The Icfai University Journal of Infrastructure - Finance Journals

September' 08

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Articles

Physical Infrastructure and Land Productivity: A District Level Analysis of Rural Orissa -- Chittaranjan Nayak

The present study analyzes the effectiveness of rural physical infrastructure on land productivity. Physical Infrastructure includes irrigation, electricity, transportation and communication. The final selection of the items in each category has been made on the basis of a priori study and regression through backward elimination. It is a novel attempt by the Principal Component Analysis, to construct infrastructure index at district level for Orissa. This study observes asymmetry in the spread of physical infrastructure across the three major regions of the state. The analysis also explores that land productivity is low in the Kalahandi-Bolangir-Koraput (KBK) belt and in certain districts of the Western-Central Orissa, in comparison to the Coastal Orissa. This may be ascribed to the underdevelopment of infrastructure.

Article Price : Rs.50

Rural Infrastructure: Spread, Investment and Benefit from Grameen Bhandaran Yojana -- M S Jairath

Development of storage infrastructure especially in rural areas is essential to harness the agriculture potential and help the farming community. This study has been conducted to know specifically the extent of spread of constructed/renovated rural godown, regional imbalances in construction of rural godowns, investment made and subsidy distributed, the availability of rural godowns in terms of geographical area as well as production, utilization pattern and to examine the benefits extended to rural economy in terms of employment generated, wastage reduction and price gain by launching of the scheme in India.

Article Price : Rs.50

Tourism Infrastructure: Forecasting of International Tourist Flows to India -- Sajal Ghosh

Development of tourism infrastructure is vital as the tourism industry is contributing significantly to India's foreign exchange earnings. This study forecasts month-wise international tourist flows to India using univariate time-series techniques namely Multiplicative Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (MSARIMA) and Holt-Winters Multiplicative Exponential Smoothing for seasonally unadjusted monthly data, spanning from January 1998 to June 2007. In-sample forecasting reveals that exponential smoothing model outperforms Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) (1, 0, 0) (1, 1, 1)¹² model in terms of lower Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), Mean Absolute Error (MAE) and Mean Absolute Percent Error (MAPE). Finally, both the models have been used to forecast monthly international tourist arrivals to India, 15 months ahead from July 2007. This will help the government and hospitality industry for better tourism strategic planning.

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Data Mining Applications and Infrastructural Issues: An Indian Perspective -- R P Datta

In recent years, the Indian Economy has shown tremendous growth. Due to advances in data storage and networking technologies, large amounts of data are now available. Data mining techniques can be applied to these large volumes of data to come up with meaningful information that can help in making businesses more competitive and sustain economic development in the long run. The question arises as to what kind of infrastructural setup would be appropriate to perform data mining operations across various industry segments in a developing country like India. This paper proposes two kinds of infrastructural setups namely centralized and decentralized setups for performing data mining operations. It focuses on three specific areas of potential applications of data mining in the growth of the Indian economy—analysis of risk in finance and banking sector, retail business, health insurance and fraud management—and suggests which kind of infrastructure may be suitable for each specific application area.

Article Price : Rs.50

Impact of Availability-Based Electricity Tariffs (Abt) on the Power Sector: Case Study of Karnataka -- Hiremani Naik and Tanaji G Rathod

The Indian power sector basically suffers from widespread shortages of electricity supply. This is due to inadequate expansion of the generation capacity by the state-owned electric utilities, poor response from the private sector players and severe resource constraints. Socioeconomic and political issues, environmental concerns and mismanagement of the existing power utilities have become debatable issues now and then. Therefore, the governments are bringing some kind of reforms in the sector. However, it has brought only a temporary relief to the sector. Against this backdrop, this study focuses on a recent mechanism or an operating tool called Availability-Based Electricity Tariffs (ABT) and its impact on the power sector with the case study of Karnataka. The unscheduled interchange, which is a hedging mechanism, has enforced the Inter-state sale-purchase of power and succeeded in transforming the fabric of the Indian power system operation in an unparalleled manner.

Article Price : Rs.50

BOOK REVIEW

Ports Infrastructure and Economic Development -- Dr. Pradeepta Kumar Samanta and Dr. Ashok Kumar Mohanty, Reviewed by Durga Madhab Mahapatra

Infrastructure is an important input for industrial and economic development. The importance of infrastructure for sustained economic growth is well recognized in India. India has made considerable progress in the last ten years in attracting investment in the infrastructure sectors like telecommunications, ports and roads and other individual projects. The sector is estimated to grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 15% over the next few years. It is a sector with enormous potential. According to the Economic Survey 2005-2006, India has the potential to absorb $150 bn of foreign direct investment in the next five years, in the infrastructure sector alone.

Article Price : Rs.50