Dissertation Abstracts

Post Graduate Programme in

Public Policy and Management

(PGPPM)

2004-06

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Customer Satisfaction in Central Public Works Department

Amol Prabhakar Joshi

Central Public Works Department (CPWD), a government organization, has a

unique position in the industry of construction and infrastructure providers. The opening up

of the economy in India in the early ’90s created new challenges to all government

organisations. Concepts such as customer satisfaction and customer orientation were

adopted to identify and prioritize the areas for improving the quality of services provided by

CPWD to its various clients. The perceived quality of services provided by CPWD was

measured using the SERQUAL instrument on selected attributes and the Gap Approach.

The SERQUAL instrument was further integrated with Importance –Satisfaction model as

in Common Measurement Tools of Canadian Centre for Management Development. Areas

of improvement were identified by the quadrant approach method. Further correlation

analysis was also conducted to find out possible relations between satisfaction scores and

perception and importance scores. The results obtained by the GAP analysis were

collaborated by the subsequent analysis. Sample questionnaires were filled by employees of

thirty-three departments, mostly from the Bangalore unit and few from Hyderabad and

Nagpur units. It was found that CPWD lacked considerably in the reliability and

responsiveness attributes. The importance and satisfaction model also collaborate these

findings by highlighting the factors which correspond to reliability and responsiveness

attributes like speed of service and delivery of promise made.

The suggested structural, process and procedural changes in the institutional mechanism to

improve the deficient attributes are:

• Declaring vivid and clear goals of the departments which should be effectively

disseminated right down to the lowest rank;

• Involving clients to evaluate the performance of the staff; Constant interaction with

the client groups to receive feedback;

• Giving more financial and work related powers to the lower staffs, especially at the

superintending engineer level;

• Leaving the higher officers to monitor and guide;

• Training to departmental as well as contractor’s staff in dealing with the client

department;

• Cutting down procedural delays in award of contract by reducing duplicate works;

• Motivating staff by introducing more levels of promotional avenues by way of

designation as they grow in the department;

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• Introducing the concept of opportunity cost and performance measurement to

enhance the decision making capacity of the officers and improve accountability in

decision making;

• Making the department and the client more accountable by measuring the cost of

services provided and comparing the same with the industry average.

These suggestions are expected to improve the working of the department as a whole

and make it more reliable and responsive towards the client departments.

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Public-Private Partnerships in Financing Projects of Indian Railways

Anil Kumar Gupta

Indian Railways (IR) has been a consistently dividend paying organization, but

capacity addition and network growth rate have dwindled over the years due to falling net

budgetary support from the Government of India, and increasing social/political

expectations causing multi fold increase in the number of socially desirable but financially

unviable projects on its shelf. Economic liberalization and globalization post 1990 ushered in

a new era of challenges, which lead to a search for alternative financing involving the private

sector. During the last two decades varied forms of partnerships with IR have emerged and

in order to capture them seven carefully selected independent organizations, including

CONCOR, KRCL and RVNL were studied. They either came into existence as part of

public-private partnership (PPP) or used varied forms of private partnerships. Thirty key

professionals including MDs and Directors in these organizations, government heads of

Delhi and Bangalore Metros, consultants and financial institutions were interviewed in depth

for eliciting their perceptions and opinions on the existing PPP models and the way forward.

Public-private partnership of IR is based on a strong need for increasing

investment, prioritising projects, timely completion, adoption of modern systems on the new

network, and using private expertise in loss making peripheral services. Each case studied is

unique in respect of form of partnership, funding, risk management and regulatory

mechanism, and provides valuable insight into what caused its success/ failure in achieving

the different objectives. Interviews and case studies bring forward an emerging trend in India

in which public sector companies under IR and SPVs have a much greater role to play in

future PPPs and in building capability in the private sector. The most encouraging finding is

the perception among stakeholders that no major reform is needed, yet the government has

to take certain policy decisions to take the endeavour forward.

Looked at this in the backdrop of the international experience of British Railways,

German Railways, and American Railroads; which were reviewed in detail before the onset of

research; the PPP of IR has been primarily a bottom up evolution in new projects in contrast

to the top down imposition on the existing railway systems of the above mentioned countries.

Lessons learnt from these countries, from the Euro-tunnel Project, Indian PPP experience in

airports and highways have been utilized along with the research findings to propose six-

project PPP models, addressing the six most talked about areas ranging from Dedicated

Freight Corridor to Mass Rapid Transport projects. Seven project structures in varying degrees

of privatisation have been used including three variants of BOT, namely, Differed Payment,

Fixed PVR, and Annuity. Together they form the new project structure framework for PPP in

railways. But this was found inadequate to capture the entire evolution of PPP in IR. Further,

the government need not necessarily address each small project; rather it should focus on

creating organizations and laying sector level policies. In the process a three level PPP

framework was developed, which is far superior in capturing various models of private

partnerships in railways and providing strategies focussed on projects, organizations and the

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railway sector as a whole. The new framework also presents PPP as an alternative to railway

reforms with the involvement of the private sector being carried out in many countries.

The research has shown valuable patterns of evolution of public-private partnerships

in rail transport in India. The new framework of PPP has given form and shape to what had

already been happening in the railway industry in India for better understanding and clearer

strategies. The policy recommendations for the government, if implemented, would help IR

take a big leap in realizing its full potential and the six-project PPP models would provide

valuable tools to the practitioners for designing future project structures.

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Development of Risk Assessment (Predictive) Model for Selective Import Goods

Examination in the Indian Customs & Central Excise Department

Anuj Kumar

The pressure of handling a large increase in trade with the available scarce

resources in the last decade of the twentieth century, prompted the Indian Customs

authorities to change over from manual processing to computer based electronic processing

of customs documents. This led to the introduction of the electronic data interchange

system in Indian Customs department (ICES) in the late 1990s. However, the goods

examination process under the ICES still remained manual and thus time consuming. In this

backdrop, the current thesis suggests that predictive models can be built from the past

transaction data stored in the EDI databases. Such models can thus predict online the

likelihood of duty short declaration in the live declaration. Therefore, a lot of precious

examination effort can be saved by physically examining only those goods which are covered

by the declarations identified as fraudulent by this predictive model. The present work

illustrates the selection and preparation of relevant data and the development of predictive

models by the application of classification tree data mining algorithm. The customs data

poses the typical problems of skewed dataset, dissimilar training and application dataset and

the variable error of misclassification for each case. These problems have been handled by

using various data level and algorithm level interventions like under and over sampling,

subdivision of target variables, attachment of differential error weights, tree pruning and use

of two different algorithms in succession to finally achieve the maximum possible desirable

duty short declaration detections with reasonably low examination effort. The predictive

models developed by the hybrid applications of these interventions were able to detect over

90% of the total duty short declaration detections with a mere 30% of the original

examination effort. In addition, the tree structure and significant decision rules of these

predictive models throw useful insights into the patterns of the transaction data that can be

utilized for making better informed policy decisions in the Indian Customs department.

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Economic Viability for Bio-Diesel Farming and Business in India Leveraging On

Environmental and Social Implications

Chandrashekar Reddy G

Bio-diesel is getting prominence today because of the exhaustible nature of the

fossil fuels, volatile international crude oil market, need for energy security and increased

environmental awareness. The tree based non-edible oil (TBO) used as bio-diesel has the

potential to drive the Indian economy when compared to edible oils, which have a huge

demand in the kitchen itself. The long gestation period of TBOs, the requirement of high

investments in the initial years and the lack of government support are the main barriers for

the bio-diesel farming.

The critical issues involved in the motivation of farmers and businessmen are

opportunity cost of land use and signals from the government in the form of investment

support; support price; multiple species based extension support; facilitation of carbon trade;

legislation for mandatory blending and promotion of research and development. The

farmers and businessman feel that pollution control, organic farming, wasteland reclamation,

employment generation, and energy security for the country are the government’s

responsibilities, but are willing to share the responsibility if adequate support is extended

from the government. These issues are analysed from the existing secondary data, literature

available; interactions with the experts in various connecting sectors and on the basis of

personal experiences from the field visits. The bio-diesel experimentation is still very recent

for researchers to gather any meaningful quantitative data; therefore only quantitative

research methods are adopted.

The study indicates that areas for targeting bio-diesel farming on a priority basis

are farm bunds, railway lands, mine spoils, cultivable wastelands, fallow lands and degraded

forest areas - but definitely not food crop areas. Farmers should be encouraged only when

quality seedlings are available for farming. As the crop matures the yields are likely to

increase and therefore additional demand of bio-diesel can be met. Multi species base for

raw material is a preferred option.

The government can leverage carbon credits from the use of renewable bio-

diesel, oilcake as organic manure in place of chemical fertilizer, bio-gas production from

oilcake and from the growth of the bio-diesel plantations, and be prepared for

environmental regulations after the first phase of the Kyoto protocol. The government can

also save on account of subsidies and avoid the cost of pollution control. The promotion of

organic farming in dry land farming areas where chemical fertilizers are not traditionally used

is very important for higher productivity as it can take care of the availability of food grains

even if part of the cultivated area is diverted for bio-diesel farming. The application of

organic manure to the bio-diesel farm also ensures sustained yield.

