… Jaipur, India. December.(http://hdl. handle …, 2009
Mobility and access problems in rural areas of developing countries have received some attention ... more Mobility and access problems in rural areas of developing countries have received some attention from researchers, but this has mostly been of a qualitative nature using small-sample studies. Progressively achieving rural development objectives requires, amongst ...
PurposeThe objective of the paper is to get a better understanding of capacity utilisation (CU) i... more PurposeThe objective of the paper is to get a better understanding of capacity utilisation (CU) in Indian public bus companies. More specifically, this paper would be measuring CU and identifying the drivers of the same. Finally, the influence of CU on the financial performance of Indian bus companies is examined.Design/methodology/approachThe study adopted data envelopment analysis (DEA) to measure the CU in Indian public bus companies. Truncated regression was used to identify the drivers of CU. Subsequently, the ordinary least squares (OLS) regression was used to analyse the influence of CU on Indian bus companies' financial performance. The period of study was from 2013 to 17.FindingsThe significant drivers of CU were fleet age, passenger lead and fleet utilisation. Additionally, it was found that CU had a significant positive influence on the financial performance of Indian public bus companies and a unit increase in unused capacity has led to an increase of 7% in the opera...
The goal of this study is to increase the comprehension of the access and mobility issues that pe... more The goal of this study is to increase the comprehension of the access and mobility issues that people with disabilities experience in developing countries. In addition, the study aims to identify definitive steps to address the challenges and problems. Phase I of the study includes five case studies from India, Malawi, Mexico, Mozambique, and South Africa. A needs assessment was conducted, and barriers and current practices are discussed.
South Africa (SA) and India are predominantly “rural” nations as depicted in Table 1. Table 1: Po... more South Africa (SA) and India are predominantly “rural” nations as depicted in Table 1. Table 1: Population statistics of South Africa and India South Africa India Urban Population 27 804 700 314 145 300 Rural Population 19 083 500 780 437 700 % of Total Rural Population 40.7 71.3 Source: World Development Indicators Database, 2005 However, rural development is a topic which has gained currency in either country only during recent times. SA and India have been experiencing encouraging rates of economic growth but it has been far from equitable. A key offshoot of the increasing growth rates is that the income disparity has widened considerably. This is more so in SA in the post apartheid era. Both India and SA were colonized countries with a similar historical background. Hence it has become imperative on the part of both governments to view rural development as a priority area. A key reason for rural poverty in SA and India is the lack of access to basic services. A major reason for l...
These guidelines are aimed at improving access to transport and reducing mobility barriers of dis... more These guidelines are aimed at improving access to transport and reducing mobility barriers of disabled people in developing and transition countries. Although the basic problems faced by disabled travelllers are similar worldwide, access solutions cannot simply be transplanted from developed to developing countires as priorities, resources and operating conditions vary greatly. This Road Note utilises principles of universal design to improve access to pedestrian and public transport systems for all users. The focus of this guide is on mobility and access in urban and peri-urban areas, where there are likely to be more resources available to tackle the transport problems of disabled people. Ways in which improved provision for disabled people benefit the whole of society are outlined. After the introduction, the guidelines consist of two parts: setting up a programme for improving access, and guidelines on good access practice. A CD-ROM with a computer presentation of the basic issu...
Traditional qualitative approaches to understanding rural travel behaviour can usefully be comple... more Traditional qualitative approaches to understanding rural travel behaviour can usefully be complemented by more quantitative modelling techniques, especially for ex ante appraisal and market estimation of new rural transport services. The paper reports on a case study undertaken in an isolated rural area within Limpopo Province in South Africa, aimed at exploring the adaptation and application of choice modelling techniques under severely constrained conditions typical of rural contexts. We describe the combined use of qualitative participatory approaches with conventional travel diary and stated choice surveys. A mixed logit model of combined mode and time-of-day choice is successfully calibrated, showing that rural travellers exhibit rational compensatory decision making behaviour when faced with real alternatives. The model is applied to estimate the demand for a service innovation using cellphone-enabled pre-booked taxi services.
