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Working Papers | 2008

Indian Railways in the Past Twenty Years Issues, Performance and Challenges

G. Raghuram and Gangwar Rachna

Indian Railways (IR) is Asia's largest and world's second largest network under one management, with a separate Ministry and its own annual budget. The network carried about 17 million Passengers and 2 mt freight every day on the route of 63,327 km (2006-07). Although key business operations are freight and passenger, IR is also engaged in several allied services including parcel, catering and production units. Nearly 70 percent of IR's revenues come from the freight operations, which can be segmented into bulk and other cargo. Over the years, IR has predominantly become a bulk freight carrier, accounting for about 94 percent of the freight revenue. Coal alone accounts for nearly half of the bulk traffic carried. Passenger business accounts for nearly 60 percent of IR's total transport effort, in terms of train kilometers, but yield less than 30 percent of the total revenues. Suburban services account for 57 percent of the originating passengers, while contribute to only 8 percent of the passenger revenue. To understand the development process of IR's over the past twenty years, the study covers issues and strategies related to financial and physical aspects of revenue generating freight and passenger traffic from 1987-2007. Study also covers the developments in the parcel, catering and advertising sector.

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Working Papers | 2008

Issues in Infrastructure for Export of Marine Products from India

G. Raghuram and Asopa V N

Indian marine products are wanted internationally. There is potential for a higher market share in importing countries. Shrimp contributed 62% by value and 28% by volume of exports in 2002-03. The potential market for marine exports is in value added products (cooked, ready to eat and ready for table), freeze dried shrimps (wherever reduced transportation cost can bring in competitive advantage), surimi and canned fish. While infrastructural requirements are essential in the entire supply chain, the quality of infrastructure in the pre-processing stage is significantly lower than the processing and post-processing stages. This paper focuses on the scope of improving both quantum and quality of product including the primary product shrimp in the pre-processing stage from farming/harvesting to the processing unit through a whole range of regulatory and infrastructure measures. These include 1. Improving the quality of trawlers and smaller mechanized boats, to enable deep sea fishing 2. Regulating the capture during the spawning period 3. Achieving global standards at fishing harbors, landing centres and auction centres 4. Promoting aquaculture, but in properly zoned areas with a focus on managing an integrated set of activities 5. Licensing of ice factories, monitoring the quality of water they use, and if required, ensuring supply of quality water 6. Facilitating cold chains in both storage and transportation

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Working Papers | 2008

Issues in Infrastructure for Export of Rice from India

G. Raghuram and Asopa V N

Rice is exported in two varieties, basmati (aromatic) and non-basmati. The basmati rice exports are in three categories: white, brown and parboiled. India earned Rs 18.4 billion in 2001-02 from exports of basmati rice and non-basmati rice contributed Rs 13.3 billion for the same period. This paper focuses on promoting rice exports, for which infrastructural and policy requirements are discussed.

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Working Papers | 2008

Feasibility of Integrating Solar Desalination with Greenhouse Systems in Semi-Arid Region of North-west India

Girja Sharan

A two-phase project is underway to develop greenhouse systems suitable for water scarce, semi-arid region of north-west India (Kutch). The first phase aimed at studying the effectiveness of natural ventilation and earth-tube-heat-exchanger for environmental control, in place of fan-pads commonly used. These measures were able to reduce the need for evaporative cooling significantly and offer scope for further improvement. The second phase, just started, aims at finding cost-effective means of desalinating brackish water for plant use. Arrays of simple basin type solar stills have been used in this region in the past to provide drinking water in villages. The area of stills needed to meet the greenhouse crop requirement works out to approximately half the cropping area. It would be cumbersome to integrate these with greenhouse structure. Besides, these were reported to be difficult to maintain. A new option - solar assisted low temperature thermal desalination - is therefore being pursued. An outline of the work in progress is presented.

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Working Papers | 2008

Inter-relationship between Economic Growth, Savings and Inflation in Asia

Chaturvedi Vaibhav, Brajesh Kumar, and Ravindra H. Dholakia

The present study examines the inter- relationship between economic growth, saving rate and inflation for south-east and south Asia in a simultaneous equation framework using two stage least squares with panel data. The relationship between saving rate and growth has been found to be bi-directional and positive. Inflation has a highly significant negative effect on growth but positive effect on saving rate. Inflation is not affected by growth but is largely determined by its past values, and saving rate is not affected by interest rate. These findings for countries in Asia with widely divergent values of aggregates are very relevant for development policies and strategies.

