Rural development management in Nepal,Part I: Coordination in the Rasuwa-Nuwakot Integrated Rural Development Programme

Rural development management in Nepal has been criticized for more than a decade now on the grounds of the country's weak aid-absorbing capacity, administrative slowness and poor project management. Though several reforms of the rural development planning and management systems have been staged, at present coordination in integrated rural development projects remains weak. The paper reports on the empirical findings of research on mechanisms, procedures, organizational arrangements and problems of coordination. Although the country's environment, and its socioeconomic and cultural constraints, may negatively influence smooth operations in implementing integrated programmes, several policy considerations for improvement may be formulated. Among these, organizational reform with decentralization and reduction of the number of offices involved, strengthening the resource management system, especially budget release and personnel motivation, and a more integrated method of policy, programme and project formulation are the issues considered most important by the government officers themselves. Part II will appear in vol. 7, no. 3 of this journal, and examines the implementation and management of rural development in the Karnali and Bheri districts of the Mid-Western Development Region of Nepal.     

A comprehensive ATR-FTIR spectroscopic analysis for the identification and differentiation of lip balms

Lip balm may be encountered as physical evidence in cases involving sexual assaults, homicides, and kidnappings. Lip balm can be used as corroborative evidence by providing a potential link between the victim, accused, and the crime scene. For lip balms to be used as evidence, it is important to understand the diversity and their aging process under different conditions. Therefore, in this study, ATR-FTIR spectroscopy in conjunction with chemometric tools such as principal component analysis (PCA) and linear discriminant analysis (LDA) has been used for the objective identification and differentiation of 20 brands of lip balms. Moreover, lip balms on different substrates and wearing effects over time were also investigated. The results show that the PCA-LDA training accuracy was 92.5%, whereas the validation accuracy comes out to be 83.33%. A blind study using pristine samples was also performed which resulted in 80% PCA-LDA accuracy. PCA-LDA prediction of samples on various substrates showed a higher chemometric prediction accuracy for nonporous substrates (glass, plastic, and steel), than for porous substrates (cotton cloth, cotton swab stick, dry tissue paper, and white paper) for samples kept in room temperature and under sunlight for 15 days. The substrate study showed that the samples from various substrates could effectively generate respective spectra which can help in brand-level identification even after several days. The present method demonstrates a potential for lip balm samples to be used in forensic casework applications.     

A market-based solution to a sanitation issue in a marginalised area

Neo-liberal ideology, as an abstract technique of self-governance and population management, is often viewed as tolerant of extreme inequality within a market economy. However, the range of policy proposals that flow from the ideology are not necessarily insensitive to development projects in marginalised areas. Sensitivity to market mechanisms may inject pragmatism in contexts where states are unable or unwilling to supply capability enhancing public goods. Through an analysis of the Center for Urban and Regional Excellence’s proof-of-concept development project in India, this article argues that a market-oriented framework can be useful in mitigating collective action problems.     

Imports of Intermediate Inputs and Spillover Effects: Evidence from Chilean Plants

This paper uses plant-level data from Chile to examine the determinants of importing intermediate inputs paying special attention to the role of importing spillovers. The results show that plants that pay higher wages and plants with previous experience importing intermediate inputs are more likely to import inputs. This study also finds a positive correlation between the number of importers in the same region, regardless of their industry affiliation, and the probability of importing intermediate inputs. This suggests that importing spillovers may be important, at least in the case of Chilean manufacturing.     

Spontaneous ignition in case of celphos poisoning

Celphos (aluminum phosphide) poisoning is the most common cause of poisoning in India. The mechanism of action, acute and chronic effect on human body, its symptoms and signs, and the line of treatment are well documented and research is still going on to find a suitable antidote. "Spontaneous ignition" is a rare but interesting finding in case of aluminum phosphide poisoning. We present the autopsy findings in this case report along with the probable factors that led to occurrence of such finding.     

Jumping Together: A Fatal Suicide Pact

In suicide pact, two or more victims mutually agree and execute to end their lives together by predetermined method, preferably by hanging, drowning, gunshot, or poisoning. The victims are usually spouses, lovers, or friends, and the reasons behind such steps are various. In this reported suicide pact, husband–wife duo jumped from the terrace of a 12‐meter‐high building with their wrist bound to each other. Although they jumped together, the injury patterns were completely different. The man landed on head sustaining mainly craniocerebral injuries, and the wife landed on feet sustaining long bone injuries. They left a suicide note pointing out sudden demise of their only child as the reason for the suicide, and it was signed by both of them. Jumping from a height in suicide pact has not been reported in the scientific literature yet.     

ForensicNet: Modern convolutional neural network-based image forgery detection network

The advancements in Image editing techniques produce realistic-looking artificial images with ease. These images can easily circumvent the forensic systems making the authentication process more tedious and difficult. To overcome this problem, we introduce a modern convolutional neural network (CNN) named ForensicNet, inspired by the recent developments in computer vision. The three major contributions of our CNNs are inverted bottleneck, separate downsampling layers, and using depth-wise convolutions for mixing information in the spatial dimension. The inverted bottlenecks help improve accuracy and reduce network parameters/FLOPs. The separate downsampling layers help converge the network. The normalization layers also help stabilize training whenever the spatial resolution is changed. The depth-wise convolution is a grouped convolution where the number of groups and channels are the same. The experiments show that ForensicNet outperforms the state-of-the-art methods by a large margin.     

Do Participatory Learning and Action Women’s Groups Alone or Combined with Cash or Food Transfers Expand Women’s Agency in Rural Nepal?

Participatory learning and action women’s groups (PLA) have proven effective in reducing neonatal mortality in rural, high-mortality settings, but their impacts on women’s agency in the household remain unknown. Cash transfer programmes have also long targeted female beneficiaries in the belief that this empowers women. Drawing on data from 1309 pregnant women in a four-arm cluster-randomised controlled trial in Nepal, we found little evidence for an impact of PLA alone or combined with unconditional food or cash transfers on women’s agency in the household. Caution is advised before assuming PLA women’s groups alone or with resource transfers necessarily empower women.     

From Swagger to Self-Advocacy: India’s Postgraduate “Transition” in the World Bank

The International Development Association (IDA), the World Bank's facility for low-income countries, has granted India an unprecedented exception to its usual “graduation” policy—extending transitional support to its largest borrower, even though it has crossed the normal eligibility cutoff for IDA’s soft loans (based on per capita income). Before 2012, some Indian officials had called for a “graceful graduation,” believing that India did not need concessionary development assistance any longer. But with IDA graduation imminent in 2013 and facing a limit on borrowing from the Bank’s other window for middle-income countries, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, India successfully appealed for continued IDA access. This article draws on official interviews and documents to show how India secured post-graduation transitional support from IDA—suggesting that while India’s leaders seek to present their country as a rising power with influence in multilateral institutions, they can also be pragmatic in their status demands and quietly persuasive in their economic diplomacy.