The paper describes the Indian component of an international project which commenced in October 2... more The paper describes the Indian component of an international project which commenced in October 2001 and has as its goal the publication (in March 2004) of comprehensive guidelines to assist planners, policy makers, transport operators and disability organizations take account of the access and mobility needs of disabled people in urban areas of the developing world. It involved carrying out a small scale low cost demonstration project wherein bus stands along an extremely busy bus route in Pune were modified to make them more accessible for all passengers but especially for those with disabilities. The onus was on physical as well as informational accessibility. In addition, accessibility modifications suggested to the bus company in Pune City, the Pune Municipal Transport (PMT) were incorporated into the fitting out of their new buses. Surveys were conducted before commencement as well as after completion of the demonstration project to obtain feedback of the project from various ...
Abstract Since Kabeer's insightful and influential article in 1999, the research in the field... more Abstract Since Kabeer's insightful and influential article in 1999, the research in the field of women studies from the perspectives of women's empowerment has gained immense significance in the academic discourse. This study examines how scholarly research on women's empowerment has evolved over the past two decades by conducting a comprehensive literature analysis. We first compiled the bibliometric data using the Scopus database. The bibliometric data included 916 articles published in 427 peerreviewed journals by 1845 authors during 1999–2019, citing the influential work by Kabeer published in the July 1999 issue of the journal - Development and Change. The analysis suggests that research on women's empowerment has primarily been a multidisciplinary field with journals from diverse disciplines publishing articles on this theme. The analysis identifies the most influential journals, authors, and centres of excellence that have shaped women's empowerment research and unearths the sub-topics related to women's empowerment, which have been in vogue in recent times. The topics trending currently include interrelationships between gender equity and empowerment, measurement of women's empowerment, dimensions, and consequences of women's empowerment. These themes present fresh opportunities for aspiring researchers to align their work in this field. Our analysis makes a significant contribution for researchers interested in women's empowerment by providing a historical perspective, tracing the reason for the spurt in research output, establishing linkages between the articles, and identifying the emerging areas within the broad theme of women's empowerment.
This article aims to establish a methodology to estimate the parameters of the Bass model of diff... more This article aims to establish a methodology to estimate the parameters of the Bass model of diffusion of innovations at the take-off stage of the innovation in emerging markets and thus draw timely diffusion forecasts. This article analyses four cases of diffusion of innovations in emerging markets. Besides gradient-based methods for model estimation such as ordinary least squares (OLS) and non-linear least squares (NLS), this article uses global optimization techniques such as genetic algorithms (GA) and simulated annealing (SA) with diffusion data till the take-off stage. This study attempts to respond to the problems of scant data by interpolation until the take-off stage. After that, a comprehensive comparison of different methods is made using the standard error diagnostic measures. The results indicate that a combination of NLS, GA and SA with interpolated data reduces error margins to a commonly acceptable level even with scant and noisy data, thus providing managers a metho...
This paper proposes a framework for measuring impacts associated with road projects on rural comm... more This paper proposes a framework for measuring impacts associated with road projects on rural communities situated on either side of the road alignment. The extant approaches for measuring community impacts of road projects follow a “top-down” approach and require assumptions while imputing monetary values to community impacts. We present an Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) based alternative approach wherein the community is placed firmly at the center. We made no presumptions regarding the prioritization of benefits and costs by the communities. A road constructed between two towns in western India has been used as a test case. The AHP hierarchies for benefits and costs have been designed by fully involving the communities. We term the resulting benefit–cost ratio as Community Impact Index. Additionally, this research contains two innovations. The first innovation is about adaptation of the 9-point AHP instrument to a pictorial scale for better comprehension by respondents with low literacy and awareness. The second is about the comparison of hypothetical alternative road designs along with the actual ones to gain insights into design improvement possibilities.
