Wealth and poverty in rural India

The main objectives of this paper are to identify and account for the regional variations in the rural household incomes and inequalities in income distribution between and within regions in India. Clearly, higher average incomes are concentrated in the W and NW regions, and very low incomes in the densely populated E and S. These differences have been analysed through the use of correlation and regression model, based on 15 variables. The results indicate that agricultural development (reflected in mechanization and irrigation), size of holdings, and family size have a positive influence on incomes, and landlessness negative. Further, a significant negative correlation between low caste population density and household incomes suggests that, at least, some of the impoverishment in the villages may be attributed to an unfair social structure that has developed and has been maintained over a long time in India. This conclusion is further reinforced by comparing income data from regions dominated by tribal social system and community ownership of land with those where Hindu caste system and private ownership of land are dominant.     

Gender and urban poverty: Single mothers in Amsterdam

Urban poverty in Western countries is usually defined in terms of social exclusion and integration. Welfare states can be characterized according to three modes of integration, namely market exchange, redistribution and reciprocity. This paper compares the mechanisms of the social integration of unemployed single mothers with those of unemployed men. In two deprived neighbourhoods in Amsterdam, unemployed single mothers and unemployed native-born men were interviewed about their coping strategies with respect to the labour market, social security institutions and social networks. Although the single mothers have serious financial problems, they are better integrated into society at large than the unemployed men are. The single mothers are strongly oriented towards the labour market, successful in getting support from the social security institutions, have strong and supportive social networks, and are integrated into their neighbourhoods. In the conclusion we challenge the idea of vulnerable single mothers and demonstrate the relatively successful integration of this category of women. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Regional changes in food poverty in India

Using average nutritive values of food actually consumed by individuals, this paper identifies regional concentration of hunger (food poverty) and its changes over time in rural India. There is clearly a heavy concentration of hunger in the coastal states of India, with few exceptions, which has persisted over time. Hunger has declined in about half the states of India but has increased in the remaining half. Unfortunately, it seems to have increased in the states that are relatively prosperous and are surplus producers of food. Hence, increased production of food, though important, does not necessarily reduce hunger. A redeeming conclusion of the study is that there has been a general improvement in the quality of food intake, particularly in the states where food poverty has declined.     

Coping strategies with floods in Bangladesh: an empirical study

In the time of the flooding, rural people in Bangladesh suffer from the lingering effects of labor market disruption and income deficiency. This study shows a model based analysis on the research question, ??what coping strategies are followed by the flooded households in Bangladesh and how???. Data are collected through a three stage stratified random sampling technique on 595 flooded and rural households??. Survey is carried out aftermath of the flood in the year 2005, from four different districts in Bangladesh. A major proportion of households are found to borrow money or resources from informal sources, such as nearby shops or the pharmacy, friends or relatives, or local money lenders, to buy food items and other essentials. A censored tobit model analysis shows that households initiate coping with borrowing money after the realization of floods, and gradually lead to cope with savings and selling assets as the duration of flood increases.     

Changing poverty distribution in Bolivia: the role of rural–urban migration and urban services

Bolivia is a country with high levels of poverty and inequality among its peoples and regions. For the nation and its urban and rural areas, trends in the social and spatial distribution of poverty (and extreme poverty) are identified from 1976 to 2003 using UBN data with minor support where appropriate from poverty lines. The main survey between 1992 and 2001 uses composite and selected UBN to track detailed poverty change for the country’s nine departments, its ten largest cities and a selection of other smaller urban and rural municipalities. Because of rising background increases in population in the various surveyed administrative units, many instances of relative reductions in poverty are accompanied by rising absolute increases. Marked spatial variations in poverty and development in the country over the last several decades are identified as the main driver for the country’s quickening pace of rural–urban migration. As a result, the paper concludes by assessing two different but closely related views. One investigation tests the notion that because more poor people have been living in Bolivia’s cities than in its rural areas since the mid to late 1990s, rapid rural–urban migration has simply shifted the locus of poverty from the countryside to the cities in a process called, the ‘urbanisation of poverty.’ A second, more challenging, investigation assesses the view that the flow of poor rural people to the better serviced urban areas of Bolivia has actually acted to alleviate national poverty levels.     