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In all this, supply chain management is crucial. The seed procured by the farmers

from their lands or by the SHGs from common lands should be purchased by the oil

companies at the agriculture market committee yards by declaring the support price and

giving oil cake free to the farmers. While fixing the price for bio-diesel it should not be

considered as the cheaper alternative and the greatest advantage is to be given to the farmer

as oil expeller, and the trans-esterifying agency can capitalize on the extraction of the bio-

pesticides from the oil; biogas production from oil cake and value addition to glycerol.

Employment generation and energy security in rural areas would bring in

livelihoods security and avoid distress migration. Global energy crisis and climate change

problems can be attended to by switching to bio-diesel use and this can be an integral part of

the strategy for achieving millennium development goals. Bio-diesel farming project in dry

land farming areas has multiple benefits like irrigation projects but with the lesser costs. At

present bio-diesel can be economically viabile only through government incentives. By

leveraging the environmental and social implications of bio-diesel, we can avoid the social

delays in adapting the program.

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Financing of Central Government Health Scheme (CGHS): A Case Study of The

Department of Post

Dave B.B

The Central Government Health Scheme (CGHS), introduced in 1954 as a

contributory welfare healthcare scheme for Central Government employees and their

families, has almost lost its purpose and has become highly inefficient, cost-ineffective and

cumbersome in procedures. As a sub-system of the larger network of publicly run health

systems in India, it has been criticised on quality, significant out-of-pocket expenses,

inadequate staff, shortage of medicines etc. This paper analyses the existing arrangements for

financing the scheme and the effectiveness of such arrangements. The cost per CGHS card

for serving employees and pensioners calculated from 2001-02 to 2003-04 revealed abnormal

increases – the cost increase was far more than increase in the number of cardholders. Data

on treatment costs, reimbursements and out-of-pocket expenses collected from the

Department of Post’s establishments in Delhi and Bangalore (hospital category wise and

disease category wise) revealed that despite liberal rules of reimbursements, out-of-pocket

expenses are quite high. A comparative study between Delhi and Bangalore is also made on

similar indoor-cost-related-parameters.

A qualitative survey conducted among the Delhi based DOP officials revealed

that they preferred treatment in private hospitals over government hospitals, and that their

satisfaction level was higher when treated in registered private hospitals. About 67% of the

191 employees surveyed were willing to pay significantly more than the existing rates of

subscription, provided that the choice of providers is widened and reimbursement rules are

further liberalized.

In the case of DOP Delhi, the premium to cost ratio comes out to a meagre ~

12%, which means ~87.37% subsidy. The subsidy ranges from 96.19% for the lowest slab of

Rs.15/pm to 69.11% for the highest slab of Rs.150/pm. Such huge subsidy by the

government for a small group of persons i.e. CGHS beneficiaries can hardly be justified as

the burden of the subsidy is borne by the general tax-payer. The paper critically analyses the

findings and evaluates the possible alternatives. Finally, it proposes a framework of reforms

required to be carried out for financing the scheme (addressing issues like linking

subscriptions to basic pay, introduction of co-payment/user fee etc.). The paper also

discusses issues relating to the necessary institutional and managerial reforms that have to be

carried out. Granting of autonomy; introduction of Third Party Administrators for auditing

the scheme etc. have been proposed with a prospective view of eventually developing the

scheme as a comprehensive social insurance scheme.

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Strategy for BSNL for Providing Viable Telecom Connectivity in the State Of

Uttaranchal

Deepak Kumar

There is a need to have a clear understanding of the issues, problems and

prospects associated with the rural telecom connectivity. The general argument of service

providers is that rural telecom services are financially not viable. Does the argument hold

well in the ever changing and technologically driven vibrant telecom market? What are the

costs involved with respect to different technologies for providing rural telephony? Can we

develop a cost effective economic model for providing not only rural telephony but a total telecom solution?

With this broad question in mind, this topic has been chosen for the dissertation. The

purpose of this research is to understand the reasons for the wide gap in tele-density

between urban and rural areas; how these positions could be changed and what are the

policy guidelines?

In this research thesis, the current state of telecom connectivity in Uttaranchal has

been studied. Beginning with landline connections, different technology deployments in

different parts of Uttaranchal have also been studied. The study draws conclusions on the

basis of revenue and cost pattern in different telephone exchanges in the state of

Uttaranchal. The marginal revenue has been linked to marginal cost after studying the cost

pattern for the capital as well as for the operating & maintenance expenditure in a few

telephone exchanges (wherever the data was available) in the Uttaranchal telecom circle of

BSNL. The problem faced by users in getting the telecom facility as well as by the operator

in providing telecom services in this difficult geographical and hilly terrain has also been

studied. The study concludes by suggesting some policy changes required in this regard, not

only for this hilly state but for all such hilly and geographically difficult states in the country.

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Women’s Empowerment: Effect of Participation in Self Help Groups (SHGs)

Deepti Umashankar

This study seeks to explore the impact of participation in Self Help Groups on the

empowerment of women in the context of the great importance being given to the group

approach while conceptualizing any programme for rural women. The study is situated in

Mewat district, in the northern state of Haryana, which faces the conundrum of rapid

economic growth juxtaposed with poor social indicators. The study uses the personal

narrative method to give a voice to women’s perspective, and looks at various dimensions of

empowerment – material, cognitive, perceptual and relational. Access to credit can help in

the expansion of women’s material base by enabling them to start and develop small

businesses, often accompanied by market access; the women also experienced ‘Power

within’: feelings of freedom, strength, self identity and increased levels of confidence and

self-esteem. However, gender discrimination is most deeply entrenched within the family,

and this is evident in attitudes towards daughters-in-law, daughters, the gender based

division of work, roles and responsibilities; plus in the mind-set towards domestic violence

and issues of ownership and inheritance of land. At the social level, one encouraging trend is

that women have been able to challenge the norm of purdah. Besides, involvement in SHGs

has enabled women to have a voice in the community affairs and they have been able to

tackle problems such as a lack of drinking water and electricity, access to health services and

children’s education. Though women face handicaps to their involvement in politics, their

participation in SHGs has altered them, and these women can be prospective leaders in the

local political field. Nonetheless, various constraints like discriminatory practices in labour,

low levels of skills etc. operate to constrict a woman’s potential for empowerment. It may be

comparatively easier to ensure material changes rather than to cause a change in the power

structures, ideologies and attitudes, which accompany them. However, no milieu is static,

and some of the recommendations for a way forward include providing a convergence of

inputs, ensuring a proactive involvement of women in the program, changing social norms

and perceptions and anchoring with wider movements of social change.

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Forest Development Agencies as Mechanisms for Institutionalizing Joint Forest

Management: A Critical Appraisal

Kamlesh Chatutvedi

The dissertation deals with the role and contribution of the Forest Development

Agency (FDA) in institutionalising and strengthening the Joint Forest Management (JFM) in

India. It was against the background of the growing realization of the importance of the

decentralised governance and bottoms up approach in planning and execution of the

developmental works and natural resource management that the Forest Policy of 1988 was

introduced. It replaced the previous forest policy of 1952. The new policy emphasised

management of the forests by local communities, which was a paradigm shift. The rights of the

locals to forests were recognised for the first time in independent India. The 1990 circular of

the Government of India that followed the 1988 policy suggested that states should take steps

to involve village communities in the regeneration of forests. This circular formed the basis of

the Joint Forest Management (JFM) in India. More guidelines were issued in 2000 and 2002 to

make JFM effective. As on 31.07.05; 99,708 JFM Committees are jointly managing 20.10

million hectares of forests in India. The JFMCs were not envisaged to be work-executing

agencies. They were not involved in executing the forestry activity works. They were not

involved in afforestation activities. They were supposed to protect natural forests and earn a

share in harvested forest produce.

To make afforestation participatory and to further scale up the JFM concept, the

Government of India introduced the concept of Forest Development Agency Scheme (FDA)

in the closing years of ninth five-year plan. Under the FDA scheme funds are to be transferred

to the JFMCs through the FDA, a registered body of the JFMCs at the territorial Division level

to carry out the village level developmental works and afforestation activities. As on 31.07.05,

Government of India has sanctioned 639 FDAs which through 21,953 JFMCs are doing works

worth 1,454 crores. This study is an attempt to explore the contribution of the FDA in

strengthening of the JFM movement.

Chapter –1 deals with the evolution of Forest Management policies in India from

the British period up to the advent of the FDAs. Chapter-2 details the concept of FDA..

Chapter-3 outlines the context of the research problem, literature review, objective of the

research and the concepts in participatory management. Chapter-4 details the research

questions and the methodology of the research. Chapter –5 deals with the inferences on the

primary data collected through questionnaire and the statistical analysis of the same. Chapter- 6

describes outcomes of interviews and discussions and assesses execution level and impact of

FDA on the JFM. Chapter –7 examines the secondary data available with respect to FDA and

their findings. Chapter-8 elaborates the conclusions and recommendations.

