Metro Cities Of India Research Articles

Sustainable Building Assessment Tool: Indian Leading Architects’ Perceptions and Preferences

As ‘sustainable development’ has become a global focus, “Green Building” or “Sustainable Building (SB)” is the need of the day. These buildings not only reduce negative environmental impact but also improve human comfort and safety. Sustainable Buildings need to be assessed by ‘Assessment tool’ for checking its overall contribution towards achievement of ‘sustainability’. In this paper an attempt is made to know Indian Architects ‘perceptions’ and ‘preferences’ regarding the framework of “Sustainable Building Assessment Tool (SBAT)” for India. Feedbacks were collected from the Architects of major metro cities of India. Total 81 responses were analyzed with SPSS 12 statistical analysis software. Indian Architects’ gave an opinion that ‘SBAT’ for India should be prepared firstly for commercial buildings. It should target ‘Architects’ first and must be applied at the building level. ‘SBAT’ should be a comprehensive one with flexible and easy to calculate scoring system. ‘SBAT’ must cover non-controllable factors along with negative scoring system. Results can be utilized in the coming years to prepare a comprehensive ‘SBAT’ for developing country like India.

Student Mobility Across the World and India

In this era of educational marketing, education has become a commodity to be purchased by a consumer in order to build a skill set to be used in the market place and no more is it only recognized as the assets of skills, attitudes and values required for citizenship and effective participation in today’s society. Moreover, with the globalization phenomenon, which was always reflected in the education sector especially in India from olden times, has lead to the mobility of the students to the foreign countries either for quality or affordable education. Educational marketing can be defined as a planned and systematic two-way process of communication between an educational institution and its stakeholders designed to build morale, goodwill, understanding and support for that organization. The outcomes are usually goodwill, positive attitudes, respect, understanding and basic support. A developing country like India can use educational marketing as per its requirements. Therefore, this paper deals with two aspects in higher education in India. It tries to build a case for the need of decreasing outward student mobility and for more foreign students to be attracted to Indian higher education. To meet this purpose, the present study focuses light on the scenario of the higher education system worldwide and how economic globalization of higher education is shaping new horizons in the education sector. The present study details the statistics of student mobility world-wide and in India. The present study will also compare the composition and trends of exports of higher educational services by selected universities in Delhi, the capital and one of the metrocities of India. The present study is based upon the data collected from the Ministry of Education, Ministry of HRD, WTO publications, University Annual Reports and various journals and books published by the Association of Indian Universities (AIU) and the University Grants Commission (UGC).The three universities under study are the University of Delhi (DU), Jamia MiliaI slamia (JMI) and Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU). These universities are involved in globalization by admitting foreign students. DU and JMI offer regular and distance education courses in India, therefore foreign students come to these universities and take admission and study, whereas IGNOU has a different modus operandi. It has the partner institutions (PIs) all over the world in different countries. Students from those countries get enrolled through the PIs and pursue courses from IGNOU as it offers only distance courses. These universities in New Delhi have been chosen as Delhi is the capital of India and has two functional universities acclaimed worldwide and one open university of international repute, in order to understand how the various modes attract the foreign students; and these being publicly funded universities, how much impetus has been put on internationalization of higher education despite all required infrastructure being available with them for conducting the courses effectively and efficiently.

Strategic Implication of Pharmaceutical Packaging to Enhance Prescription from Indian Doctors - A Study on the Four Metro Cities

The Indian pharmaceutical industry is expected to be US$ 55 billion by the year 2015. In the clustered market of several thousands of brands it's essential to evolve a unique marketing strategy that would increase sales in the rapidly expanding market. This paper examines the value addition for the utility function that packaging can do to boost the sales efforts of the pharmaceutical product. The technological aspects of the packaging are the key value additions to the utility function. There are several technologies available globally, these are classified as ‘new technologies’ that are new to the Indian pharmaceutical markets where the awareness of the doctors are studied and ‘ existing technologies’ that studied the perceptions among the doctors in terms of value addition are considered as this can enhance the prescription sales. Based on these factors the target segment of doctors is identified to achieve above average returns especially when the discovery of drugs takes time and money and success of the product is difficult due to the cluttered market. The study covered 400 doctors over the four metro cities in India that helps to add value and strategize the pharmaceutical business based on the package.

Integrated approach to solid waste management in Chennai: an Indian metro city

Management of municipal solid waste is a major problem for most of the Indian cities due to the growing urban population and per capita waste generation rate, inadequate public participation and the deplorable organizational and financial capacities of urban local bodies. This article highlights the interventions required for sustainable solid waste management in Indian cities by analyzing the waste generation, collection, and disposal scenario of a metro city in India along with the regulatory and institutional frame work. It advocates a phased and integrated approach taking into account the operational hurdles and the capacity building of local bodies with the support of educational organizations.

