Was elusive carnivore a panther? DNA typing of faeces reveals the mystery

In this study, we report the findings of a recent case in which the officials of an Indian zoo claimed that an animal, possibly a carnivore, is periodically visiting the zoo from a nearby vast forest area and causing panic in zoo and nearby villages. They collected some elusive faecal material from the vicinity of an herbivore enclosure. Looking to the pugmarks found in that area and faecal matter ceased, the officials could not decide whether it was a lioness, a tiger or a panther. We resolved this mystery by DNA-based analysis of the faecal material, using our recently developed novel universal primers to amplify and sequence a specific fragment of mitochondrial cytochrome b gene. The findings of the DNA-based analyses were confirmed after few days when the zoo officials trapped the animal of same species as suggested in our report. The potential of our procedure to investigate the cases related to wildlife offence is discussed.     

Revisiting Purchasing Power Parity for India using threshold cointegration and nonlinear unit root test

This study examines the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) hypothesis in case of India for her five major trading partners over the period of 1991M₁–2009M₂. The study used the DF-GLS unit root test and threshold autoregressive (TAR) model as well as momentum-TAR (M-TAR) models for empirical analysis. However, we relied on TAR and MTAR models based cointegration tests to draw conclusions because of their superiority to traditional cointegration techniques as these models have limit cycles, amplitude dependent frequencies, and jump phenomena. These models are capable of producing asymmetric limit cycles and are suitable for time series data. Our empirical exercise reveals that PPP hypothesis does not exist for all major trading partners in case of India. This reveals that intermediate goods face high barriers to trade in this sampled countries. This supports the argument that Indian government has not been able to strike out the proper balance between flexibility and stability between real bilateral exchange rates and thus unable to maintaining confidence in the domestic currency that has been evident from the recent fall of rupee in relation to the US dollar.     

Construing the Written Warranty

Liverpool Law Review - In common law, the question of whether the express warranty is one that sounds in contract or tort has been a question of some debate. This question is not one of...     

Nexus between income inequality and consumption of renewable energy in India: a nonlinear examination

Economic Change and Restructuring - While the association between income inequality and environmental degradation has been researched extensively by various scholars, the impact of income...     

The Development of the Urban Government System in Bangladesh: Does Coordination Exist?

This paper is intended to shed some light on the development of urban governance in Bangladesh by highlighting the issue of coordination. It addresses the question of whether there is any mechanism through which urban government bodies can ensure coordination on matters of dispute between different government organisations. The paper is based on a review of secondary literature as well as on primary data drawn from a case study on a city corporation. The available data substantiates the view that the process of urban service delivery in Bangladesh has lacked proper coordination mechanisms from its very inception. Successive governments since the independence of Bangladesh have experimented with the structural design of urban government bodies without considering the need for a proper mechanism to ensure sound coordination among actors involved in implementing the various policies of these bodies. Although an attempt was made by the then Awami League1 1 The Awami League is one of the two major political parties in Bangladesh. View all notes (1996–2001) government to establish a high-powered coordination committee under the chairmanship of the minister in charge of the Local Government, Rural Development and Cooperatives (LGRD&C) Ministry for each city corporation, in order to ensure better management of services and to settle disputes between various government agencies, the initiative was perverted upon the change of state power in 2001. As a result, these bodies continue to suffer from problems of coordination.     

Milton's army: The white house press corps

White House reporters follow a path constructed by presidential advisers that they hope will lead them to fulfill goals set by their news organizations. White House officials ration them facilities for work, access to newsworthy people, and reportable information in amounts that depend on the importance to the President of the type of media they work in, the status of their particular news organization, and the staff's respect for the influence and competence of a particular individual. In this context, several constraints that affect White House reporting are discussed here: those placed on reporters by their organizations; by the way their type of media covers the White House; by their relations with each other; and by their concepts of what they are required to do. The framework for this discussion and analysis is a classification by type of media and news organizations that assign journalists to the White House. Of the resulting six categories, the first three have the most structural and organizational influence and are given the most attention. The special status, unique history, and influence of photographers at the White House require that they be treated separately.     

Banking reforms and the evolution of cost efficiency in Indian public sector banks

This paper analyses the trends of cost efficiency and its components across Indian public sector banks (PSBs) during the post-deregulation period spanning from 1992/1993 to 2007/2008. The study also examines the issue of convergence in cost, technical and allocative efficiency levels of Indian PSBs. The empirical results indicate that deregulation has had a positive impact on the cost efficiency of Indian public sector banking industry over the period of study. Further, technical efficiency of Indian PSBs followed an uptrend, while allocative efficiency followed a path of deceleration. We note that in Indian public sector banking industry, the cost inefficiency is mainly driven by technical inefficiency rather than allocative inefficiency. The convergence analysis reveals that the inefficient PSBs are not only catching-up but also moving ahead of the efficient ones, i.e., the banks with the low level of cost efficiency at the beginning of the period are growing more rapidly than the highly cost efficient banks. In sum, the study confirms a strong presence of σ- and β-convergence in cost efficiency levels of Indian public sector banking industry.     

Anand Patwardhan: Social Activist and Dedicated Filmmaker

In this essay—an earlier version of which was delivered as a lecture at a session cosponsored by Critical Asian Studies and the Alliance of Scholars Concerned about Korea (ASCK) at the annual conference of the Association for Asian Studies, San Diego, California, on 23 March 2013—the author argues the need to go beyond the current state of perilous confrontation and volatility on the Korean Peninsula and examine how and why the current division of the peninsula into North and South has evolved into a “division system.” The author contends that “civic participation” (broadly defined to include business entrepreneurs, corporations, NGOs, and private citizens) is necessary to deal with the durable enormity of the division system. He calls this body of nonstate actors the “third party” (the first two parties being those of North and South Korea). Going beyond strictly Korean affairs, this third party, the author concludes, can play a crucial role in creating a larger framework of East Asian cooperation and solidary.     

Programmed to Fail? Development Projects and the Politics of Participation

The Eastern India Rainfed Farming Project is in many respects a model development project. A joint venture of the governments of India and the UK, the EIRFP has been successful in improving farm-based livelihoods in Jharkhand, Orissa and West Bengal. But the Project might yet be considered a failure. It has not persuaded the poorest villagers in Jharkhand (our study area) to join or manage the self-help groups that are called for by the Project's Logical Framework. We show why this has been the case, and why such an outcome was entirely predictable. Development projects cannot be expected to change local systems of politics or stratification. But this does not mean that the EIRFP is a failure. It means that a development project will be destined to 'fail' when it is judged against unrealistic assumptions about the possibilities and merits of 'participation'.     

International assistance to promote independent media in transition and post-conflict societies

This article focuses on an important but neglected area of democracy assistance: international aid to build and strengthen independent media in transition and post-conflict societies. The purpose of such assistance is to promote democratization by facilitating the free flow of information, transparency, accountability in the government, and economic growth. The article describes the origin of media assistance, examines the focus of media programmes, and presents some of the most important policy and programmatic lessons derived from fieldwork in seven locations: Afghanistan, Bosnia, Central America, Indonesia, Russia, Sierra Leone, and Serbia. The article ends with a plea for further research by the academic community on the subject.