State transport undertakings (STUs) are bus companies in India are instrumental for transporting ... more State transport undertakings (STUs) are bus companies in India are instrumental for transporting large numbers of people. They operate under stringent government regulations. Despite operating under relatively similar external environments, they have shown marked differences in their physical and financial performance. Hence it is imperative to have a holistic perspective of their productivity and efficiency. This is accomplished by the use of the non-parametric efficiency measuring technique known as data envelopment analysis (DEA). In order to minimize the effect of slacks on the efficiency measure, a non-radial input oriented variant of DEA is used. Efficiency scores have been computed for each of the twelve years, 2002–2013. It is observed that technical efficiency has fallen for STUs, on an average, during the study period. A key issue of concern is the fall in labour efficiency during the study period. Also “larger” STUs, in terms of fleet strength, are doing better than smaller STUs.
In empirical research on productivity measurement adjusted for undesirable outputs on the side, t... more In empirical research on productivity measurement adjusted for undesirable outputs on the side, the good and the bad outcomes are treated as joint products of the underlying production process. In the present paper, following Murty, Russell, and Levkoff, we conceptualize the good output as technologically separable from the bad output. Joint disposability is assumed between the bad output and the polluting input, rather than weak disposability and null jointness between the good and bad outputs. Moreover, we set up an integrated DEA optimization problem over the intersection of these two subtechnologies to measure the efficiency of a firm that produces a bad output alongside the good output. In an empirical illustration of our methodology, we use country-level data for an unbalanced panel of 64 countries over the years 1986 through 2011 where per capita GDP is the good and per capita $$\hbox {CO}_{2}$$CO2 emission is the bad output. We then utilize our DEA results to compute opportunity costs of a targeted reduction in $$\hbox {CO}_{2}$$CO2 emission in terms of required dollar amounts of reduction in per capita GDP for the individual countries in selected years.
The Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation has been instrumental in providing access and co... more The Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation has been instrumental in providing access and connectivity across the entire state. Over the last few years, due to a variety of factors, particularly falling load factors and competition from the private sector, MSRTC's financial performance has shown a marked deterioration. After the financial turnaround of Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation when it was split into four smaller organisations, it has shown a marked improvement in physical and financial performance. The same solution is suggested by many for large corporations like MSRTC. In this paper, we examine whether splitting of MSRTC into smaller regions would actually help in its financial recovery. Also, we examine the possibility of an improvement in financial profitability by means of enhanced input productivity.
… Jaipur, India. December.(http://hdl. handle …, 2009
Mobility and access problems in rural areas of developing countries have received some attention ... more Mobility and access problems in rural areas of developing countries have received some attention from researchers, but this has mostly been of a qualitative nature using small-sample studies. Progressively achieving rural development objectives requires, amongst ...
PurposeThe objective of the paper is to get a better understanding of capacity utilisation (CU) i... more PurposeThe objective of the paper is to get a better understanding of capacity utilisation (CU) in Indian public bus companies. More specifically, this paper would be measuring CU and identifying the drivers of the same. Finally, the influence of CU on the financial performance of Indian bus companies is examined.Design/methodology/approachThe study adopted data envelopment analysis (DEA) to measure the CU in Indian public bus companies. Truncated regression was used to identify the drivers of CU. Subsequently, the ordinary least squares (OLS) regression was used to analyse the influence of CU on Indian bus companies' financial performance. The period of study was from 2013 to 17.FindingsThe significant drivers of CU were fleet age, passenger lead and fleet utilisation. Additionally, it was found that CU had a significant positive influence on the financial performance of Indian public bus companies and a unit increase in unused capacity has led to an increase of 7% in the opera...
The goal of this study is to increase the comprehension of the access and mobility issues that pe... more The goal of this study is to increase the comprehension of the access and mobility issues that people with disabilities experience in developing countries. In addition, the study aims to identify definitive steps to address the challenges and problems. Phase I of the study includes five case studies from India, Malawi, Mexico, Mozambique, and South Africa. A needs assessment was conducted, and barriers and current practices are discussed.
South Africa (SA) and India are predominantly “rural” nations as depicted in Table 1. Table 1: Po... more South Africa (SA) and India are predominantly “rural” nations as depicted in Table 1. Table 1: Population statistics of South Africa and India South Africa India Urban Population 27 804 700 314 145 300 Rural Population 19 083 500 780 437 700 % of Total Rural Population 40.7 71.3 Source: World Development Indicators Database, 2005 However, rural development is a topic which has gained currency in either country only during recent times. SA and India have been experiencing encouraging rates of economic growth but it has been far from equitable. A key offshoot of the increasing growth rates is that the income disparity has widened considerably. This is more so in SA in the post apartheid era. Both India and SA were colonized countries with a similar historical background. Hence it has become imperative on the part of both governments to view rural development as a priority area. A key reason for rural poverty in SA and India is the lack of access to basic services. A major reason for l...
