157 research outputs found
Communication Technologies for Vehicles: Third International Workshop, Nets4Cars/Nets4Trains 2011 Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany, March 23-24, 2011 Proceedings
No full textThe Communication Technologies for Vehicles workshop series provides an international forum on latest technologies and research in the field of intra- and inter-vehicle communications in which to present original research results in all areas relating to communication protocols and standards, mobility and traffic models, experimental and field operational testing, and performance analysis
Hydraulic simulations to evaluate and predict design and operation of the Chashma Right Bank Canal
No full textIrrigation systems / Irrigation canals / Flow control / Velocity / Canal regulation techniques / Hydraulics / Simulation models / Design / Operations / Crop-based irrigation / Distributary canals / Water delivery / Policy / Protective irrigation / Water allocation / Water requirements / Sedimentation / Water distribution / Equity / Water conveyance / Pakistan / Chashma Right Bank Canal
Financial Capacity and Willingness of Farmers to pay for Irrigation Services in the Post-reform Scenario in Pakistan: Two Case Studies
No full textTo eliminate the subsidy on the canal irrigation system, the Government of Pakistan has decided to reform the management, intending to make it more efficient, equitable, transparent, and able to take care of the sustainability of the world’s largest contiguous irrigation network. The water users are being entrusted with greater role in the management through the formation of Farmers’ Organisations (FOs) to operate and maintain secondary canals and pay for full cost of water delivery. Ultimate payer will be the farmer. The economic viability of the reforms, therefore, much depends on farmers’ ability and willingness to pay for the cost of irrigation water delivery, which is expected to rise. This paper estimates financial liabilities of the farmers in the post-reform scenario, and assesses their capacity and willingness to pay for liabilities in the provinces of Punjab and Sindh. One distributary in each of the two provinces is studied as the reference distributary, where FOs have already been formed. The cost of desired level of operation and maintenance levels are worked out using secondary data for 1997-98. With these costs, the water users in the Punjab and Sindh provinces need to pay Rs 333 and Rs 373 per ha for their water service, respectively. The estimated O&M costs form about 5.4 and 3 percent of production costs and 3.8 and 3.5 percent of the net income in the Punjab and Sindh provinces respectively. The farmers’ net income from crop enterprise is higher than the cost of water. Thus, an average farmer has the potential to pay for water. Recent experience of Hakra 4-R Distributary FO suggests that the farmers are also willing to pay for water service, if they are organised properly.
Returns to Facilitating Farmers’ Organisations for Distributary Maintenance: Empirical Results from a Pilot Project in Southern Punjab
No full textInstitutional reforms currently underway in Pakistan’s irrigation and drainage sector require that farmers take over the operation and maintenance responsibilities of their secondary canals. However, the farmers need to be organised first, for which investments are a prerequisite. A great deal of skepticism about the farmers’ collective ability and willingness to undertake the needed tasks exists, even now when they are actually organised. This skepticism originates from past experiences when direct subsidies were offered to induce collective action. Theoretically, collective action can be more sustainable if investments are made in capacity building for the tasks that the farmers have to perform to improve the service delivery. Farmers are being organised for distributary operation and maintenance. So far, the delay in formulation of an appropriate legal framework has prevented the irrigation departments from formally transferring the operation and maintenance responsibilities to farmers. Self-help-based maintenance has been the only avenue for farmers to participate in the management of the irrigation system. The paper uses data pertaining to the cost of facilitation and estimates the amount of resources mobilised for two successive years from a pilot project. The analysis shows that investments made for facilitation do pay off. Investment in facilitation returns 69 percent higher than the actual investment per year during the initial years. In the short-run, the returns to facilitation indicate an increasing trend. The paper argues that when compared to previous approaches adopted in Pakistan, investments for facilitation and capacity building have a greater chance of prompting sustainable collective action for irrigation and drainage management.
Estimation of Distribution of Income in Pakistan, Using Micro Data
No full textIncome distribution entered the post war discussion of economic development fairly late. Until the 1960s much of the focus was on industrialisation and the need for capital accumulation. Pakistan was no exception as in the early 60s economic expansion became the main target and means to political identity. Rapid population growth associated with steep decline in mortality demanded acceleration of production to keep pace. Overall aggregate expansion was much faster than before but without benefit for the poor. In that context emerged a new professional interest in income distribution. Haq’s (1964) study was one of the oldest studies conducted to measure inequality in personal income distribution in the high income brackets in the urban areas of Pakistan. The main objective of the author was to present the income distribution pattern in terms of the relative shares of different income groups as well as in terms of Pareto coefficients and concentration ratio during the period 1948-49 to 1957-58 for which published tax data was available. While recognising the limitations of the data used, the author went on to calculate various measures of income inequality including Pareto coefficient and Lorenz curve. The author also made comparison of Pakistan’s income distribution with U.S.A. and U.K.
Computational Reproducibility of "The Impact of Presidential Appointment of Judges: Montesquieu or the Federalists?"
No full textWe computationally reproduce the central findings in Mehmood (2022), which studied the effect of a 2010 reform in Pakistan replacing the presidential appointment of high-court judges with peer appointments. Mehmood leveraged judicial records interpreted and coded by lawyers in Pakistan at the levels of cases, districts, benches, and individual judges. We successfully execute all Stata code in the author's replication archive without any errors, then translate and execute that code in R, again finding no serious errors. Consequently, we reproduce the article's main findings from regressions in Tables 2-4. Additionally, we successfully reconstruct the primary treatment variables of these regressions, after corresponding with the author to clarify precisely how to do so. We then replicate the main findings from regressions in Tables 2-10. Finally, we identify several minor errors which left the article's findings intact. Overall, this report reveals no serious defects in Mehmood (2022). We publicly archive our replication code and a spreadsheet of our results
Assessing the outcomes of IWMI’s research and interventions on irrigation management transfer
No full textIrrigation management / Participatory management / Privatization / Water users associations / Farmers associations / Gender
Potential for Blue-Gray Water Trade-offs for Irrigation in Small Towns of Pakistan: A Case Study of Farmers' Costs and Benefits in Haroonabad
No full textThe growing demand and the competition for fresh water in various sectors suggest that the irrigated agriculture will have to release freshwater for more important and valuable uses. This implies that other options would need to be identified to meet water demands for agriculture. Meeting irrigation requirements through non-conventional water sources is one of the options for agricultural uses. Gray water use for irrigation, a pervasive practice in urban and peri-urban areas of many developing countries, could be one of the solutions. The debate on wastewater irrigation from an environmental point of view is already on, focussing more on human and environmental “safety” aspects. The “value” aspect of the wastewater irrigation remains neglected, however. The irrigation users of untreated wastewater in many parts of the world had already traded off and revealed their preference for gray over blue water decades ago, when the water supply systems in towns and cities were set up. Why they would do it despite the high environmental and health risks associated with its use needs an answer. The paper documents the costs and benefits of wastewater irrigation from users’ point of view, and assesses the potential for real blue water savings in a small town setting in the southern Punjab, Pakistan. The data presented in the paper suggest that wastewater irrigation does lead to blue water savings, and it is profitable for farmers. While its potential is not fully exploited, more focus on appropriate approaches to physical and institutional aspects of wastewater disposal planning and management could make wastewater irrigation more productive, profitable, and safe for individuals as well as for the society as a whole.
A proposed framework for irrigation management transfer in Iran: Lessons from Asia and Iran
No full textWater resource management/ Land management/ Leaching/ Drainage/ Sodic soils/ Soil reclamation/ Supplemental irrigation/ Irrigation programs
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