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Institutional and Technological Constraints for Commercialization of Honge Bio

Fuel in Karnataka State: Policy Issues

Kanwerpal

Environmental stability and energy security are essential for the overall

development of India. Factors like ever increasing import bills, high consumption of

petroleum, and price uncertainty in the international market have caused considerable

concern and underline the necessity for stable and sustained economic growth. The domestic

supply of crude oil is about 22% and the demand for transport fuel is expected to grow from

10 MMT (2006) to12.848 MMT (2011). It is imperative therefore to find a viable and

sustainable alternative energy source to reduce dependence on import. The other issues that

need immediate attention include, cutting down on harmful emission, providing energy

security, environmental amelioration and providing gainful employment in the rural sector.

Bio diesel made from oil extracted from the seeds of the Honge tree (Pongamia pinnata) is a

renewable, eco-friendly, oxygenated, potential bio fuel that can be easily blended with diesel

up to 20% and used without any engine modification, leading to increase in mileage and

thermal efficiency. Organized cultivation of Honge will enable sustained growth by

providing energy security, employment, and a clean and green environment.

This research was undertaken to explore whether Karnataka has the potential or

otherwise to take up Honge cultivation on a commercial scale and to see what the

constraints in its commercialization are. The methodology adopted in this study includes

interviewing farmers and oil expellers, and collection of data from secondary sources. The

findings are that farmers are not willing / interested at present to raise Honge tree crop in

block plantations and that food security is their greatest concern. They are willing to practice

farm forestry on a larger scale and to raise Honge tree cropping on bunds, provided saplings

of high yielding variety are available, and buy back guarantee of seeds is provided by the

government functionaries. Many of the farmers are still not aware of the potential of Honge

bio diesel. There exist no effective market mechanism/ policies in the field level to promote

the use of bio-diesel. Creation of bio diesel market, with supply network, awareness

campaign of use and advantages of bio diesel, capacity building of locals, establishment of

demonstration plots, and supply of genetically superior seedlings with assured buy back of

seeds can turn around the rural economy in Karnataka. This will not only provide energy

security, round the year employment, and additional income in rural areas, but will also be

cutting down harmful emissions, thus achieving multiple objectives - that of energy security,

employment, and environment amelioration. There is a large genetic variation in seeding of

Honge trees in a natural stand. Supply of genetically superior seedlings holds the key for

commercial Honge tree cropping on farmlands.

The government transport sector can offer the support price for Honge oil so as

to reap the twin benefits of increased mileage and reduced greenhouse emission. For

promotion and use of the bio diesel and to reduce harmful emissions, resource building

green tax needs to be imposed on use of fossil diesel, while blended diesel is to be exempted.

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This will generate resources for the self-financing of Honge plantations, striking a balance in

environmental stability, productivity, equity and it would also prove that the government is

fulfilling its social responsibility. To overcome the resource crunch and to induce market

efficiency, public-private partnership is also to be encouraged for taking up large-scale

Honge plantations in degraded forestlands for commercialization, research and development

of Honge bio diesel.

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India-Thailand Free Trade Agreement (FTA): A Critical Analysis through Indian

Auto-Components Industry

N.J Kumaresh

In the global era, countries have understood the need for trade liberalization by

lowering their trade restrictions unilaterally, bilaterally, regionally or multilaterally. Regional

or bilateral trade agreements have become increasingly popular among the nations.

India, for long, had remained a closed market till it started to liberalize its

economy unilaterally from 1991. India has become active in recent years in finalising bilateral

Free Trade Agreements. India’s economic growth in recent years and its market size have

attracted the attention of countries, which were hitherto hesitant to do business with India.

Though India’s trade agreements with its neighbours such as Srilanka and Afganistan did not

affect the domestic industries, the India-Thailand FTA, signed in September 2004 had raised

strong protests from the domestic manufacturing industry such as the auto-component

industry.

This first part of this paper attempts to understand the strategies of these countries

in using the FTA and to see what could be the dynamics if there are different strategies. The

second part analyses at the feedback obtained from the on the Indian auto-component

cluster in the Chennai-Bangalore region. The feedback has been obtained through in-depth

interviews with the players from the Indian automotive and auto-components industry as

well as the policy-makers in the Government of India to understand what the FTA means to

them.

The findings indicate that for a trade agreement to be successful, it has to be owned

by the industry in the country. If the partner countries have different strategies and

objectives to be achieved through an FTA, it creates a different kind of dynamics, which may

not be mutually beneficial to the partner countries. Again, if the trade policy of a country is

not synchronized with the industrial/investment policies of the country, the trade agreement

may not exactly achieve the desired objectives. In such a scenario, it is better for a country to

go in for unilateral or multilateral trade liberalization than to go in for a bilateral trade

arrangement.

The study on the Indian auto-component industry indicates that the automobile

majors are outsourcing their manufacturing to low-cost manufacturing countries including

India and Thailand. Thailand appears to be better prepared to leverage the benefits of the

FTA since they have a focused aim of making Thailand, the “Detroit of the East”.

The study also indicates that India lacks institutional mechanisms to consult the

think tanks and industry before going for an FTA with any country vis-à-vis the partner

countries. There are important lessons to be learnt and the policy recommendations have

been made at the last chapter.

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Transfer Pricing Methodologies in the BPO Industry-Capturing Intangibles from the

Taxation Perspective

Lakshmi Hande Puri

This dissertation was conceived in the light of the explosive growth of the BPO

industry in India, the consequential large volume of international transactions involved and,

perhaps even more importantly, the evolution of the industry from rendering simple

transaction-based type services (such as call centre services) to more complex services that

would involve significant intellectual content. The issue of transfer pricing relating to

intangibles that such complex services may entail seemed to be of great relevance from the

taxation perspective.

The objective of the dissertation is to formulate an approach (or approaches) to

how transfer pricing with respect to intangibles in the BPO industry may be arrived at, such

that it is representative of an arms length price. The structure followed in the dissertation is

as follows:

Chapter 1 consists of an introduction to the subject of transfer pricing and the

BPO industry. It also explains the different definitions of intangibles. In Chapter 2, the

different methodologies available to arrive at a transfer price that would be representative of

an arms length price are covered. Chapter 3 contains a review of the literature available on

the subject, particularly with reference to transfer pricing in the case of intangibles, to ensure

that one is not reinventing the wheel. Chapter 4 provides the research framework in terms of

explaining the research objectives, the hypothesis framed etc. Chapter 5 summarizes

information gathered from the Income tax Dept. with respect to a few cases of BPO

companies, the methodology followed by these companies, and the views taken with respect

to the methodologies by the Income tax Dept. The information gathered from a few BPO

companies through the questionnaire issued is reviewed in Chapter 6.

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Assessing the Impact Of the National Child Labour Policy 1987 & National Child

Labour Projects (NCLPs) in Elimination of Child Labour In India

Laxmikant Vasant Deshmukh

Child labour is a global problem that demands worldwide response. The Indian

government is pro-active in its legislative action plan to address the child labour problem.

The National policy on child labour 1987 & National Child Labour Project are the strategic

elements in India’s response to eliminating child labour.

This paper attempted to study the functioning of two representative NCLPs from

two states of India having the largest number of child labourers. The hypothesis formulated

for the study was that the National Child labour policy & NCLP are highly inadequate as

they lack a holistic and integrated approach in their conceptual, institutionary and

implementational aspects, as well as in their overall design. A mixture or both qualitative and

quantitative methodology was adopted.

The key research findings are as follows:

1. The National Policy has denied free and compulsory education to the child labourers

working in non hazardous occupation. It also denied the right of health care. Thus

the policy has compromised with the most of the articles of C.R.C.

2. The vicious cycle of poverty perpetuates child labour. The national policy failed to

break the cycle, as it has not been successful in helping the parents of child labourers

with a package of economic assistance and skill upgradation, spelt out in the policy.

3. The standard of the vocational training is poor and not in tune with the market

demand. In spite of having the freedom and authority to design quality and

productive vocational training, it did not happen due to the bureaucratization of

project society and concentration of decision-making with the chairperson of NCLP.

Thus the students of special schools graduate to adulthood and still remain

unproductive, being unable come out of their poverty.

4. The study found very low awareness of the civil society, especially among the parents

of students of special schools. They were found to be sending their other children to

work instead of school.

5. There is a mixed result of enforcing the legislative action plan at the two NCLPs

studied. Lacking commitment and by not aligning with the goals and objectives of

NCLP, the enforcement machinery at district level could not deter the erring

employer engaging child labour.

6. The low involvement of various stakeholders in elimination of child labour is

resulting in less than desired results of NCLPs.

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7. The lack of interdepartmental coordination and heralding convergence is also

contributing to the slow progress of NCLPs.

On the basis of interactions with a few reputed NGOs working in the field of child

labour, the study finally suggested a new revamped policy capable of addressing the

inadequacies found in the functioning of NCLPs. If adopted, the new policy can eliminate

child labour from the project area over a period of time.

