Are Daughters Like Mothers: Evidence on Intergenerational Educational Mobility Among Young Females in India

Taking data from the ‘India Youth Survey: Situation and Needs’ the paper examines intergenerational educational mobility for young females (vis-à-vis their mothers) in India. The paper uses transition/mobility matrices and mobility measures widely used in the literature on intergenerational mobility for the examination. The overall intergenerational educational mobility among the young females in India is about 0.69 (the upper limit being 1). The upwards component of the overall intergenerational educational mobility is 0.55 (that is, nearly four-fifth of the overall). Also, the intergenerational educational mobility is slightly higher in the ‘Scheduled Castes and Tribes (SC/ST)’ compared to the ‘Other Backward Castes (OBC)’ as well as ‘Others’ castes. But the upward mobility is substantially higher in the ‘Others’ caste group compared to SC/STs. The upward mobility among the OBCs is higher than that of SC/STs but lower than that of the ‘Others’ category. Also, the overall mobility as well as upward mobility is higher in urban areas. Moreover, there are large inter-state variations with the economically and demographically poorer states having substantially lower overall as well as upward mobility than the economically and demographically advanced states.     

Inequality of Opportunity in Indian Women

Social Indicators Research - Inequality of opportunity (IOp) in any society is defined as that part of overall inequality which arises from factors beyond the control of an individual...     

Leveraging the common and outsourcing the distinct: institutional difference and multinational company identity in emerging economies

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the challenges of outsidership faced by multinational companies (MNCs) accessing emerging economies. The paper departs from popular conceptualisations of culture drawing instead on social identity theory as part of an institutions-based view, to explain how employing a singularities approach can allow the identification of commonalities of Indianness and Australianness that can be leveraged to ameliorate negative socially embedded business norms that pose a challenge to MNC success in emerging economies. This study shows that despite recognised formal (regulatory) and informal (cultural) differences, managers of Australian MNCs operating in India were able to innovatively identify and exploit cultural commonalties/singularities to ease cultural adjustment and mitigate intergroup conflict, allowing them to achieve an innovative institutional fit. The paper discusses how, using this approach, sole-venture MNCs can access many of the benefits provided by collaborative entry modes while preserving MNC identity. We further propose that the singularities approach can provide a valuable starting point to develop culturally appropriate competence training initiatives.     

Design and implementation of an integrated production planning system for a pharmaceutical manufacturing concern in India

SmithKline Beecham (SBPI) is a major player in the Indian pharmaceutical industry. Though relatively small in terms of turnover, it has performed Pharmaceuticals (India) exceptionally well in terms ofprofitability and growth rate. The firm has substantial cash reserves. However, the firm operates in 'mass production' mode at present, with the established finished goods inventory norms being in the range of 1 to 1.5 months. Competitive pressure on the firm is now forcing it to move towards world class manufacturing and the application of concepts from MRP II, JIT and OPT is under consideration. This paper describes the considerations that went into the justification, design and implementation of an integrated production planning and control system in this situaion.     

Understanding cultural singularities of ‘Indianness’ in an intercultural business setting

Analysing data from the Indian information technology (IT) industry, this paper advances an understanding of cultural singularities of ‘Indianness’. The research context of an intercultural meeting place of IT and business process outsourcing firms’ overseas subsidiaries, Belgium in this case, allows the authors to identify 10 cultural singularities that typify ‘Indianness’. This ethnographic, reflexive study is further validated by employing Ghoshal's ‘smell of the place’ metaphor through the authors collective experiences as consultants and researchers, and builds and extends upon the popular cultural dimension frameworks for understanding intercultural business and management. Existing cultural dimensions do not sufficiently describe the contemporary intercultural dynamics that typically take place in workplaces, especially so in offshore and outsourcing environments. A provisional set of parameters for understanding Indian culture, with its relevant impact on business life (customs and manners), business processes and business deliverables are proposed in this study.     

Inequality of Opportunity in Indian Children: The Case of Immunization and Nutrition

Basic services which are essential for the overall development of a child should not depend on circumstances such as caste, religion, gender, place of birth, or other parental characteristics, which are beyond his/her control. This paper uses two rounds of Indian National Family Health Surveys and concepts of Inequality of Opportunity and Human Opportunity Indices to measure inequality arising out of unequal coverage of full immunization and minimum nutrition for Indian children. The results suggest overall high level of inequality of opportunity with substantial geographical variations. Changes in inequality of opportunity in the two services during 1992–1993 to 2005–2006 were mixed with some geographical regions outperforming others. The findings also call for substantial policy revisions if the goal of universal full immunization and minimum nutrition has to be achieved.     

Addition of runs to an s-level supersaturated design

The purpose of the present work is to extend the work of Gupta et al. (2010) to s  -level column balanced supersaturated designs. Addition of runs to an existing E(χ²)-optimal$E({\chi }^2)\mathrm{-}\mathrm{optimal}$ supersaturated design and to study the optimality of the resulting design is an important issue. This paper considers the study of the optimality of the resulting design. A lower bound to E(χ²)$E({\chi }^2)$ has been obtained for the extended supersaturated designs. Some examples and a small catalogue of E(χ²)-optimal$E({\chi }^2)\mathrm{-}\mathrm{optimal}$ supersaturated designs are also presented.     

A study of the kinematics of ingress and egress of upright and recumbent seats

Research has been done on the maximum reach and ingress/egress of upright seats. However, research on recumbent seats and comparisons between recumbent and upright seats is limited. By using an eight-camera Vicon motion capture system and C-motion Visual 3D modeling software, this research compared the ingress/egress joint kinematics and maximal planar reach of an upright seat with a recumbent seat. Mean range of motion and mean peak angle for each ingress/egress task were determined and the values for the upright seat were compared to the values for the recumbent seat. For each reach task, three extreme points were extracted and compared between the upright and recumbent seat. Seat orientation was found to have a statistically significant effect on the range of motion of several joints during the ingress/egress tasks, as well as one of the extreme points during the reaching tasks.     

Earth Vikalp Sangam: proposal for a Global Tapestry of Alternatives*

ABSTRACT

Globally there is a visible counter-trend to the destructive process of ‘development’ that the forces of capitalism, statism, patriarchy have imposed. Though still marginal and not yet able to make significant macro-level transformations, the resistance is growing. As is, often emerging from such resistance, there is a re-assertion of ways of life that respect, nature (including humans), co-existence, and justice. Such radical alternatives can be from ancient cultures, or be very new, but all have a core of ethical values that put life at the centre. One crucial barrier to these becoming a force for macro-level change is that they remain scattered, only sporadically learning from each other and becoming a greater critical mass. With this background, a Global Tapestry of Alternatives has been initiated in mid-2019, a kind of confluence of ideas and practices towards further collaboration and visioning. The idea has emerged from the Vikalp Sangam (Alternatives Confluence) process running since 2014 in India.     

Some applications of lagrangian distributions in queueing theory and epidemiology

In this note we demonstrate that the Lagrangian distributions have applications in queueing theory and theory of epidemics. The Lagrangian distribution appears as the distribution describing the number of customers served in a busy period under certain conditions. Also, the Lagrangian distribution describes the distribution of number of persons infected by a certain infectious disease.