Sustainability of Participatory Projects: Study of Productive Sector under Peoples’ Planning in Chempu Village Panchayat of Kottayam District

The study has wider policy implications as it identifies the possible variables which influence the sustainability of participatory productive sector projects. The method which is developed to study the sustainability of projects under People’s Planning in Chempu Panchayat could be used for studying the same in other panchayats also. Unlike the case of the standard features of sustainability identified, the independent variables vary according to the nature of the project. Hence, this needs to be modified accordingly while applying the method in a dissimilar domain. Selection of a single panchayat for the present study is relevant on the basis of a common package of inputs for decentralised planning which is forwarded by the State Planning Board respectively for the three-tier panchayat system in Kerala. The dynamic filed realities could be brought out in view of a comprehensive planning approach through an in depth study of specific cases.The assessment of the nature and pattern of productive sector projects in the selected Village Panchayat puts the projects under close scrutiny. The analysis has depended largely on secondary sources of information, especially from panchayat level plan documents, and also on the primary information obtained using direct observation and on-site inspection of project sites. An analysis of the nature and pattem of productive sector projects is important as it gives all necessary information regarding follow-up, monitoring/evaluation and even termination of a particular project. It has also revealed the tendencies of including infrastructure and service sector projects under ‘productive’ category, especially for maintaining the stipulated ratio (40:30:30) of grant-in-aid distribution. The study regarding the allocation and expenditure pattern of plan funds is vital in policy level as it reveals the under-noticed allocation and expenditure pattern of plan funds other than grant-in-aid. One major limitation of the study has been the limited availability of secondary data, especially regarding project-wise expenditure and monitoring/evaluation reports of various project committees.

Sustainability and Livelihood Issues of Vembanad Ecosystem Fisherfolk Communities

Dept.of Applied Economics,Cochin University of Science and Technology

Socio-Economic Survey of a Specific village

This thesis Entitled Socio-Economic Survey of a Specific village.For the purpose of analysis the thesis is divided into nine chapters. The first chapter introduces the subject of study and explains the significance of the study.It also provides the profile of the village. Chapter two deals with the different aspects of agriculture in the village.Chapter three discusses the problems of industrialisation in the Village. Chapter four is on village administration. It elaborates on the services rendered by government machinery in facilitating the development of agriculture and industry in the village.Chapter five explains the ways and means of marketing of village produce, both industrial and agricultural origin. It also explains the relevance of intra village connections in facilitating marketing.Chapter seven provides information regarding the income and expenditure pattern of the village.Chapter eight is on village social life. It explains the social life of the villagers, including religious

“Income, Livelihood and Education of Tribal Communities in Kerala – Exploring Inter Community Disparities

The overall objective of the study is to examine whether the tribal communities in Kerala can be considered a coherent group in terms of select indicators of development by focusing on nine major tribal communities. The study also aims to bring out the intercommunity differences if any in aspects of livelihood options and education level of the tribal communities in Kerala

"|mpact of trawling on sea bottom and its living communities along the inshore waters of southwest coast of India'’

Mechanized fishing started in Indian waters in mid —fifties and large-scale operation of trawl fishing began in the mid sixties by the surfeit of individual entrepreneurs. The southwest coast of India especially the coastal waters of Kerala are the most productive area in the subcontinent and the state has been in the forefront in marine fish production (Kurup, 2001a). Though the coastline of Kerala is one tenth of the coastline of India, the state occupies the foremost position in the marine fish production of the country, accounting for more than 30% of the marine fish landings (Thomas, 2000). The coastal waters of Kerala have rich and diversified fishery resources, which are prone to heavy exploitation by a unprecedently high number of fishing gears, among them, mechanized bottom trawlers with a numerical strength of 4550 (Kurup, 2001a) against the permissible number of 1145 (Kalawar, et al., 1985) are the most destructive. Trawling operations during monsoon periods in Kerala has been a subject of controversy between traditional fishermen and trawl fishers on a subject that trawl fishing destroys large amount of juveniles and young ones of fishes since this period is the major breeding season of most of the fish and prawns (John, 1996). Therefore Government of Kerala imposed a ban on bottom trawling activities from 1988 onwards for a period varying from 21-70 days, which usually commences from June 15th. Though many studies revealed that large amount of non-target groups were destroyed in the commercial trawl fishing in the Indian waters, no concerted study has been conducted so far to evaluate the real impact of bottom trawling on the sea bottom and its living communities. The present study was conducted to assess the impact of excessive bottom trawling exerted on the sea bottom habitat and its living communities, which would be useful in impressing up on the seriousness of habitat degradation and biotic devastation, enabling the concerned to adopt relevant conservation and management steps to conserve the resources for sustainable exploitation

Effect of industrial pollution on the benthic communities of a tropical estuary

Cochin backwaters, a tropical barbuilt estuary is well known for its prawn, molluscan and demersal fisheries. Also it formed the dumping area for sewage,235 retting of husks and discharge of effluents from industries located on either side of it. As a result the fishery is being gradually dwindled year after year due to the lowering of the water quality. The effect of industrial polution on the benthic community of this tropical estuary was worked out. An area extending over 21 km from the mouth of the estuary to upstream of industrial belt was selected. Temporal and spatial variations of 16 environmental parameters at 9 stations along the area were monitored monthly during 1981. Benthic fauna of these 9 stations consisted of amphipods , polychaetes, isopods, tanaidaceans, molluscs and other crustaceans (Decapods, Acetes, Alpheids, Balanus, insect larvae, chironomid larvae, cumacea and some fresh water forms ). Apart from these, sea anemone, flat worms, nematodes, sipunculoids, echinoderms and fishes were also encountered. 75 species belonging to 31 faunal groups were identified. Of these 31 groups, amphipods, polychaedes, isopods, tanaidaceans and molluscs were numerically abundant. Rest of the 26 groups (including 13 riverine forms) were found less significant due to their rare occurrence/low numerical abundance. Polychaetes and molluscs were the only major groups present at all the stations.