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An Exploration of the Market Orientation of BSNL and Its Effect on Organizational

Identification of Senior Officers

Madhav Narayan Punde

With the liberalization of the Indian economy, private sector participation in the

telecommunications sector got a thrust. The monopolistic department of

telecommunications was converted into a corporation called BSNL, which has been facing

intense private sector competition in the telecom services. In this changed scenario, BSNL

should become market oriented to maintain a sustained competitive advantage. This is a

study of the market orientation of BSNL. The attempt is to understand organizational and

behavioural factors which will help BSNL become market oriented. The effect of

organizational learning disabilities on market orientation and the effect of market orientation

on organizational identification are studied.

The hypotheses developed have been tested with the help of correlation and

regression analysis. The study has used readily available scales for identifying organizational

learning disabilities for measuring market orientation of the firm and for measuring

organizational identification of the employees.

The results show that organizational learning disabilities hamper market

orientation of BSNL. Simple mindedness and superstitious learning affect market orientation

of BSNL the most, followed by blindness and homogeneity. Data supported the predicted

relationship between organizational learning disabilities and market orientation dimensions,

except paralysis.

However, the link between market orientation and organizational identification

has proved to be weaker than expected. Response design and response implementation

affect organizational identification the most. Data showed that predicted relationship

between intelligence generation and dis-identification does not hold good.

Overall homogeneity and response design affect dis-identification and identification

of the employees; while response implementation affects ambivalent and neutral

identification.

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Business Process Reengineering Case of MPLS-VPN Service in BSNL

N Murali Krishna

Business process reengineering is a concept, which aims at introducing radical

changes in the business process of organisations to achieve better performance. Several

companies in the manufacturing sector have applied the concept to revamp their production

process. Of late, the services industry too started using this concept and related techniques

to improve their service delivery mechanism to customers. However, though BPR concepts

and techniques are being used in the private sector, the public sector companies in India are

lagging behind in this regard. The Indian telecommunication sector has witnessed sweeping

changes due to implementation of the new telecom policy (NTP)-1994, 1999, which has

opened up the sector to the private companies. As a result, customers now have a wide

range of services and service providers to choose from. BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam

Limited), India’s largest telecom company, which was carved out of the Department of

Telecom in the year 2000, has played a key role in achieving the targets set by the New

Telecom Policy. However, as the heat of competition is rising, customers are distancing

themselves from BSNL due to deficiencies in service delivery and poor customer care. The

technological changes are also happening rapidly and increasingly data is gaining importance

compared to voice. The delivery of services based on data requires a radical change in

BSNL’s approach customer care since customer expectations are higher for data related

services. BSNL has to seriously review the present way of doing business, analyse the reason

for customers not willing to embrace its services and remove the drawbacks in the current

procedure and mechanism of working. In this study an attempt has been made to identify

and study the flaws in the current ‘customer facing process” pertaining to MPLS-VPN

(Multi protocol Label Switching- Virtual Private Network) which is a new data based service

launched by BSNL for providing highly secure closed user group network connectivity to

corporates and other organisations. This study identifies the defects in the current process

and accordingly develops a revised process to improve the service delivery mechanism

drastically. It also suggests the strategy for implementation of this revised process.

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Competitiveness of the UP Sugar Industry: Problems and Prospects

Nitin R. Gokarn

India is the largest consumer and second largest producer of sugar. Sugar is the

largest agro-based industry in rural India with over 45 million sugarcane farmers. Sugar is a

regulated commodity and is important to the political economy of the major states including

Uttar Pradesh (UP). The study of the competitiveness of the UP sugar industry, which ranks

first in cane cultivation, is important in the context of an industry in financial distress,

declining area under cane, ongoing phased decontrol of sugar in India, production shortfalls,

reform processes in EU and US markets, emerging potential for the fuel ethanol and

CDM’s. The study examines the impact of removal of subsidy in the EU and US markets

across major sugar producers. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) for all mills operating in

UP during 1993-94 to 2003-04 has been examined for efficiencies and has been compared

with Maharashtra mill efficiencies for 2000-01 and 2001-02. The management model and

control systems of Haidergarh unit of Balrampur are examined for replicability. The

environmental costs and benefits of cane cultivation, including cogeneration, ethanol and

carbon credits are examined. Factors impacting efficiency levels of sugarcane production in

UP are analyzed in terms of its costs and benefits. The study concludes that for the U.P.

sugar industry to be cost competitive it needs to use the cane biomass as an energy and bio-

fuel source. State Advisory Prices need to be frozen at current levels and incentive systems

need to be built-in to link pricing with sucrose content and time of harvest. Cane

cooperatives do not add value but lead to substantial costs while constraining feedback to

mills and growers and need to be abolished to enable backward linkages of mills with

farmers. Technological upgradation and cogeneration can be financed through carbon

credits. Mergers need to be encouraged to develop economies of scale in the existing units.

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Ecotourism in Protected Areas and its Policy Implications - A Case Study of Periyar

Tiger Reserve, Kerala

Noyal Thomas

Tourism has been regarded as the fastest growing sector in the global economy,

with a turn over of more than $ 500 billion, surpassing even the Information Technology

sector. The growing environmental awareness of the 1970’s and 80’s resulted in the shift from

consumptive mass tourism to more sustainable non-consumptive nature tourism in the 1990’s.

Though the concept of ecotourism permeates all the spheres of tourism through its

sustainability concept, much needs to be done at the policy level in the area of nature tourism

so as to prevent the drifting of the practices into the ones practiced by mass tourism earlier.

Ecotourism in protected areas is nothing new but merely the reinvention of the old wildlife

tourism practiced earlier in these areas. With the advent of ecotourism the thrust has been for

the participation of local communities in planning and implementing the various programmes

so as to directly accrue the benefits. Ecotourism has conservation of the resources and

deriving sustainable benefits out of these resources with the active participation of the

stakeholders as the central theme.

An attempt has been made in this study to analyze the ecotourism practices taking

place in the Periyar Tiger Reserve in Kerala and their policy implications for future

management, not only of Periyar but also of other major sanctuaries of the state. The

qualitative study was made through structured questionnaires, focussed group discussions and

in-depth interviews of the policy makers and various stakeholders. The views elicited were

analyzed and based on the findings suggestions were made for the future policy prescriptions

for the protected areas of the state, especially for Periyar and other major sanctuaries.

The study finds that community based tourism activities, through empowerment of

local communities are reaping rich dividends in Periyar. The institution of Periyar Foundation

has given the necessary impetus and flexibility to the community based ecotourism activities.

The institutional frameworks of EDC’s and their confederation have been found to be

successful and major portions of the conservation activities are being funded by the Periyar

Foundation now. Hence it has been suggested that the other PA’s in the state should go for

community based ecotourism initiatives constituting EDC’s and also respective foundations so

as to become self sustainable in all respects. There is an urgent need to develop the satellite

camping sites in the plantations around the sanctuaries as part of plantation tourism so that

much of the pressure on the sanctuaries could be reduced. This will help to generate valuable

revenue and can act also as an insurance against the crisis in the plantation sector, especially for

the tea and cardamom plantations in the high ranges of Kerala.

The study makes the following policy recommendations:

• There should be a concrete ecotourism policy for the state to take up the activities in

conformity with the accepted principles of sustainability.

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• Ecotourism activities should invariably be taken up with conservation as the focal

point and through local community participation.

• Organizations like the Periyar Foundation could be constituted in the Protected Areas

and Non Protected Areas for the flexibility and smooth functioning of these initiatives.

• The activities within the Sanctuaries should be limited to the carrying capacity

preferably of the flexible type by undertaking various modifications in the P.A’s and

Non P.A’s so as to enhance the carrying capacity.

• The concept of Limits of Acceptable Change may be a good alternative to carrying

capacity as it is very difficult to arrive at absolute terms while assessing carrying

capacity.

• Private sector be encouraged to take up infrastructure development in the plantations

surrounding the sanctuaries according to the approved perspective plan and should

also be permitted to take up investments in hotels, resorts and other infrastructure.

• All tourism activities should be taken up as per the Certificate of Tourism

Sustainability so as to ensure the sustainability of the whole programme.

• There should be a synergy between various agencies facilitating tourism activities like

Tourism Department and Forest Department. They should act as facilitators rather

than as directors in the whole programme, so that ecotourism activities would help the

cause of conservation in the protected areas of the state, and can also be a tool for

socio economic empowerment of the local stake holders so as to make them own the

conservation programmes in the state.

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Power Distribution Reforms in Delhi

Prashant Goyal

State Electricity Boards in India have not been run on commercial principles and

this has created serious socio-economic problems. Under the circumstances, power

distribution reforms have become inevitable for the nation. Faced with similar circumstances

and due to growing public discontent with the performance of state-owned Delhi Vidyut

Board, the Delhi Government decided to privatise the distribution business in July 2002.

Since then the performance has unambiguously improved, as reflected in lower losses, better

quality of supply (QoS) and reduced financial burden on the government. However, the

reform strategy has not been without flaws. Hence, the Delhi model has number of useful

lessons for the other reforming utilities to emulate.

