerged as a new growth strategy for MNCs to innovate in emerging markets and then to further exploit the profit potential of such innovations by subsequently introducing them not only in other similar markets but also in developed markets, thereby delivering MNCs a sustainable growth globally. In this study, we propose an overarching conceptual framework to describe factors that contribute to the feasibility of RIs. Using grounded theory with a triangulation approach, we define RI as a multidimensional construct, identify the antecedents of RI, discuss the outcomes, and propose a set of moderating variables contributing to the success of RIs. We also present a set of research propositions with their relative effects on the relationships proposed in the conceptual framework. Additionally, we provide future research directions and discuss theoretical contributions along with managerial implications to realize the strategic goals of RI.

Go to link
Read More

Journal Articles | 2019

Innovations in public administration in India

Dipti Gupta, Ashok Kumar Pandey, and Amit Garg

Economic & Political Weekly

Innovations in public service could be a core driver for ensuring that public administration becomes competitive, efficient, cost-effective and accountable to the citizenry. This state of innovation in India is analysed through the Prime Minister’s Awards for Excellence in Public Administration for the period 2005–06 to 2016–17. The analysis shows that most of the innovations are management innovations, followed by technological innovations. They indicate some degree of direction in good governance and replicability. There is also need for some scouting mechanism for public administration innovations and for providing a replicable yet flexible template to promote them across the country.

Go to link
Read More

Journal Articles | 2019

Exploring the role of urban green spaces in 'smartening' cities in India

Rama Mohana R Turaga, Sandip Chakrabarti, Urmila Jha-Thakur, and Dipita Hossain

Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal

This paper explores the conceptualization of Urban Green Space (UGS) within India’s urban planning process. In doing so, the context of the Smart Cities Mission (SCM), which is a flagship programme for urban transformation in the country, is chosen. We identified four key elements of UGS planning in the literature – quantity, accessibility, multifunctionality, and connectivity. Using this as a framework for analysis, we reviewed the national SCM guidelines and plans of four cities – Gwalior, Bhagalpur, Chandigarh, and Udaipur – in depth. We find that multifunctionality does not feature in the planning of UGS, and the notable absence of a connected, strategic vision suggests the need for strategic-level planning and assessment that goes beyond the project level in India.

Go to link
Read More

Journal Articles | 2019

An overlapping community detection algorithm based on rough clustering of links

Samrat Gupta and Pradeep Kumar

Data and Knowledge Engineering

The growth of networks is prevalent in almost every field due to the digital transformation of consumers, business and society at large. The unfolding of community structure in such real-world complex networks is crucial since it aids in gaining strategic insights leading to informed decisions. Moreover, the co-occurrence of disjoint, overlapping and nested community patterns in such networks demands methodologically rigorous community detection algorithms so as to foster cumulative tradition in data and knowledge engineering. In this paper, we introduce an algorithm for overlapping community detection based on granular information of links and concepts of rough set theory. First, neighborhood links around each pair of nodes are utilized to form initial link subsets. Subsequently, constrained linkage upper approximation of the link subsets is computed iteratively until convergence. The upper approximation subsets obtained during each iteration are constrained and merged using the notion of mutual link reciprocity. The experimental results on ten real-world networks and comparative evaluation with state-of-the-art community detection algorithms demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

Go to link
Read More

Journal Articles | 2019

The goblet and two faces: Understanding transcendence and paradox from the perspective of Advaita Vedanta

Shiva Kakkar (FPM)

Human Resource Management International Digest

Purpose

Paradox theory looks at ambidexterity as a set of paradoxical yet interrelated demands. A form of response to such paradoxes is transcendence. Currently, there is limited understanding of the concept among researchers. Using concepts from the Indian philosophy of Advaita Vedanta, this paper aims to provide a deeper understanding of transcendence, highlight some of the epistemological challenges it presents and suggest ways in which the concept can be used by practitioners and ambidexterity researchers.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper uses concepts and theories from advaitic episteme to look at concepts of paradox and transcendence. The method of adhyaropa–apavada is introduced as a way to help individuals get a transcendental perspective of paradoxes. The application of the method is demonstrated using secondary data from published research on ambidexterity management.

Findings

It is postulated that transcendence is an “intuitive experience” born out of reflexive thinking. The dialectic of adhyaropa–apavada (affirmation followed by recension) is suggested as a pedagogical tool that can promote reflexive thinking.

Originality/value

The paper significantly adds to the theoretical understanding of paradoxes and transcendence in ambidexterity literature. The paper also makes a strong pedagogical contribution to literature by suggesting the dialectic of adhyaropa–apavada that can be used by managers to promote reflexive thinking among subordinates when faced with paradoxical situations.

Go to link
Read More
IIMA