Post-Cyclone Sidr illness patterns in coastal Bangladesh: an empirical study

After the landfall of Cyclone Sidr along the southwestern coast of Bangladesh on November 15, 2007, emergency and public health personnel within and beyond Bangladesh anticipated a massive outbreak of water-borne and other diseases in most affected areas. Fortunately, such an outbreak did not occur. The objectives of this paper are to examine the extent and pattern of illnesses experienced by Cyclone Sidr survivors in the aftermath of its landfall and to investigate household and individual-level factors associated with such illnesses. Based on face-to-face interviews conducted among 277 randomly selected Sidr survivors living in the four most severely impacted coastal districts, this study found that the post-cyclone incidence of water-borne, respiratory, and other diseases was not unusually high. Only 52 persons suffered Sidr-related illnesses, and their illnesses were significantly associated with household income, and gender and age of the Sidr survivors. A major outbreak of such diseases was largely avoided because of the proper distribution of food and safe drinking water, as well as the timely implementation of health care intervention measures. This important finding will aid relevant authorities in successfully responding to outbreaks of diseases following a future extreme event in Bangladesh and perhaps elsewhere.     

Dewaterability of faecal sludge and its implications on faecal sludge management in urban slums

The current practices of faecal sludge management in urban slums pose risks to public health and environmental pollution. Given that faecal sludge contains high water content, dewatering it presents an important step of managing it effectively. This paper therefore explores the applicability of dewatering as the first step in decentralized treatment of faecal sludge (FS) generated from pit latrines, the commonest sanitation technology used in urban slums. A total of 22 and 10 FS samples were collected from lined and unlined pit latrines, respectively. The high moisture content of 92.4 and 83.4 % of FS from lined and unlined pit latrines, respectively, depicted a need for dewatering. Dewaterability extent and rate were measured in terms of per cent cake solids and capillary suction time, respectively. The average dewaterability extent of FS from unlined pit latrines (31.8 %) was significantly higher than that of lined latrines (18.6 %) (p = 0.000) while the dewaterability rate (1122 and 1485 s of FS from lined and unlined pits, respectively) was not significantly different (p = 0.104), although very low compared to sewage sludge. To obtain high dewaterability extent of FS from lined pit latrines, volatile solids should be reduced and sand content increased. To maintain high dewaterability extent of FS from unlined pit latrines, the particle sizes should be ≤1 mm. The results from this study suggest that FS from pit latrines in Kampala can be conveniently dewatered without thickening, thereby reducing costs of FS management.     

Local site effects in Latur, India: an empirical study based on the aftershocks of the Killari earthquake of September 29, 1993

The site amplification is estimated at five seismic stations of the Latur region using the horizontal to vertical spectral ratios of 33 aftershocks of the main Killari earthquake of September 29, 1993 (UTC). Spectral amplifications, ranging from a factor of 2–6 are found to vary with frequency at different places. Significant amplification is found at four sites within the Latur region, at Basavakalyan, Kasgi, Killari, and Mudgad Eakoji villages. Our results show a positive correlation between the site amplification and the damage pattern in area. The pattern and the nature of the site amplification estimated in the present study corroborates also with the analytical models and the borehole data indicating alternating layers of unconsolidated sediments and basaltic rocks.     

Flood damage assessment of an urban area in Chennai, India, part I: methodology

Floods are random phenomena that not only cause damage to the lives, natural resources and the environment, but also affect the health of people. The severity of flooding tends to increase with urbanization. Socio-economic impacts of floods depend on the area, duration and depth of inundation, population density, housing typology, construction materials of dwellings, etc. This article examines the different available methods to trace the flood damage and illustrates the methodology to explore the economic loss through social investigation in Velachery, a part of urban Chennai in India. This paper is Part I of a two-part series in which the objectives and methodology are discussed. Based on the objectives and methodology developed for the study, a comprehensive flood management strategy can be proposed for the efficient management of future flood disasters. The results of the study are discussed in Part II.     

Determinants of poverty: lessons from Kenya

Poverty and food security are twin concerns of Kenya in a manner similar to many affected developing countries. It is characterized by the inability of the affected households in the country to acquire and retain sustainable livelihoods. The picture in Kenya is bound to be complicated by the projected changes in climate, as well as by population increase and environmental degradation, all which will put pressure on the natural resource base and militate against the achievement of sustainable development. The poverty picture in Kenya has hardly changed since independence over four decades ago despite the enormous resources and efforts which have been directed at tackling it. The current national poverty level remains high at well over 70% in some pockets which remain particularly vulnerable. Following the recent post-election violence, there is now a fear that the situation could degenerate into famine conditions and further hopelessness for a sizeable proportion of the rural population. Government efforts to eradicate poverty and food insecurity spelled out in a thirty year development plan are unlikely to succeed unless underlying causes of inequality are properly addressed. The paper contains suggestions for new approaches to addressing the twin problems.     