Chapter 2 presents the research questions and the methodology used to find answers to

them. Extensive reliance has been made on in-depth interviews with people involved in the

reform process at various levels and this has helped in adding a practical touch to the

analysis. Chapter 3 comes up with extensive literature review of the studies that have been

done in this field. However, no study seems to have gone into the details of the reform

process as it has unfolded in Delhi.

Chapter 4 highlights the managerial and technical measures used by the distribution

companies to reduce their losses and improve QoS. The research tries to examine whether

there is any freshness in their strategy and whether the measures could have been properly

sequenced. The innovate concept of measuring losses as aggregate technical and commercial

losses has been discussed in Chapter 5, along with their advantages and limitations.

Chapter 6 moves on to examine the role of Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission in the

reform process. The chapter also examines if the regulator could have been more pro-active?

Taking cue from the Latin American experience with power reforms, Delhi had adopted a

partial multi-year tariff (MYT). The chapter has tried to examine the usefulness of MYT in

the political economy of India and also in light of the controversy created by the recent

demand to amend the Electricity Act 2003 to make the regulator subservient to the

government directions. Finally, Chapter 7 has used the Ahmed Galal Framework to

examine how successful the Delhi privatisation experiment has been.

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The Antecedents of Psychological Contract and Its Consequences: An Empirical

Study of Frontline Employees of the Forest Department in a North Indian State

Pratibha Singh

In this study, psychological contract is viewed as being influenced by organization

politics, job-design (task autonomy, task identity, task significance and task feedback), and

organizational justice (procedural, distributive, interactional and informational). The

proposed influences of psychological contract are seen as burnout (emotional exhaustion,

personal accomplishment and de-personalisation), organization identification (positive

identification, dis-identification, neutral and ambivalent identification) and organizational

commitment. A number of hypotheses are developed linking the psychological contract to

the various antecedents and consequent variables.

Data for empirical verification was gathered through field study using a

questionnaire in Hindi. The data was then analyzed and the hypothesis verified through

multiple regression for foresters and forest guards. SPSS software was used for the statistical

analysis. Along with the empirical study, a blank space was left in the questionnaire to

encourage people to give their responses on whatever they felt was important to them based

on the questionnaire. The responses were then grouped and analyzed.

Results indicated that organization politics, distributive and procedural justice, task

autonomy, task significance and task feedback were important antecedents of the

psychological contract. Organization identification was an important consequence of

psychological contract fulfillment. Organization disidentification was high when exhaustion

was high and personal accomplishment was low. Levels of burnout were low in the

department and commitment level of foresters was interestingly more than that of forest

guards though the latter enjoyed more autonomy. The study is an effort to enhance the

understanding of the psychological contract among the frontline employees in the Forest

Department to motivate them and to put to best use their talents and skills.

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Livelihood - Focused Conservation Development Model for Maharashtra

Praveen Srivastava

Livelihood rights amount to dependence of local villagers upon the forests for

meeting their bonafide needs of timber, firewood and minor forest produce. As they earn

their wage income from forest-related activities and have their homes in forests, they get

financial and social security as well. Conservation connotes ensuring sustainability of the

ecosystem that encompasses soil, water, air, flora and fauna - in a way a whole life-support

system. There is a popular notion that livelihood rights of forest-dependent people

jeopardize conservation, as people-centric conservation policies are in conflict with

conservation-centric laws. This is based on the precept that harvest of forest produce affects

regeneration. It is applicable to commercial harvest, but certainly may not hold well in cases

of livelihood-driven extraction. The line demarcating these two domains is hazy. To that,

contradicting judicial pronouncements under the influence of evolving global conservation

conventions have added more confusion. Growing number of scanners of conservation

activities in the form of Supreme Court, High Courts, Centrally Empowered Committee,

National Forest Commission, NGOs, media and the recently created PM-appointed

committee headed by Sunita Narayan to probe the reasons for the dwindling number of

tigers in Sariska, cumulatively create an air of urgency to resolve the existing paradox.

This dissertation probes several ongoing national and international efforts

attempting to resolve this conflict. To that, diverge perceptions of all the relevant

stakeholders over the twin issues through questionnaire-cum-interviews was collated.

Politicians, bureaucrats, forest officers, media people, NGOs and academia from Karnataka

and Maharashtra, with credible past experience about the twin issues were interviewed.

Stakeholder analysis was corroborated by the innovations in the existing policy indicators to

discern cause and affect relationship in regard to social capital with livelihood security status

within a society. Likewise, inter-relation of ecological capital with eco restoration status of an

ecosystem and the need for economic capital investment for achieving sustainable

development too was analysed. The analysis reveals that social capital is crucial, but

insufficient economic capital often results in ecological degradation. Forest-rich belts

therefore need empowerment of local village institutions. Promotion to forest produce-

based sustainable industries in such areas may ensure eco restoration as well as economic

well-being. The need to invoke this to arrest the social strife simmering in forest-rich tribal

belts may no longer be denied. Resource-starved degraded forest regions need investment

from private sectors along the line of sustainability while ensuring livelihood security and

thereby ushering in a holistic development. A tripartite arrangement between the private

sector, the federation of existing forest protection committees and the Forest Development

Corporations may turn out to be a viable strategy. Experiences world over have proved this

beyond doubt. Care, however, should be taken to ensure that unalloyed commercial interests

of private sectors may not jeopardise the social capital and in turn livelihood security.

Livelihood security certainly warrants judicious and adequate investment in conservation for

its sustenance.

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Bio-Fuels and the Impact on India’s Future Oil Dependence

Pushpa Thottan

The high crude oil prices ruling since mid-2004 has once again trained the

spotlight on the dangers of continued dependence of a large part of the global economy on

oil imports from the Middle East. Simultaneously, it has highlighted the potential of bio-

fuels to lower this dependence to a limited extent, as Brazil, USA and the EU demonstrate.

India has also recently ventured into this area and is considering alternatives available.

The world fuel ethanol production of 28 billion litres, equalling 0.4 million

barrels per day is mainly concentrated in Brazil and the United States. This constitutes about

0.5% of global oil consumption, production being based on sugarcane or corn. Bio-diesel

production is as yet less than 2 billion litres per day. Low-cost feedstock such as cellulosic

crops and wood would serve to substantially increase global production potential. Long-term

prospects for bio-fuels use depend on biomass availability, future food demand and food

patterns, other types of land use and agricultural productivity, costs compared to oil based

transportation fuels and government support.

In all countries where bio-fuels are now in vogue, finding their place under the

sun has been an uphill battle, since the cost-benefit evaluation of bio-fuels is dominated by

relatively difficult-to-quantify benefits ranged against well-defined costs. Promotional factors

instrumental for growth in ethanol and bio-diesel use have been the consciousness of their

social benefits, the involvement of the oil sector, production and tax incentives to producers,

subsidies to users, environmental initiatives, land use policies, stakeholder support and so on.

India’s imports of crude as a percentage of the total crude available have been

over 70% in the past years and are slated to become higher as the GDP increases even faster.

Additionally, our limited reserves of oil and gas necessarily imply that our oil dependence

will continue to reign high, particularly in transport because of the limitations of fuel

substitutability. For the present, increased refining capacity, reduced imports of costlier

petroleum products and export of petro-products have so far kept the oil import bill within a

third of the total import bill, but the situation would not continue to be under control

indefinitely

Analysis of the relationship between import dependence, real GDP and the oil

price (in rupees) yielded significant results for the period 1970-2003, and is as follows:

ln (crude imports) = - 4.476 + 1.648 ln (real GDP) - 0.216 ln (oil price in t-1)

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However, in the short-run, the results were insignificant or contrary to theoretical

expectations, perhaps partly because India is not a major player in the oil market and partly

on account of the short-term inelasticity of demand for crude oil.

As India is a diesel-based economy with an annual consumption of almost 40

MMT, a 5% bio-fuel in diesel would obviously have a much greater impact on oil imports

than a similar blend in petrol in transport. Focus on non-transport, where such use would be

voluntary - though perhaps the best way to proceed - may not yield much. A government

mandate issued to the oil companies to use bio-fuels is definitely needed in the initial years

till the product price stabilizes, in the form of, say, guaranteed purchase as per specifications

at specified prices.

As commercial production of bio-fuels is yet to commence on a large enough

scale, it is advisable to start with a lower level of bio-fuel blend, say 2% and gradually raise

the percentage over the years as production capacities get enhanced. Lack of a coordinated

policy by the central government promoting the fuel and limitations of supply are the main

stumbling blocks at present.

The study also tries to analyse how use of bio-fuels would affect refineries by

putting their expansion plans on hold. An investment of Rs.34, 000 crore by 2010 is required

to upgrade refineries to meet the increasingly tighter emission norms. Consequently, there

would not be any under-utilisation of refinery capacity, implying that crude imports

dependence would grow regardless of price. The surplus, over and above domestic demand

for petroleum products would be exported after value enhancement through refining and the

savings in petrol and diesel accruing from use of bio-fuels would similarly be exported.

The key findings of the study are as follows:

• Oil import dependence is a long-term function of real GDP and oil prices.

Factors like refining capacity, crude production and oil intensity are relatively

insignificant.