A Comparative Evaluation of Customer Perception and Satisfaction of M-banking and I-banking

Electronic banking is the latest delivery channel for banking services. Among the various channels of e-banking, Internet banking and mobile banking are considered to be the fastest developing areas. This research provides a comparative evaluation on some identified parameters of i-banking and m-banking. Primary data have been gathered from the three selected Indian PSBs from four major metro cities of India. The analysis indicates that for services like e-shopping, electronic fund transfer, utility bill payments, tax payments, and balance enquiry i-banking is more suitable as a channel of delivery. Those who have experienced m-banking have shown a clear inclination toward m-banking for value-added services like movie ticket booking. The factors identified from the perceptional analysis of i-banking indicate people like to use i-banking mainly for reducing the lead-time of operation and transaction intensive services. The analysis on the satisfaction level gives core service dimension and value added service dimension both for i-banking and m-banking. Both the channels have been found suitable to offer the various banking services that customers expect to receive from these services through these two channels because of the respective advantages of the channels. Therefore i-banking and m-banking can be regarded as complementary to each other.

A review of assessment of benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene (BTEX) concentration in urban atmosphere of Delhi

The most universal atmospheric pollutants present in the atmosphere are one of the representatives of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), popularly known as benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene (BTEX) which have their origin from both natural and anthropogenic sources. These compounds make an important contribution in the formation of photochemical smog. In spite of the well known toxic effects of BTEX, data available on them in India is very limited and very less study have reported their levels in Indian metro-cities. This paper reviews the status of BTEX concentrations at different sampling points in the ambient air of Delhi in order to investigate their temporal and spatial distributions. Key words: Atmosphere, benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene (BTEX), sampling points.

Establishing Criteria of Relative Abundance of Alkyl Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) for Differentiation of Pyrogenic and Petrogenic PAHs: An Application to Indian Sediment

Various source materials such as crude oil, automobile exhaust, coal, and wood combustion products were analyzed for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and hopanes. Hopanes were detected in coal combustion-derived soot, along with petrogenic sources. Based on the correlation between the alkylated PAHs/parental PAHs ratio with their respective C30 hopane/PAHs ratio in these source materials, the criteria for differentiating the petrogenic and pyrogenic sources of PAHs were established. This study concluded that sediments contained exclusively pyrogenic PAHs when the following conditions were met: MP/P (methylphenanthrenes to phenanthrene) = 0.5, MPy/Py [(methylpyrenes + methylfluoranthenes) to (pyrene + fluoranthene)] = 0.15, and MC/C [(methylchrysenes + methylbenz[a]anthracenes) to (chrysene + benz[a]anthracene)] = 0.2. By contrast, the sediments contained exclusively petrogenic PAHs when the ratios of MP/P, MPy/Py, MC/C, and methyl PAHs (MPAHs)/PAHs exceeded 3.5, 1.5, 2.0, and 2.2, respectively. Based on these criteria, an intensive source apportionment of PAHs to sediments from three Indian metro cities, Chennai (n = 6), Mumbai (n = 6) and Kolkata (n = 12) (2003–2007), was determined. This investigation found that sedimentary PAHs from India were depleted in alkylated PAHs with low MP/P ≈ 0.7, MPy/Py ≈ 0.14, and MC/C ≈ 0.3, which contrasted with other tropical Asian countries, where elevated values of these ratios were detected. Among the three cities, Kolkata waters were more strongly influenced by pyrogenic sources of PAHs with very low alkylated PAHs ratios than Chennai and Mumbai sediments. The compositional differences were attributed to the dominant coal and biomass in Kolkata compared to the dominant usage of petrogenic cooking fuel (e.g., kerosene) and automobile-derived sources in Chennai and Mumbai.

Role of Forensic Medicine Expert in Police Encounters

Police encounter is the term used by the Indian Police Service or Indian Military/Paramilitary forces when explaining the death of an individual at their hands who was deemed by them to be a militant or ‘subject of interest’. It refers to extra judicial killings or executions not authorised by a court or by the law. Such encounters also go by the name of ‘staged encounters’, where weapons are planted on or near the dead body to provide a justification for killing the individual. Common reasons given for the discrepancy between records showing that the individual was in custody at the time of his encounter, is that he/she had escaped 1. The police in Indian metro cities have a very high rate when it comes to encounter killings. Since October 1993: 2,560 cases of police encounters have been brought into the notice of National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), of them according to NHRC 1,224 cases have been found fake encounters. It means every second police encounter is fake in the country 2. Human right activists consider these encounter killings, together with torture by police in lock-ups and custodial deaths, to be gross human right violation. The fact that the dead person had a criminal background that does not give a legal authority to police for such encounters, as the law decide on the basis of evidence of such allegations.