Socio-Economic Dimensions of Health Care Development Among Tribals in Kerala: A Study of Tribal Communities in Wynad

The contemporary explanations and discussions of the relationship between medicine and health, and society centre around assumptions that can be broadly classified into three setsl. The first set considers health and illness as predominantly ‘biological’ and therefore, having nothing to do with the social and economic environment in which it occurs. The struggle to combat illness therefore, lies entirely within the purview of modern medicine which is neutral to economic or social change. The second considers practice of medicine as a natural science. It allows the doctor to separate himself from his subject matter, the patient, in the samelway as the natural scientist is assumed to separate himself from his subject matter, the natural world. As a 'science' and with the scientific method, it can produce unchallengable and autonomous body of knowledge which is free from the wider social and economic context. The third, different from the above, recognises the relationship between health, medicine and society. Social and environmental aspects as determinants of illness or of health comes to sharp focus here and it assigns to medicine the status of a mediator, the only viable mediator, between people and diseases. In this scheme of things the usefulness of medicine is unquestionable but the problem lies in not having enough of it to go arounds.

Impact of climate change on hetrotrophic bacterial communities in the water and sediment of kongsfjord in norwegian artic

Considering the extent of warming in the artic region and the resultant changes in the dynamic marine enviornments there is a need to monitor the bacterial diversity in the fjord enviornments especially in terms of cultivable bacteria. The present study reports the diversity of cultivable hetrotrophic bacteria from the water and sediment samples of kongsfjord their growth responses to important enviornmental variables and ability to produce industrially important hydrolytic enzymes.

Continuation and discontinuation of local institution in community based natural resource management

Currently the push toward frontier areas, which until twenty years ago were still largely untouched by commercial agriculture, is taking place on a massive scale. This push is being driven not the least by global economic developments, such as the price increase of agriculture commodities like coffee and cocoa. In most cases the indigenous communities become trapped between the state monopoly in natural resource management and the competition for resources by external actors. In this processes the indigenous communities start to lose their access to resources. Another victim in this process is the environment where the natural resources are imbedded. International and national organizations working to conserve environment have became conscious of the important role that indigenous people could fulfill as partners in this endeavour. This partnership in struggle has produced a new discourse on the relationship between indigenous people and their environment. As a further consequence, programs were set up to develop what became known as Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) with its numerous variations. Based on a case study in a village on the eastern border of the Lore Lindu National Park in Central Sulawesi, this study questioned the basic assumption behind the concept of Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM). Namely the assumption that communities living at the margin of forest are socially and culturally homogenous, still more or less egalitarian, and basically living in harmony with their natural environment. This study was inspired by the persistent critique – although still a minority – on the basic assumption the CBNRM from academicians and practitioners working through the Entitlement perspective. Another inspiration was the mounting critique toward the participatory approach. In its effort the study explore further the usefulness of certain approaches. One of the approach much relied on in this study was the local history of the community studied, through exerting oral and local written documents on local history, legends and local stories. These sources proofed quite capable in bringing the local history into the light. Another was the actor oriented approach, which later came to be supported by the concept of Social Pool Resources. The latter concept proofed to be useful as analytical instrument to integrate social institutions and the common pool resources, as a field of action for the different actors as human agencies.

Wege zur Entdeckung von Communities in Folksonomies

Ein wichtiger Baustein des neu entdeckten World Wide Web - des "Web 2.0" - stellen Folksonomies dar. In diesen Systemen können Benutzer gemeinsam Ressourcen verwalten und mit Schlagwörtern versehen. Die dadurch entstehenden begrifflichen Strukturen stellen ein interessantes Forschungsfeld dar. Dieser Artikel untersucht Ansätze und Wege zur Entdeckung und Strukturierung von Nutzergruppen ("Communities") in Folksonomies.

Discovering similarities in the time use patterns of the Spanish Autonomous Communities by Fuzzy techniques

In 2000 the European Statistical Office published the guidelines for developing the Harmonized European Time Use Surveys system. Under such a unified framework, the first Time Use Survey of national scope was conducted in Spain during 2002– 03. The aim of these surveys is to understand human behavior and the lifestyle of people. Time allocation data are of compositional nature in origin, that is, they are subject to non-negativity and constant-sum constraints. Thus, standard multivariate techniques cannot be directly applied to analyze them. The goal of this work is to identify homogeneous Spanish Autonomous Communities with regard to the typical activity pattern of their respective populations. To this end, fuzzy clustering approach is followed. Rather than the hard partitioning of classical clustering, where objects are allocated to only a single group, fuzzy method identify overlapping groups of objects by allowing them to belong to more than one group. Concretely, the probabilistic fuzzy c-means algorithm is conveniently adapted to deal with the Spanish Time Use Survey microdata. As a result, a map distinguishing Autonomous Communities with similar activity pattern is drawn. Key words: Time use data, Fuzzy clustering; FCM; simplex space; Aitchison distance

Communities and the Web

What is a social network? How does an online community differ from a real world community? See also: Anne Hornsby, 'Surfing the net for community: a Durkheimian analysis of electronic gatherings' ch.3 in Peter Kivisto (ed.) Illuminating Social Life (3rd ed 2005). Libr ref HM51KIV. Graham Crow and Catherine Maclean, 'Community' in Geoff Payne (ed.) Social Divisions (2nd ed. 2006) HM821PAY.