• The costs of bio-fuels show that in the normal context, bio-fuels are three times

costlier than petro-fuels but the high crude prices of the past year and a half have

reduced the extent of the gap.

• Promotional factors leading to the programme’s success in other countries

indicate that the onus for promoting bio-fuel use lies with the government.

• No adverse impact needs to be envisaged on refinery capacity augmentation

plans or on availability of other fuels in the Indian economy. Refinery cost

structure would be affected only if ethanol blending in petrol is encouraged on a

large scale, but as per current indications, availability considerations would

restrict it to below 10% in the foreseeable future.

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The recommendations that flows from the study are, in brief, thus are of two major

types:

1.1 With oil reserves considered to be running out and hydrogen still in the

demonstration phase, bio-fuels can be developed in the interim 25-30 years to reduce the

strain to the economy. This can be achieved by way of special R &D grants to agricultural

universities to develop higher yielding varieties of cane, improve techniques to raise the

sugar recovery factor, enhance extraction of ethanol and encourage production from other

low-cost feedstock for countrywide coverage of 5% ethanol. Dissemination of information

on the successful agronomic practices of Brazil’s sugar cane farmers and its sugar industry

through e-chaupals in the sugar production belt, appropriate industrial and governmental tie-

ups with Brazil and exchange visits would be fruitful. Similarly, the bio-diesel programme

can begin in wasteland regions and areas eager to try bio-fuel farming, with full knowledge of

prospects and risks to curb irrational expectations, disappointments and large-scale drop-

out/ rejection of the programme.

1.2 Well-developed infrastructure for up-stream and down-stream processing of bio-

fuels, guaranteed off-take, collection and processing mechanisms are essential. Also, some

initial subsidies on bio-fuels are needed, weighing costs of continued dependence on imports

at high ruling crude prices versus those of encouraging bio-fuels production. For this, the

ownership of the programme should also vest with the Finance Ministry.

2. Additional measures that can help are the strict implementation of the Energy

Conservation Act of 2002, generating electricity from all sources on a war footing, increased

encouragement to use rail transport for freight, development of an integrated public

transportation system, linking all modes of urban public transport, free pricing of all

petroleum fuels, rating vehicle fuel efficiency by weight, exploiting methane from treatment

plants, better ties with neighbours relatively better off in terms of oil reserves - in short, all-

round infrastructure upgradation would cut down growing oil import dependence and

provide a measure of self-reliance to the economy.

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Railway's Uneconomic Branch Lines Potential and Possibilities

Rajesh Agarwal

Indian Railways is saddled with many railway branch lines that were constructed

either by the British on military/strategic considerations or by the princely states as a status

symbol. Today these lines do not carry much traffic and the expenditure on the staff and

maintenance of these lines is higher than the revenue generated.

Uneconomic branch lines by definition are those lines that do not yield a return

equal to or more than the opportunity cost of capital employed in the stock of similar risk.

In Railways, the return can be considered as equal to the rate of dividend payable to the

central government. Considering their low importance to the public, development of area,

capital for line being generated through taxpayer’s money and the consent of the central

government to forgo the dividend on these lines, one can assume returns to be zero.

However, if the lines continue to have operational losses, they become a constant drain on

revenues. It thus necessitates a holistic evaluation to find whether they are serving any other

purposes or not. Due to network characteristics of the railway system, a viability evaluation

of an isolated section is complex. The need of section is seen not only from the point of

financial viability but also from that of service, connectivity and economics. So far, studies

on IR have been done with the view of finding ways and means to reduce losses i.e. the

viability gap and the net loss is to be bridged through state or central government funds, or

else the option is to close the lines. Discontinuation of the services on branch lines is an

issue having wide social and political ramifications. Therefore it is generally difficult,

especially given the Indian political environment.

i. Internationally, this issue has been handled differently. In USA, through an

elaborate government regulation, namely the Staggers Act, many innovative

schemes of merger and acquisition of rail lines, apart from closure of isolated

sections among various class I, II and new rail road carriers have been followed

to bring in efficiency in customer service, maintenance practice and financial

performance. Looking at the advantage of having private players, UK has also

gone ahead with full-scale privatization but ended with limited success. This has

happened because of capacity constraint among private players but has still

provided valuable lessons to UK. Now they had modified their concepts and

plans of management of rail services differently for different regions. The

philosophy for London is totally different from that of an isolated section. The

community rail concept allows greater participation of local bodies, industries

and individuals in the day-to-day management of rail lines serving their area.

In India, a similar experiment on Darjeeling Himalayan railways have shown the

way forward with initial success in bringing the local community and state government

together in the management of rail service. Where such potential does not exist, better

utilization of assets needs to be thought of before closure of lines; as demonstrated by the

successful case of the Sanganer-Todaraisingh section of Jaipur. In the absence of a better

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alternative utilization of the released assets, any closure will result in failure, like in the case

of the Vadodara division, where the inoperative NG sections were re-opened. The fact

remains that the fate of the line is always decided by popular sentiments.

Therefore the management of these lines should be de-linked from IR to facilitate

an increased local participation, allowing them to set their own technical standards for

maintenance; flexibility in deciding the fare and service level; and in harnessing all kinds of

support, including finance from all possible sources. This will ensure transparency among all

stakeholders. Despite this, if a line remains non-viable, it can be closed without the political

resentment and the assets can be put to alternative use.

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Objective Performance Appraisal: Developing a Methodology for the Employees of

MP Forest Department

Raman K

ACR is the appraisal system for the government servants in India. Various studies

and committees’ reports, like that of the Surinder Nath and Hota Committees have

recommended the adoption of the Objective Performance Appraisal System. Similarly,

studies for Karnataka and MP Forest Departments diagnosed a very high level of

dissatisfaction at all the levels of the organization, caused by lack of recognition for good

work, a very weak system of internal communication, lack of role definition, lack of an

effective performance appraisal system, lack of transparency and openness and lack of trust

and faith among personnel. AP Forest Department's counseling system answers some of the

HRM issues. The employee exercises his choice in the matters of his transfer and posting.

The present study is an attempt to develop an Objective PAR for MPFD

employees. Having the largest forest area in the country, it has a lot at stake in proper HRM.

There is an urgent need to reflect on the quality of service, the factors of motivation and

associated consequences of non-delivery. There is a desperate need for assigning clear

responsibilities to the foresters, setting the targets as per the policies and objectives,

monitoring and evaluation of performance, maintaining transparency and planning the career

of the employee, which should include promotion, training, transfers and postings. Such an

arrangement will not only motivate the foresters to perform better, the department would

also be in a better position to meet the challenges of the day.

The study found it feasible to quantify the performance parameters of different

field employees of the department, which include:

1. It was possible to measure objectively the performance of the beat guards, range

assistants and the coupe-in-charges

2. The evaluation was done on the basis of the available records and reports of the

department

3. On comparing the evaluation based on confidential report and the objective

performance appraisal, it was found that there is no correlation between the two

4. The objective criteria for performance evaluation were found to be very helpful in

providing a reliable measure of the performance of an individual.

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Public -Private Participation in Slum Rehabilitation in Mumbai

Samir Kumar Biswas

Mumbai, the commercial center of India, is well known for its vast slum population.

The government of Maharashtra has been making efforts to improve the environment, which

started with forceful eviction in the 1950s and evolved through stages to the ‘enabling’

approach of forging public-private partnership in the 1990s. The main focus has been on

decentralizing the decision making process to the community level, and on involving the

private developers. Multistoried buildings are constructed by demolishing the existing huts to

accommodate all the families and the remaining land is sold in the open market to meet the

total cost of construction and the profit of the developer. A developer mobilizes the

community to implement the project in a slum colony only when he sees sufficient profit in it,

which depends mainly on the location of the colony and the density of the existing huts.

Approximately, 1900 out of 2500 colonies are not covered yet, mainly because they are not

financially ‘viable’ due to their poor location or high density. This paper is based on a case

study of six slum rehabilitation projects. One was ‘impossible’ due to its very high density, in

spite of being situated in a ‘lucrative’ location. The community decided to execute the project

without depending on a developer and also to contribute the deficient amount and put it on

the path of sure success. The task of construction is very difficult and complex, which involves

obtaining permissions from various government agencies, mobilizing finances, shifting the

families into temporary houses, marketing and selling the saleable flats, resolving conflicts etc.

For executing all these activities, a community must be sufficiently enabled and supported by

some agency at each stage, which was done by an efficient and experienced NGO working in

the area of slum housing for many years. Many lessons can be learnt from these cases to make

the remaining ‘unviable’ colonies ‘viable’ with proper empowerment of the community. This

study also demonstrates that there is lack of community empowerment effort and absence of

institutional support to enable the community.

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Antecedents and Consequences of Job Satisfaction among the Constabulary in

Karnataka

Sanjay Vir Singh

With the passage of time, crime and its mode of operation have undergone a sea

change and the responsibility on the law enforcing agencies has shot up significantly. The

growth of economy and globalisation has led to more sophisticated and professional crimes.