Principal component analysis and neurocomputing-based models for total ozone concentration over different urban regions of India

The present study deals with daily total ozone concentration time series over four metro cities of India namely Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai, and New Delhi in the multivariate environment. Using the Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin measure, it is established that the data set under consideration are suitable for principal component analysis. Subsequently, by introducing rotated component matrix for the principal components, the predictors suitable for generating artificial neural network (ANN) for daily total ozone prediction are identified. The multicollinearity is removed in this way. Models of ANN in the form of multilayer perceptron trained through backpropagation learning are generated for all of the study zones, and the model outcomes are assessed statistically. Measuring various statistics like Pearson correlation coefficients, Willmott’s indices, percentage errors of prediction, and mean absolute errors, it is observed that for Mumbai and Kolkata the proposed ANN model generates very good predictions. The results are supported by the linearly distributed coordinates in the scatterplots.

Sector Reforms, Regulation and the Challenges of Sustainability: Demand Side Analysis for Urban Water Utility of Delhi, India

Viewed as an essential service, water in India is still treated as an obligation that the government has to meet at a very heavy subsidy. The government continues to operate major water utilities across cities and towns, most of which are in poor shape. The municipal water sector in India is caught in a vicious cycle where many service providers are not financially viable and are unable to maintain services without substantial subsidy, direct or indirect. Existing services are unable to provide full coverage of the population and are often of a very poor quality. In most of the municipalities, piped water is neither of good quality, nor available 24 hours a day. The quality of service is generally low. Water treatment facilities are also vastly inadequate. Inadequate revenue earning from water supply does not leave any funds for maintenance and upgradation. The vicious cycle has been continuing for decades now. The purpose of this paper is to critically analyze the present status of municipal water sector in India in the light of water pricing and tariff design and devise a roadmap for reform. Supply, tariff and performance of water utilities in four metro cities of India are discussed. The paper describes the major elements of pricing and tariff reforms that are needed in the municipal water supply sector in India. Due to space constraints, the focus of the paper is on municipal water supply and not on sewerage and sanitation services.

Pollution As a Consequence of Public Transport: A Case Study of Kolkata, India

One of the vital activities in an urban area is transport. However it also contributes to air pollution, noise pollution and road traffic accidents. Congestion, vibration, community severance and visual intrusion are other transport related problems. Air quality on the city of Kolkata (a metro city of India) seems to be deteriorating. Pollution level in the city and its outskirts is alarming. This is due to old vehicle plying in the road of Kolkata and illegal vehicle plying violating pollution norms, by using bad fuel such as KATATEL. Government, non-government organization, environmentalist are doing their best, but to keep the city pollution level low, it demands a total consciousness of people from all works of life to make the city green. This study has made an attempt to sensitize the issue of pollution which is a sustainable threat to humankind arising out of public transport and the

Heavy metal pollution of ambient air in Nagpur City

Heavy metals released from different sources in urban environment get adsorbed on respirable particulate matter less than 10 μm in size (PM(10)) and are important from public health point of view causing morbidity and mortality. Therefore, the ambient air quality monitoring was carried out to study the temporal and special pattern in the distribution of PM(10) and associated heavy metal content in the atmosphere of Nagpur, Maharashtra State, India during 2001 as well as in 2006. PM(10) fraction was observed to exceed the stipulated standards in both years. It was also observed that minimum range of PM(10) was observed to be increased in 2006 indicating increase in human activity during nighttime also. Six heavy metals were analyzed and were observed to occur in the order Zn > Fe > Pb > Ni > Cd > Cr in 2006, similar to the trend in other metro cities in India. Lead and Nickel were observed to be within the stipulated standards. Poor correlation coefficient (R(2)) between lead and PM(10) indicated that automobile exhaust is not the source of metals to air pollution. Commercial and industrial activity as well as geological composition may be the potential sources of heavy metal pollution. Total load of heavy metals was found to be increased in 2006 with prominent increase in zinc, lead, and nickel in the environment. Public health impacts of heavy metals as well as certain preventive measures to mitigate the impact of heavy metals on public health are also summarized.

Assessing cold chain status in a metro city of India: an intervention study.