These guidelines are aimed at improving access to transport and reducing mobility barriers of dis... more These guidelines are aimed at improving access to transport and reducing mobility barriers of disabled people in developing and transition countries. Although the basic problems faced by disabled travelllers are similar worldwide, access solutions cannot simply be transplanted from developed to developing countires as priorities, resources and operating conditions vary greatly. This Road Note utilises principles of universal design to improve access to pedestrian and public transport systems for all users. The focus of this guide is on mobility and access in urban and peri-urban areas, where there are likely to be more resources available to tackle the transport problems of disabled people. Ways in which improved provision for disabled people benefit the whole of society are outlined. After the introduction, the guidelines consist of two parts: setting up a programme for improving access, and guidelines on good access practice. A CD-ROM with a computer presentation of the basic issu...
Traditional qualitative approaches to understanding rural travel behaviour can usefully be comple... more Traditional qualitative approaches to understanding rural travel behaviour can usefully be complemented by more quantitative modelling techniques, especially for ex ante appraisal and market estimation of new rural transport services. The paper reports on a case study undertaken in an isolated rural area within Limpopo Province in South Africa, aimed at exploring the adaptation and application of choice modelling techniques under severely constrained conditions typical of rural contexts. We describe the combined use of qualitative participatory approaches with conventional travel diary and stated choice surveys. A mixed logit model of combined mode and time-of-day choice is successfully calibrated, showing that rural travellers exhibit rational compensatory decision making behaviour when faced with real alternatives. The model is applied to estimate the demand for a service innovation using cellphone-enabled pre-booked taxi services.
The paper describes the Indian component of an international project which commenced in October 2... more The paper describes the Indian component of an international project which commenced in October 2001 and has as its goal the publication (in March 2004) of comprehensive guidelines to assist planners, policy makers, transport operators and disability organizations take account of the access and mobility needs of disabled people in urban areas of the developing world. It involved carrying out a small scale low cost demonstration project wherein bus stands along an extremely busy bus route in Pune were modified to make them more accessible for all passengers but especially for those with disabilities. The onus was on physical as well as informational accessibility. In addition, accessibility modifications suggested to the bus company in Pune City, the Pune Municipal Transport (PMT) were incorporated into the fitting out of their new buses. Surveys were conducted before commencement as well as after completion of the demonstration project to obtain feedback of the project from various ...
Abstract Since Kabeer's insightful and influential article in 1999, the research in the field... more Abstract Since Kabeer's insightful and influential article in 1999, the research in the field of women studies from the perspectives of women's empowerment has gained immense significance in the academic discourse. This study examines how scholarly research on women's empowerment has evolved over the past two decades by conducting a comprehensive literature analysis. We first compiled the bibliometric data using the Scopus database. The bibliometric data included 916 articles published in 427 peerreviewed journals by 1845 authors during 1999–2019, citing the influential work by Kabeer published in the July 1999 issue of the journal - Development and Change. The analysis suggests that research on women's empowerment has primarily been a multidisciplinary field with journals from diverse disciplines publishing articles on this theme. The analysis identifies the most influential journals, authors, and centres of excellence that have shaped women's empowerment research and unearths the sub-topics related to women's empowerment, which have been in vogue in recent times. The topics trending currently include interrelationships between gender equity and empowerment, measurement of women's empowerment, dimensions, and consequences of women's empowerment. These themes present fresh opportunities for aspiring researchers to align their work in this field. Our analysis makes a significant contribution for researchers interested in women's empowerment by providing a historical perspective, tracing the reason for the spurt in research output, establishing linkages between the articles, and identifying the emerging areas within the broad theme of women's empowerment.