Replacement study of dump-trucks in an opencast mine in India

Geotechnical and Geological Engineering -     

Farm fragmentation: a case study from Coventry's urban fringe

Empirical studies of farm fragmentation in Great Britain are rare, despite its increasing importance in the trend to fewer and larger holdings. This paper examines the extent and characteristics of farm fragmentation in the rural-urban fringe south of Coventry. Quite severe levels of fragmentation were recorded for some of the affected farms, with distances of over 32 km between isolated parcels and the main farmstead. Relationships were revealed between fragmentation and farm size, farm-size change, land tenure and enterprise structure. However, the anticipated distance-decay effect, from the edge of the city, was not apparent.     

Post-Cyclone Sidr nutritional status of women and children in coastal Bangladesh: an empirical study

Cyclone Sidr, a Category 4 storm, struck the southwestern coast of Bangladesh on November 15, 2007, causing 3,406 deaths, 2.51 million acres of crop damage, and aggregated damage of US$1.7 billion. It significantly damaged household food availability and increased post-cyclone nutritional insecurity. This study assesses the nutritional status of household and explores influences of various socioeconomic variables on nutritional security. More specifically, it explores the impact of the cyclone on short-term nutritional status of women of reproductive age and children under 5?years. For this study, 331 households living in three villages devastated by Cyclone Sidr were selected. The nutritional status of women of reproductive age was measured based on body mass index, and that of children aged 6?C59?months was measured based on weight-for-height (wasting), height-for-age (stunting), and weight-for-age (underweight). This study found that the nutritional status, along with other household characteristics, of the study groups was not remarkably different across the three selected villages. Findings of this study further suggest that the nutritional security situation was not much changed in the post-cyclone period compared with the pre-cyclone period primarily because of rapid and effective distribution of essential food items among cyclone survivors by the government of Bangladesh along with donor and other organizations. However, nutritional insecurity was more prevalent in the island village relative to inland and coastline villages. Similarly, fishermen were found to be the most vulnerable to nutritional insecurity in the post-cyclone period. Several recommendations are made to improve food aid distribution in the aftermath of a cyclone.     

Solubility of Ca and Al in orthopyroxene from spinel peridotite: an improved version of an empirical geothermometer

Geothermometric equations for spinel peridotites by Fujii (1976), Gasparik and Newton (1984), and Chatterjee, and Terhart (1985) based on the reaction enstatite (en)+spinel (sp)Mg–Tschermaks (mats)+forsterite (fo) were tested using a nearly isothermal suite of mantle xenoliths from the Eifel, West Germany. In spite of using activities of MgAl₂O₄, en, and mats to allow for the non-ideal solution behaviour of the constituent phases, temperatures calculated from these equations systematically change as a function of Cr/(Cr+AL+Fe³⁺) in spinel. We propose an improved version of the empirical geothermometer for spinel peridotites of Sachtleben and Seck (1981) derived from the evaluation of the solubilities of Ca and Al in orthopyroxene from more than 100 spinel peridotites from the Rhenish Volcanic Province. A least squares regression yielded a smooth correlation between

Growth and urban differentiation on the urban periphery: A case study from Szeged, Hungary

In late nineteenth century Hungarian cities there were strong contrasts between the inner ‘urban’ core and the rural periphery in terms of housing conditions, accessibility and lifestyle. Rural-urban fringe zones in the Great Plain were quite distinctive because the Turkish period was followed by an outflow of population which resulted in scattered settlement around the urban centres. The fringe could be regarded simply as a zone of transition, but the differences between urban centres and their immediate surroundings were gradually reduced through the industrialisation of the larger towns in the communist period. A study of Szeged examines the expansion of the fringe zone and its gradual urbanisation through the growth of housing as people have moved out from the centre to live among the rural population which increasingly turned from agriculture to commuting. Villages on either side of Szeged's administrative boundary accommodated more migrants from the city during the 1980s and experienced a gradual positive change in the quality of life as people escaped from the decaying residential blocs in the centre. During the years since 1989 there has been further migration, coupled with a growth of small businesses and a big improvement in services (shopping, running water, sewage and telecommunications). Further change may be expected in line with the forces of counterurbanisation. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Aerosol particle behavior during Dust Storm and Diwali over an urban location in north western India