The environment has become extremely complex; vested interests play their communal card;

mafia elements, black marketers, illegal liquor barons etc., are making the work of the police

extremely challenging. It is therefore essential that the police officers of all ranks show

personal initiative in tackling the problems effectively.

The study tries to understand the antecedents and consequences of job satisfaction

and personal initiative of the policemen, so as to identify the de-motivating factors in the

police department and to suggest means to empower the constabulary. The concept of

empowerment is “encouraging and allowing individuals to do their jobs and contribute to

the organization’s goals. It requires the creation of a culture which both encourages people

at all levels to feel they can make a difference and helps them to acquire confidence and

skills to do so.” (August Vollmer)

Motivation of policemen is essential to increase personal initiative of the

constabulary in Karnataka. Motives represent what the policemen want and expect from their

jobs, while job satisfaction reflects the policemen’s reactions to what they receive.

Empowerment is extremely essential in the interest of the police since responsibility for

decision-making can be delegated to the lower police officers who are at the field level and

who are in a position to take decisions as per the requirement of the situation. As Richard

Curver states-“The right structure and environment has to be established so that the majority

constituents of the civil police can make full contribution towards better service delivery to the

citizens. This should be recognized that there should be power and authority established at all

levels of the organization”.

In the Police Department, extrinsic factors like pay and working conditions have

contribution significantly more towards job satisfaction than do intrinsic factors like

recognition. Maslow’s need-gratification theory (1954) states that higher needs become

desirable only when the lower needs are satisfied. The study of personal initiative of

policemen can help the police leadership to improve service delivery and get more motivated

employees. Also higher motivation will result in better service and generate staff loyalty and

increase efficiency.

The Districts studied are Bidar, Gulbarga, Mysore, Bangalore and the

Commissionerate of Bangalore. Analysis finds that the most significant factors affecting

personal initiative are – (a) Communication, (b) Exhaustion. The next significant factors

affecting personal initiative are – (a) Supervision, (b) Affective Organisational Commitment (c)

Personal Accomplishment.

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The following specific suggestions are given for improving the personal initiative of

the constabulary:

• A conscious attempt should be made by the police station in-charge to be fair in job

allocation and

distributive justice.

Replacing the existing system of performance evaluation by a more transparent and

measurable system.

Since the most significant factor is communication, it is essential that both

downward and upward communication be made very effective and all communication

should be clear, precise and easily understood by the constables.

The number of work hours, which is very high at twenty-four hours per day; seven

days a week, exhausts a person physically and mentally and like the police in Mumbai and

Delhi, having an 8 hours duty schedule is required for more personal initiative.

Police is a team organization and a good supervisor makes a difference by enhancing

motivation of the constable in the police station, which results in high personal initiative.

The organization must make efforts to improve the police image, as also make the

constable get a sense of belonging to the organization, since affective organization

commitment will also make a significant difference to the personal initiative of the

constable.

Personal accomplishment is a significant factor and the constable must be rewarded

if he has done some good work. This would motivate him to take personal initiative to

resolve any crisis.

Promotional aspects of constables are poor and the nature of work is monotonous.

The police leadership must strive to change this by giving at least 3-4 promotions to the

constable during his service and also ensure fairness in job allocation and job rotation at

the police station in order to achieve better personal initiative.

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Taxation and Tax Compliance in India: The Attitudes and Perceptions of Taxpayers

and Their Influence on the Tax Behaviour

Sibichen K Mathew

Taxation is one of the key institutions in all civilized societies. Through taxes, the

citizens become partners in the state’s responsibility to serve the society. However, paying

taxes is not always a pleasant task for a majority of the taxpayers. There is an increasing

tendency among the income earners to pay as little as possible. Consequently, substantial

amount of undisclosed income is generated in the society, creating social and economic

imbalances. Therefore much academic attention has been given to analyse taxation and tax

compliance all over the world. That has resulted in a plethora of studies from different

perspectives. Analysis of various studies have shown that the predominant inference is that

taxpayers are rational decision makers and are concerned about costs and benefits and their

action depends on deterrence factors. Very few studies have recognized the social and

psychological dimensions in the tax behaviour. The present study examines the issue with an

integrated sociological perspective recognizing the influence of multiple factors contributing

to one’s tax behaviour. The study examines the problem with a symbolic interactionist

perspective and attempts to understand the taxpayers’ perception of the state and taxation in

personal, social and situational contexts.

Historical analysis of taxation and tax enforcement in India during the ancient,

medieval and British period clearly brought to light the discriminatory and partisan

characteristics that dominated in each distinguishable period. Thus there is a historical-

sociological reason for the general tax apathy in India. Though the tax policies in the post

independent India took a radical shift and were oriented towards the ideals of equity and

welfare, there were serious problems in ensuring perfect tax compliance. The citizens felt

that while taxes are very much visible, services of the state are not visible to that extent.

While the taxpayers have a positive attitude about the role of the state and taxation in

achieving development and welfare for the country, they seem to have a negative attitude

both about the role performance of the state and the functioning of the tax system. They

perceive large scale tax evasion around them and frankly admit that they conceal part of their

income from taxation. While the tax administration has been successful in ensuring

procedural compliance among the taxpayers, it has failed to increase substantive compliance.

Taxpayers indulge in inter group comparison and perceive that tax policies and tax

administration are not fair. Though there is an inner recognition of the rationale of taxation

at the cognitive level, the same is disturbed by what is perceived in the society and that has

resulted in cognitive dissonance leading to unintended tax behaviour.

The study tries to analyze various problems affecting tax compliance in India as

perceived by the taxpayers and suggests policy recommendations based on the insights that

emerged. The data revealed that past tax experience was not influential to increase the

compliance behaviour of the taxpayers through better disclosure. This calls for the need for

investigations of high quality in detecting tax evasion. The study suggests appropriate

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communication strategies and enforcement techniques in the light of the findings. It is

necessary that the tax system be flexible to the needs of various categories of taxpayers, but

that flexibility has to be based on consistent, fair, rational analysis of the demands and not

on narrow considerations. The study suggests several steps to ensure a psychological

contract between the taxpayers and the government that would increase the tax morale. Tax

reforms on the lines stated in the study coupled with good governance can ensure better tax

compliance and taxpayer satisfaction in the era of globalization.

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E-Public Procurement Approach for Implementation on Indian Railways

Sudhir Kumar Sharma

E-public procurement is being looked as a tool for increasing efficiencies and

transparencies and for reducing costs. In the context of the Indian Railways, the need to cut

down the costs is even more urgent given its poor financial health and increasing

competition. Initiative has been taken by the Indian Railways towards implementing the e-

procurement system. However, in implementing the e-procurement system it has to take a

number of decisions such as which model to choose, which format to adopt and which

items to procure through the web. Various available models have been compared and a

hybrid model is suggested for e-procurement, keeping in view the integrated vision for later

upscaling. A framework based on the purchasing portfolio models has been developed to

classify the items into different categories and appropriate auction formats for these

categories have been suggested. The details as to what rules to follow and what valuation

mechanism to use in addition to addressing various pitfalls of the usual auction design have

been addressed within the specific regulatory constraints of Indian Railways. The process of

stake holder analysis has been used to identify the weaknesses of the present system and has

been taken into consideration while suggesting the auction design.

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Effect of Institutional Structures on Urban Water Delivery System: A Longitudinal

Comparative Analysis

V. Umashankar

The post-liberalisation era has seen several reform efforts in the natural

monopoly utility sectors. However, urban water supply systems have been in the background

and have seen very limited attempts at effective reform. With the burgeoning urbanization

and the essentiality of water for life contrasting with the realization that fresh water is not an

inexhaustible resource, the reform of the urban water infrastructure will achieve prominence.

The water sector has two features that distinguish it from other infrastructure and have

implications for public policy. First, the supply is finite and location-specific. Second,

because safe water is crucial for life and health, its availability and affordability for the entire

population are of enormous welfare and political importance. The achievement of the

objective of affordable provision calls for appropriate institutional arrangements at the local

level for equitable access and economically efficient functioning of urban water systems. The

challenge for institutional development and policy formulation for the sector is to meet both

efficiency and social welfare objectives in the water sector, balancing the needs of

consumers, utilities, governments and the environment.

De-centralisation has been postulated to bring about efficiency and

responsiveness in service delivery. This study attempts to investigate this postulate in respect

of urban water delivery systems by contrasting the relative efficiency and access policies of

the centralised water boards in Bangalore and Hyderabad, functioning under the control of

the respective state governments; and the decentralised service provision by municipal

bodies in Pune and Faridabad. From an understanding of the accountability structures

inherent in the institutional construct, the study concludes that efficient service provision

does not solely depend on decentralisation but on the presence of factors that tend to

promote accountability. Autonomy, clarity in functions, adequacy of revenue assignments

and enforcement of a hard budget constraint with predictability of transfers, foster efficiency

in service delivery; but responsiveness is an outcome of the strength of the chain of

accountability from the customer/voter to the delivery agent. The chain would also depend

on the nature of service provision: whether centralised or decentralised. From the

understanding obtained from the study, appropriate recommendations are drawn for the

policy maker in designing institutional structures for service delivery.