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Working Papers | 2008

International Outsourcing Hurdles in Value-added Services

Arindam Banerjee

Purpose: International Outsourcing has been traditionally looked upon as a low end cost effective servicing option to take advantage of the cost arbitrage that exists across countries. Of late, many outsourcing vendors have realized that the advantages of cost differentials that spurred a lot of the global outsourcing business in the past 20 years will disappear in the medium term. This paper provides a perspective about how much value addition, besides cost, traditional outsourcing vendors can provide and what may be the facilitator/ inhibitors of such activities. Approach: To substantiate the claim, a brief case describing the setting up of an offshore analytics operation is presented which gives a back drop to the challenges faced in relatively high end value creation processes in a remote outsourced environment. Findings/Claim: The author uses the case to develop a conceptual model of off shoring value -added services. The key dimensions that will determine the extent to which international outsourcing of high end services will take place are: 1) Expertise of the vendor, 2) Environmental Stability of the Outsourcing Domain, 3) Physical Barriers to outsourcing complex business processes such as, Communication Problems and Proximity issues, 4) Possibility of Knowledge Leakage from Outsourcing Domain and, 5) Cost Benefits of Outsourcing. Practical Implications: The author contends that conventional outsourcing vendors may find it difficult to acquire "Expert Power" and, set aside negative perceptions of "Environmental Stability" of their domain, in the pursuit to climb up the value chain in their client organizations. The validation of the proposed model is an opportunity for future research. Originality: This paper is one of the first to present a model that will govern the growth of international outsourcing opportunities in high end value-added processes.

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Working Papers | 2008

Impact of 360 Degree Feedback: A Follow-up study of Four Organizations

T. V. Rao and Chawla Nandini

A large number of organizations have been using 360 degree feedback in India as leadership development intervention. This paper is based on the feedback of 43 participants from four companies where the 360 Degree Feedback program was initiated. The study was done using a questionnaire method. The results indicated that there has been an overall positive impact reported of 360 Degree intervention on ones professional life after 360DF. More than 60% of the participants report that they visited 360DF data every quarter. 24 participants reported that about 50% of their action plans prepared at the end of the 360 intervention were implemented. At least 30% of the action plans were achieved by 6 of the participants and 2 participants reported achievement of all their action plans. The participants also reported that the RSDQ model based 360DF tool provided detailed insight covering various parameters of one's role. The participants also recommend that with more periodic follow up and review sessions (every quarter) anchored by internal HR and more focus and seriousness among the participants to work on the action plans will result in using 360 DF for change and growth

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Working Papers | 2008

Hedging Effectiveness of Constant and Time Varying Hedge Ratio in Indian Stock and Commodity Futures Markets

Ajay Pandey

This paper examines hedging effectiveness of futures contract on a financial asset and commodities in Indian markets. In an emerging market context like India, the growth of capital and commodity futures market would depend on effectiveness of derivatives in managing risk. For managing risk, understanding optimal hedge ratio is critical for devising effective hedging strategy. We estimate dynamic and constant hedge ratio for S&P CNX Nifty index futures, Gold futures and Soybean futures. Various models (OLS, VAR, and VECM) are used to estimate constant hedge ratio. To estimate dynamic hedge ratios, we use VAR-MGARCH. We compare in-sample and out-of-sample performance of these models in reducing portfolio risk. It is found that in most of the cases, VAR-MGARCH model estimates of time varying hedge ratio provide highest variance reduction as compared to hedges based on constant hedge ratio. Our results are consistent with findings of Myers (1991), Baillie and Myers (1991), Park and Switzer (1995a,b), Lypny and Powella (1998), Kavussanos and Nomikos (2000), Yang (2001), and Floros and Vougas (2006).

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Working Papers | 2008

Process, People, Power and Conflict: Some Lessons from a Participatory Policy Process in Andhra Pradesh, India

Vinod Ahuja, Gustafson Daniel J, and Joachim Otte

A large body of empirical literature highlights the need for stakeholder participation within the context of policy change and democratic governance. This makes intuitive sense and may appear to be a straightforward process of managing conflicting interests, building consensus, and lining up support. The reality, however, is often much more complicated and conflictive, even where there is general agreement on the policy objectives. The present paper examines these issues in the context of participatory policy development for the delivery of veterinary services by para-professionals in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. It illustrates the challenges inherent in the politics of participatory policy processes and the potential of 'agenda hijack' by influential partners, resulting in missed learning opportunities. It also offers insights on practical steps to counter these dangers, as potential lessons for practitioners and project managers engaged in participatory policy reform processes.

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Working Papers | 2008

Exploring Feasibility of Alternate Channels of Information Dissemination: Study of Rural Consumers Information Needs

Rajanish Dass

Information plays a vital role in lives of individuals/groups for development and growth. Just information does not serve the purpose, but accurate information does. The sources/tools/techniques used to get the desired information have evolved from the foremost person-to-person interaction to the latest search engines on the World Wide Web. Thus options to obtain information have widened. Search engines have enabled to get information from any corner of the world to person's desktop within fraction of seconds. In this paper, we try to study the information needs of rural population in India. This research tries to understand types of information required and frequency of search for information among the rural population. The study attempts to understand whether, demand exists for 'information on demand' or search engine service itself would unlock a new untapped demand. The socio-economic aspect, livelihoods of rural population and the available resources for information retrieval have been studied to enable, if search engine service could be made available to them and in what form. Whether this proposition of search engine services being made available to those who are unable to access or rural population would be a win-win scenario for the users as well as for the search engine service providers (considering the limiting factors). The paper ends, with possible alternatives to make search engine services available to those unable to access and at the same time can be attractive to the search engine service providers.

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