This article aims to establish a methodology to estimate the parameters of the Bass model of diff... more This article aims to establish a methodology to estimate the parameters of the Bass model of diffusion of innovations at the take-off stage of the innovation in emerging markets and thus draw timely diffusion forecasts. This article analyses four cases of diffusion of innovations in emerging markets. Besides gradient-based methods for model estimation such as ordinary least squares (OLS) and non-linear least squares (NLS), this article uses global optimization techniques such as genetic algorithms (GA) and simulated annealing (SA) with diffusion data till the take-off stage. This study attempts to respond to the problems of scant data by interpolation until the take-off stage. After that, a comprehensive comparison of different methods is made using the standard error diagnostic measures. The results indicate that a combination of NLS, GA and SA with interpolated data reduces error margins to a commonly acceptable level even with scant and noisy data, thus providing managers a metho...
This paper proposes a framework for measuring impacts associated with road projects on rural comm... more This paper proposes a framework for measuring impacts associated with road projects on rural communities situated on either side of the road alignment. The extant approaches for measuring community impacts of road projects follow a “top-down” approach and require assumptions while imputing monetary values to community impacts. We present an Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) based alternative approach wherein the community is placed firmly at the center. We made no presumptions regarding the prioritization of benefits and costs by the communities. A road constructed between two towns in western India has been used as a test case. The AHP hierarchies for benefits and costs have been designed by fully involving the communities. We term the resulting benefit–cost ratio as Community Impact Index. Additionally, this research contains two innovations. The first innovation is about adaptation of the 9-point AHP instrument to a pictorial scale for better comprehension by respondents with low literacy and awareness. The second is about the comparison of hypothetical alternative road designs along with the actual ones to gain insights into design improvement possibilities.
State transport undertakings (STUs) are bus companies in India are instrumental for transporting ... more State transport undertakings (STUs) are bus companies in India are instrumental for transporting large numbers of people. They operate under stringent government regulations. Despite operating under relatively similar external environments, they have shown marked differences in their physical and financial performance. Hence it is imperative to have a holistic perspective of their productivity and efficiency. This is accomplished by the use of the non-parametric efficiency measuring technique known as data envelopment analysis (DEA). In order to minimize the effect of slacks on the efficiency measure, a non-radial input oriented variant of DEA is used. Efficiency scores have been computed for each of the twelve years, 2002–2013. It is observed that technical efficiency has fallen for STUs, on an average, during the study period. A key issue of concern is the fall in labour efficiency during the study period. Also “larger” STUs, in terms of fleet strength, are doing better than smaller STUs.
In empirical research on productivity measurement adjusted for undesirable outputs on the side, t... more In empirical research on productivity measurement adjusted for undesirable outputs on the side, the good and the bad outcomes are treated as joint products of the underlying production process. In the present paper, following Murty, Russell, and Levkoff, we conceptualize the good output as technologically separable from the bad output. Joint disposability is assumed between the bad output and the polluting input, rather than weak disposability and null jointness between the good and bad outputs. Moreover, we set up an integrated DEA optimization problem over the intersection of these two subtechnologies to measure the efficiency of a firm that produces a bad output alongside the good output. In an empirical illustration of our methodology, we use country-level data for an unbalanced panel of 64 countries over the years 1986 through 2011 where per capita GDP is the good and per capita $$\hbox {CO}_{2}$$CO2 emission is the bad output. We then utilize our DEA results to compute opportunity costs of a targeted reduction in $$\hbox {CO}_{2}$$CO2 emission in terms of required dollar amounts of reduction in per capita GDP for the individual countries in selected years.
The Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation has been instrumental in providing access and co... more The Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation has been instrumental in providing access and connectivity across the entire state. Over the last few years, due to a variety of factors, particularly falling load factors and competition from the private sector, MSRTC's financial performance has shown a marked deterioration. After the financial turnaround of Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation when it was split into four smaller organisations, it has shown a marked improvement in physical and financial performance. The same solution is suggested by many for large corporations like MSRTC. In this paper, we examine whether splitting of MSRTC into smaller regions would actually help in its financial recovery. Also, we examine the possibility of an improvement in financial profitability by means of enhanced input productivity.
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