In this study, the aerosol behavior during two contradictory events, i.e., dust storm (DS) and Diwali (DW) has been studied over Jaipur. The aerosol particle number concentration shows distinct features between DS and DW events. The total ANC was found minimum during DS while maximum during DW. The 24 h mean of total ANC was 9.15 × 10⁴ (±7.71 × 10⁴) and 5.38 × 10⁵ (±3.73 × 10⁵ particles/l) during DS and DW, respectively. The total ANC increases from 7.78 × 10⁴ to 5.32 × 10⁵ and 3.52 × 10⁵ to 1.70 × 10⁶ particles/l in 24 h during DS and DW, respectively. In DS, the ANC in coarse mode (2 < particle diameter < 20 μm) is significantly high while in DW, the ANC in fine mode (0.3 < particle diameter < 2 μm) exhibits higher concentration. During dust episode, a significant change in ANC (3.0 × 10³ to 1.12 × 10⁵ particles/l) was observed for the particle of size range in 2.0–20 μm with a slight increase in particles number concentration (7.48 × 10⁴ to 4.20 × 10⁵ particles/l) in 0.3–2.0 μm range is also observed. During DS, the fine and coarse mode particles increased 4.61 and 36.44 times while during DW, it increased 3.83 and 0.95 times, respectively. The relatively high particle levels during DW are attributed for two reasons: local emissions due to burning of fire crackers and meteorological conditions, i.e., low wind speeds and low mixing-layer heights lead to relatively high particle concentrations.

     

Complex baseflow in urban streams: an example from central Ohio, USA

Baseflow in urban streams remains an under-researched topic, given the critical roles it plays and the extensive and ever-increasing pace of urbanization and its impacts on stream ecosystems. This study is designed to characterize the complexity of baseflow in Dry Run, an urban stream in Columbus, Ohio. A hierarchical modeling approach combined with observations of streamflow discharge (Q) and specific conductance (SC) of the stream water was applied. The streamflow measurements showed that baseflow in Dry Run is small (below 1 m³ s^?1) and being impacted by anthropogenic activities that directly discharge water into the stream. Model analyses using IHACRES and SWMM showed that baseflow is mainly composed of two different components—groundwater inflow and slowly released flows from storm-water detention ponds. The complex origins of baseflow are exemplified by hysteresis, which can be described with a plot of SC versus discharge. Overall, the study shows the value of geochemical measurements that constrain conceptual models of source-water inflows to the stream.     

A review of recent urban geographic studies in India

This paper reviews the changing nature of the growing specialized trends of urban geography in India since independence, with a particular emphasis to the 1980s and early 1990s. Urban geography has emerged as a major academic sub-field in India with active researchers at its frontier. The 1980s and early 1990s are characterized by a diversified and growing trend of specialization both in inter-urban and intra-urban research in urban geography. This diversification is most clear and pronounced in intra-urban studies where the emphasis is directed towards socio-cultural aspects of the city. Conversely, inter-urban research is concerned both with analysis of patterns and trends of macro level urbanization and the processes. Although model building is in its infancy, a few static, deterministic, probabilistic and dynamic models have been constructed. There has been severe limitations in the use of computers in India, particularly the large-frame ones, so the researcher there cannot use the large scale data on national level.     

Geochemical characterization of groundwater from northeastern part of Nagpur urban,Central India

Hydrogeochemical investigations are carried out in the northeastern part of Nagpur urban to assess the quality of groundwater for its suitability for drinking and irrigation purposes. Groundwater samples are collected from both shallow and deep aquifers to monitor the hydrochemistry of various ions. The groundwater quality of the area is adversely affected by urbanization as indicated by distribution of EC and nitrate. In the groundwater of study area, Ca²⁺ is the most dominant cation and Cl⁻ and HCO₃ ⁻ are the dominant anions. Majority of the samples have total dissolved solids values above desirable limit and most of them belong to very hard type. As compared to deep aquifers, shallow aquifer groundwaters are more polluted and have high concentration of NO₃ ⁻. The analytical results reveal that most of the samples containing high nitrate also have high chloride. Major hydrochemical facies were identified using Piper trilinear diagram. Alkaline earth exceeds alkalis and weak acids exceed strong acids. Shoeller index values reveal that base-exchange reaction exists all over the area. Based on US salinity diagram most of samples belong to high salinity-low sodium type. A comparison of groundwater quality in relation to drinking water standards showed that most of the water samples are not suitable for drinking purpose.