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Future Directions and Policy for the Karnataka Telecom Circle: A Critical Appraisal

R. K. Upadhyay

Telecommunication services in India have been going through a phenomenal

period of reforms in the last decade. This period has also brought in a tremendous amount

of competition in this sector. BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited) is facing tough

competition from private players like Bharati, Reliance, TATA and others. These companies

are concentrating in urban areas and are aggressively pursuing the creamy customers of

BSNL by means of pricing and promotion. Further, due to falling tariffs of mobile service

there is a shift in preference of mobile phones over landline. This has resulted in negative or

almost stagnant growth for BSNL in the landline segment. The result is that a lot of capacity

of landline network is not being utilized and has remained idle for the past few years. In

addition, being a state owned operator, BSNL is the only operator serving in rural areas.

Enough support from use is not available as it is still evolving. Under these circumstances,

BSNL has to think of an alternative approach to its expansion plans in terms of investment,

technology, and strategy to fill up the idle capacity by way of new services like broadband. In

this dissertation an attempt is made to study the BSNL network of Karnataka in respect of

cost, revenue, traffic and new services like broadband to be able to prioritize the exchanges

in terms of giving attention for business and future investment. The cost of providing a line

in urban and rural area is calculated. Similarly the access deficit charges (ADC) are estimated

for each district. The ADC for rural and urban are calculated separately to emphasize that

access deficit is much higher in rural areas. The cost of different type of calls is calculated

both in rural and urban areas to base future strategies in terms of pricing and promotion.

The traffic pattern for traffic originating from Karnataka or terminating in Karnataka has

been studied. It is seen that 76% traffic is confined to Karnataka and only 24% exits out of

Karnataka. Mobiles contribute the highest amount of traffic in tax exchanges. This analysis

can provide insights into possible tariff and marketing schemes. Finally, it has been

established that expanding by GSM will be a better option; however if facilities like

broadband could be given in a large way in cities like Bangalore and Mangalore even,

landlines will be a good option in terms of return.

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WTO Fisheries Subsidies Debate: Issues and Strategies for India

N Vasudevan

The nexus between fisheries subsidies, overcapacity and over fishing dominates

the WTO negotiations related to fisheries. The Doha declaration of WTO in 2001 stressed

the need for clarifying and improving fisheries subsidies disciplines and since then, some

serious attempts have been made to arrive at some form of consensus among the WTO

members. Reliable estimates suggest that many developed and developing countries heavily

subsidize their fishing fleets. India being one of the largest maritime states has to sooner

than later take a position on the question of fisheries subsidies. In this dissertation, an

attempt is made to provide a framework for India’s negotiating position on fisheries

subsidies in WTO. The methodology involved an extensive survey of literature and

collection of secondary data and interviews with various experts on the subject. The

submissions made by member countries in WTO are also reviewed.

The research questions included the following: (1) What is the level of exploitation of

commercially important fish species/ species groups in Indian fisheries? (2) What are the

subsidies provided to the Indian fisheries industry? (3) What safeguards can be worked out

within the WTO framework to protect the livelihood security of the traditional fishing

communities? (4) What are the challenges faced by our marine products export industry and

how best can it adapt to the globalised world? (5) What management measures and policy

interventions can supplement/complement the global efforts to move towards responsible

fisheries?

The findings include the following: (1) Many of our commercially important fish species do

not appear to be as overfished as they are projected to be (2) Subsidies provided to Indian

fisheries is very negligible (3) It is possible to safeguard the interests of our fishers within the

WTO framework; several management and policy measures are suggested to equip our

fisheries industry to face global challenges and also to strengthen our negotiating position in

the WTO.

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Imperatives of Developing the Indian Food Industry: Opportunities, Constraints and

Policy Challenges

Venkateswara Prasad J.S

Food is vital to India’s future. India is mainly an agricultural economy, yet the

economic liberalization process has by passed it. This is in sharp contrast to the experience of

other developing economies like Thailand, Philippines, China and the like. If India has to

accelerate its overall economic growth then the food sector has to become dynamic. There

have been some sporadic attempts to remove obstacles to the growth of the food industry in

the last ten years. The governments at the centre as well as in the states have announced

policies, which have not yet created the desired impact. The central Ministry of food

processing has been in existence since 1988. It has a basket of schemes and programmes, but

still things have not improved.

Hence a study was undertaken to not only identify the critical factors affecting the

food industry’s performance but also to identify suitable mechanisms and institutions to

resolve these problems. This study, which was mainly undertaken in Andhra Pradesh, has

covered all stakeholders in the food industry. The respondents have strongly indicated a

need for the government to play a proactive catalytic role. A positive attitude without any

gap between policy intentions and implementation, and convergence of all policy matters

under the umbrella of a separate food processing department is recommended. This will be a

sign of empathy and seriousness of the government towards the food industry. Provision of

basic infrastructure, synchronizing the tax regime with international levels and streamlining

food legislation are other pre requisites. Another significant aspect thrown up by the study is

the need to encourage market systems to integrate farm-firm linkages. Out of the several

options available, contract farming seems the most valuable means of achieving effective

integration of the food chain.

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Effective Delivery of Public Services Using Information & Communication

Technology

P Vinodchandran

ICT has emerged as a powerful tool for enhancing the effectiveness of public

service delivery. With a plethora of initiatives India is in the forefront of the global effort to

exploit the full potential of ICT for providing a variety of services both in the urban and the

rural areas of the country. However, there is scope for achieving better results if a cohesive

approach, focusing on the customer needs, is adopted. This study attempts to evolve a

strategy for success with customer satisfaction as the main objective. Feedback from

customers, kiosk operators and stakeholders have helped to identify the important factors

influencing the success of initiatives aimed at public services delivery using ICT. The critical

factors for success relate to utility, accessibility, connectivity, reliability, replicability and

sustainability. Ensuring sustainability is the most challenging task and can be achieved

through multiple stake holder involvement, sharing of resources, especially infrastructure,

and providing services that customers need at an affordable price. Accordingly a suggestive

reference model has been developed which could be useful while designing and redesigning

ICT based platforms for public service delivery. Case studies pertaining to some of the

important ICT initiatives which have made an appreciable impact have helped to identify

key features which could be adopted as best practices by other such initiatives. Most of these

projects rely on powerful partnership with other stakeholders based on their capabilities.

Collaboration between the various stakeholders participating in different ICT ventures can

maximize the benefits to the users while at the same time containing the wastage of

resources associated with isolated attempts. Suggestions regarding the terms and conditions

of engagement between the key stakeholders form part of this study. This framework could

enable them to function effectively as a team and achieve the goals within reasonable time

limits. This study includes recommendations for creating the appropriate public policy

background to facilitate the rapid growth of public service delivery using ICT.

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Terrorism and Human Rights: A Human Rights Perspective on Public Policy

Response to Terrorism in India in the New Millennium

Shikhar Sahai

India is facing the threat of terrorism that presents a major public policy dilemma

that lies in the need to reconcile the requirements of countering terrorism, which requires a

strong state; and preservation of human rights and civil liberties that necessitates limitations

on the powers of the state. In the post 9/11 World, growing global consensus against

terrorism strengthens India’s position in formulating its policy response. There is no single

pattern or causative factor for the three broad strands of terrorism in India. Kashmir

terrorism is predominantly external aided but with historical roots. Northeast terrorism is

localized but intense and complex with ‘live’ volcanoes (Assam, Manipur, Tripura and

Nagaland) and ‘dormant’ volcanoes (Mizoram, Meghalaya & Arunachal Pradesh) that may

become ‘live’ in future. The conflict patterns alternate between inter-tribal conflict, conflict

between tribes and non-tribes and between tribes and the state. Naxalism is a homespun problem

that is expanding to cover pockets of underdeveloped areas in several states.

The theoretical distinction between ‘terrorism’ and ‘insurgency’ gets blurred in the

real world. Sustained terrorism leads to de-legitimization of the state. A recurrent theme of the

reports and campaigns of the human rights NGOs is the alleged violations committed by the

security forces while the latter regard the NGOs as the front organizations of the terrorists.

Human rights are now to be seen in terms of their horizontal applicability to all sections of

society (including terrorists) instead of confining it to a vertical relationship between the state

and the citizens. While the “root causes” of terrorism (“demand side”) must be addressed, it

is equally important to pay attention to factors that “sustain” it (“supply side”). The nexus

between criminality and terror is one such factor. A soft state with soft borders is a recipe for

policy disaster.

The Indian state must adopt a coherent policy response to justify its raison d’etre.

Such a policy frame work must be based on the following 8 pillars:

� Law Enforcement

� Human Rights Sensitization

� Border Management

� Crisis Management

� Sustained Dialogue

� Diplomatic Initiatives

� Good Governance and

� Management of Political Pluralism.

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A “Triple I” approach based on Insulation of vulnerable sections from group appeal of

terrorism, Isolation of the lawless fringe and Integration into social mainstream is called for. In

a democratic society based on principles of human rights, there is no “final” solution to such

complex problems; and conflict resolution is more a process than a destination.