Cold chain maintenance is an essential activity to maintain the potency of vaccines and to prevent adverse events following immunization. One baseline study highlighted the unsatisfactory cold chain status in city of Kolkata in India. To assess the changes which occurred in the cold chain status after the intervention undertaken to improve the status and also to assess the awareness of the cold chain handlers regarding cold chain maintenance. Intervention consisted of reorganization of cold chain points and training of health manpower in Kolkata Municipal area regarding immunization and cold chain following the guidelines as laid by Govt of India. Reevaluation of cold chain status was done at 20 institutions selected by stratified systematic random sampling after the intervention. The results were compared with baseline survey. Significant improvement had been observed in correct placing of cold chain equipment, maintenance of stock security, orderly placing of ice packs, diluents and vaccines inside the equipment, temperature recording and maintenance. But awareness and skill of cold chain handlers regarding basics of cold chain maintenance was not satisfactory. The success of intervention included significant improvement of cold chain status including creation of a designated cold chain handler. The gaps lay in non-availability of non-electrical cold chain equipment and separate cold chain room, policy makers should stress. Cold chain handlers need reorientation training regarding heat & cold sensitive vaccines, preventive maintenance and correct contingency plan.

Indian Wealth Distribution - On Geographic Basis - Nov 2009

It is widely known fact that Mumbai and Delhi NCR hold the chunk of Indian wealth. We have just made an attempt here to see, how this works out in terms of distribution of market capitalization (hereinafter referred as 'market cap') of India across the states. For this, we have reviewed BSE 500 companies. Of this, about 66.17% (that is about two-thirds) of the market cap is located in the states of Maharashtra (with 38.35%) and Delhi NCR (with 27.82%), underlining the serious concentration of wealth in these two regions.As of now, there is heavy concentration of wealth in very few metro cities of India in terms of market cap. As the Indian economy keeps evolving, tier-2 and tier-3 cities may catch up gradually, to bring-in more equitable distribution of wealth across the country.

Demand for hybrid car in Indian metro cities

The depleting stock of fossil fuels, environmental problems, and global warming are today's major concerns. Existing studies identify that transport sector is one of the major contributors towards these problems. Constant efforts in search of alternative, less polluting fuel are being made. Hybrid car technology uses the gasoline and electric technology to reduce air pollution, and save oil. From the field study it is observed that the people with conventional thinking, constituting about one-third of respondents, show more concern for environment. The variables leading to demand for hybrid cars could be energy efficiency, concern for environment, etc. Despite being price sensitive, Indian consumers are willing to pay a decent premium for acquiring this environment friendly car. This study is undertaken with the objective of analysing the scenario of hybrid car in India, and its market potential. The study conducts a questionnaire-based consumer survey based on demographic, economic, and desirable features in a hybrid car; using logit model and factor analysis for identifying variables useful for the study.

Emission inventory of evaporative emissions of VOCs in four metro cities in India

High concentrations of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in ambient air of urban areas stress the need for the control of VOC emissions due to the toxic and carcinogenic nature of many VOCs commonly encountered in urban air. Emission inventories are an essential tool in the management of local air quality, which provide a listing of sources of air pollutant emissions within a specific area over a specified period of time. This study intended to provide a level IV emission inventory as par the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) definition for evaporative VOC emissions in the metro cities of India namely Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, and Kolkata. The vehicular evaporative emissions are found to be the largest contributor to the total evaporative emissions of hydrocarbons followed by evaporative losses related to petrol loading and unloading activities. Besides vehicle-related activities, other major sources contributing to evaporative emissions of hydrocarbons are surface coating, dry cleaning, graphical art applications, printing (newspaper and computer), and the use of consumer products. Various specific preventive measures are also recommended for reducing the emissions.

Wastewater disposal in the major cities of India

In India, out of the total population of 1,027 million, about 285 million live in urban areas. With increasing urbanisation and the pressures of population, the impervious areas in the metropolitan cities are increasing. With increasing water supply to the metro cities, the drainage managers are faced with the task of managing the wastewater from the highly populated areas. However, drainage infrastructure has not kept pace with the rate of population growth. In addition, rainfall occurs mainly in the monsoon season from June to September and a major challenge is to manage the huge volume of monsoon discharges during these four months. This has resulted in increased incidences of urban flooding followed by epidemics not only disrupting the daily life during monsoons but also affecting the overall quality of life in most of the metro cities in India. A series of workshops were conducted by the author in many of the worst affected metros, namely, Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, and Bhubaneshwar. The aim of this paper is to present the different types of drainage systems and the specific management practices being followed to handle wastewater flows and the high monsoon discharges in the metros.

Public intervention and urban land management: The experience of three metro-cities of India

Public intervention and urban land management: The experience of three metro-cities of India