Paradigms of Development: Issues in Industrial Policy in India -

This paper presents empirical evidence on the cement industry in Gujarat to support the argument that the state still has an important role to play in determining the development path of India. A detailed case study of the impact of two cement plants on their localities includes the consequences for employment generation, land markets, farmer livelihoods, labour markets, environment and pollution. The author concludes that public action is required in order to achieve sectoral balance, secure adequate environmental protection and correct factor market distortions.

How well do India's social service programs serve the poor?

Reaching India's poor calls for greatly improved social service delivery systems, better targeting of the poor, more coordination between agencies, policies aimed at income generation, and more involvement of the poor and of nongovernmental organizations. The authors of this paper found that India's social services were used relatively little by the poor. The health and education of the poor has improved but not as much for the population as a whole. The reasons that all social service programs did so little to alleviate poverty are similar. Physical access to education and health services has improved but inequalities exist because of biases in locating facilities. The access of the poor to housing, social security, and social welfare services has been limited because these services were inadequate relative to needs and because services leak to the nonpoor. Social service policies are not comprehensive enough and the quality of services is low. Issues common to the social sector delivery systems are weak management, ineffective targeting, and inflexible service delivery systems that result in a mismatch between perceived needs and services delivered. The bureaucracy is inadequate to reach the poor. Existing capacity and resources are inadequate, particularly for education and health.Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Health Economics&Finance,Poverty Assessment,Safety Nets and Transfers,Rural Poverty Reduction

A QoE evaluation on the influence of spatial audio on visual attention in 360° videos

Research on neurological analysis of the human brain shows evidence of multimodal information processing. However, research in the area of human visual attention do not take into consideration the impact of the audio modality. In practice, visual signals often come along with audio. Therefore, it is natural to investigate the influence of audio on visual attention.ye

Demo: A QoE and visual attention evaluation on the influence of audio in 360° videos.

360° video, also known as immersive video, is the recording of video content which simultaneously captures scene information in every direction, using an omnidirectional camera. Due to their immersive nature, the popularity of 360° videos has grown significantly. Understanding user Visual Attention when watching 360° videos is very important. This knowledge can help develop effective techniques for processing, encoding, distributing, and rendering 360° content. Whilst major efforts have concentrated on the visual element of immersive experiences, recently there has been growing interest in different forms of audio and in particular high-quality spatial audio. Spatial audio allows listeners to experience sound in all directions. Ambisonics or 3D audio is one such technique which offers a complete 360° soundscape. Although several models of visual and audio-visual attention have been proposed, very few have investigated the role of spatial audio in guiding attention in 360° videos. This demo shows our dataset and our methodological approach to understanding the user’s audio-visual attention and QoE when experiencing 360° videos enhanced with spatial sound (first and third order ambisonic). Our research focus is to understand how audio affects Visual Attention in 360° videos and to evaluate its impact on the user’s Quality of Experience (QoE).ye

A QoE and visual attention evaluation on the influence of spatial audio in 360° videos

What is the impact of different types of audio (stereo & spatial) on user QoE (Quality of Experience) and Visual Attention in 360° video environments

Tenure Security and Urban Social Protection Links: India

Guaranteeing tenure security to the households living in informal settlements (slums) has not seen any progress in urban India. This is because the policymakers have failed to see land tenure status as a continuum from insecure tenure to a legal status. In general, the poor in the cities move from informal to quasi?legal ( de facto ) tenure through various processes, and then to legal tenure ( de jure ) in cases of a public policy intervention that confers property title on them. In the absence of such a policy, the urban poor and low?income migrants can seek to consolidate their urban citizenship through political citizenship in an electoral democracy, through welfare interventions by the state and above all, through their own subversions of urban legalities. This article first illustrates the existence of a continuum of tenure status in informal settlements in Ahmedabad City. It explains the factors that give a slum settlement a particular level of tenure status; and then through quantitative data, links the level of tenure security to social protection outcomes. The article shows that through small public actions, it is possible to improve access of the urban poor to social protection measures and that it is not necessary to leapfrog to extending property rights to the dwellers of these informal settlements. It is essential to realise that if land titles are given in a society where other rights are not present, the poor will not be able to retain them

Unpaid Work and the Economy: Linkages and Their Implications

Unpaid work, which falls outside of the national income accounts but within the general production boundary, is viewed as either "care" or as "work" by experts. This work is almost always unequally distributed between men and women, and if one includes both paid and unpaid work, women carry much more of the burden of work than men. This unequal distribution of work is unjust, and it implies a violation of the basic human rights of women. The grounds on which it is excluded from the boundary of national income accounts do not seem to be logical or valid. This paper argues that the exclusion reflects the dominance of patriarchal values and brings male bias into macroeconomics. This paper shows that there are multiple linkages between unpaid work and the conventional macroeconomy, and this makes it necessary to expand the boundary of conventional macroeconomics so as to incorporate unpaid work. The paper presents the two approaches: the valuation of unpaid work into satellite accounts, and the adoption of the triple "R" approach of recognition, reduction, and reorganization of unpaid work, recommended by experts. However, there is a need to go beyond these approaches to integrate unpaid work into macroeconomics and macroeconomic policies. Though some empirical work has been done in terms of integrating unpaid work into macro policies (for example, understanding the impacts of macroeconomic policy on paid and unpaid work), some sound theoretical work is needed on the dynamics of the linkages between paid and unpaid work, and how these dynamics change over time and space. The paper concludes that the time has come to recognize that unless unpaid work is included in macroeconomic analyses, they will remain partial and wrong. The time has also come to incorporate unpaid work into labor market analyses, and in the design of realistic labor and employment policies

Labour market policies, poverty and insecurity

The article sets out to evaluate the performance of the conventional labour market and social policies in the era of globalised labour markets in terms of poverty alleviation, equality and security. To this end, it develops a framework based on three key policy evaluation principles, centred on the normative notion of social justice, whereby the expansion of full freedom requires basic economic security for all. After summarising main labour market trends, the article proceeds by analysing conventional labour market policies, targeted labour schemes, regulatory interventions and cash transfers as labour market policy

The Social and Economic Importance of Full Employment

Unemployment was singled out by John Maynard Keynes as one of the principle faults of capitalism; the other is excessive inequality. Obviously, there is some link between these two faults: because: since most people living in capitalist economies must work for wages as a major source of their incomes, inability to obtain a job means lower income. If jobs can be provided to the unemployed, inequality and poverty will be reduced although such policy will not directly address the problem of excessive income at the top of the distribution. Most importantly, Keynes wanted to put unemployed labor to work not digging holes, but in socially productive ways. This would help to ensure that the additional effective demand created by government spending would not be exhausted in higher prices as it ran up against bottlenecks or other supply constraints. Further, it would help maintain public support for the government's programs by providing useful output. And it would generate respect for, and feelings of self-worth in, the workers employed in these projects (no worker would want to spend her days digging holes that serve no useful purpose). President Roosevelt's New Deal jobs programs (such as the Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps) are good examples of such targeted job-creating programs. These provided income and employment for workers, actually helped increase the nation's productivity, and left us with public buildings, dams, trails, and even music that we still enjoy today. As our nation (and the world) collapses into deep recession, or even depression, it is worthwhile to examine Hyman P. Minsky's comprehensive approach to resolving the unemployment problem