South Asia Institute Research Articles

Systemic risk spillover between the stock market and banking deposits: Evidence from a sustainability perspective in the South Asian countries.

This research explores the link between stock markets and banking deposits in South Asian (Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal) countries. This study empirically examines the systemic risk potential of financial institutions in South Asia using current systemic risk statistics. Yearly data on stock prices and banking deposits from January 2000 to December 2020 were analyzed using a two-stage process. In the first phase, we measure VaR (value at risk), and in the second step, we measure the DCC GARCH model for our empirical analysis. The study findings reveal systemic risk spillover between the stock markets of South Asian countries and the relevant country's banking system deposits. The policymakers can use our study findings to create a more sustainable financial sector.

Political Trust in South Asia

This study examines relative trust in national versus local institutions in South Asia using a tripartite framework that combines political and economic performance with religious identity to explain the three categories of relative trust that correspond to individuals whose trust in national institutions is stronger than, equal to, or weaker than their trust in local institutions. In particular, religious minorities in South Asia are often discriminated against and poorly represented at the national level but tend to cluster in local communities, which erodes their trust in national institutions but not necessarily in local institutions. The empirical analysis of two waves of South Asian Barometer surveys eight years apart produced consistent results which suggest that the religious segregation and discrimination in South Asian countries tilt relative trust patterns among religious minorities in favor of local institutions at the expense of national ones.

Tobacco use in people with severe mental illness: Findings from a multi-country survey of mental health institutions in South Asia.

People with severe mental illness (SMI) tend to die early due to cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, which may be linked to tobacco use. There is limited information on tobacco use in people with SMI in low- and middle-income countries where most tobacco users reside. We present novel data on tobacco use in people with SMI and their access to tobacco cessation advice in South Asia. We conducted a multi-country survey of adults with SMI attending mental health facilities in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan. Using data collected with a standardized WHO STEPS survey tool, we estimated the prevalence and distribution of tobacco use and assessed receipt of tobacco cessation advice. We recruited 3874 participants with SMI; 46.8% and 15.0% of men and women consumed tobacco, respectively. Smoking prevalence in men varied by country (Bangladesh 42.8%, India 20.1% and Pakistan 31.7%); <4% of women reported smoking in each country. Smokeless tobacco use in men also varied by country (Bangladesh 16.2%, India 18.2% and Pakistan 40.8%); for women, it was higher in Bangladesh (19.1%), but similar in India (9.9%) and Pakistan (9.1%). Just over a third of tobacco users (38.4%) had received advice to quit tobacco. Among smokers, 29.1% (n=244) made at least one quit attempt in the past year. There was strong evidence for the association between tobacco use and the severity of depression (OR=1.29; 95% CI: 1.12-1.48) and anxiety (OR=1.29; 95% CI: 1.12-1.49). As observed in high-income countries, we found higher tobacco use in people with SMI, particularly in men compared with rates reported for the general population in South Asia. Tobacco cessation support within mental health services offers an opportunity to close the gap in life expectancy between SMI and the general population. ISRCTN88485933; https://doi.org/10.1186/ISRCTN88485933 39.

Resilient higher educational institutions in a world of digital transformation

PurposeResilient higher education institutions can endure, develop and compete in the face of ambiguous, challenging and pandemic situations. In a world of digital transformation, organizational resilience is crucial. Prior research has paid less attention to achieving organizational resilience. This study aims to use the digital capability theory to address this research gap and determine adaptive culture’s direct and indirect influence on organizational resilience. The impact of adaptive culture on organizational resilience is being investigated via the underlying mechanism of digital transformation.Design/methodology/approachThe data was gathered using a cross-sectional, self-administered questionnaire with convenience sampling techniques from higher educational institutions in South Asia’s context. The direct and indirect effects were analyzed using SEM from 294 teaching faculty members.FindingsThe findings show a significant positive association between the study’s constructs. The association between adaptive culture and organizational resilience was partially mediated by digital transformation. The findings provide important insights for policymakers, academics and higher education institutions in developing adaptable cultures to achieve organizational resilience, primarily through digital transformation.Originality/valueFew research studies have investigated a direct relationship among the constructs of the study to the best of the authors’ knowledge. It is the first study to investigate the role of digital transformation as the underlying mechanism between adaptive culture and organizational resilience. Theoretical contributions, practical implications and future research directions have all been presented.

Human Rights During the Pandemic and the National Human Rights Commission of Bangladesh

Abstract The covid-19 outbreak has brought forth the existing cracks and crevices in the governance of Bangladesh. At such a time, the National Human Rights Commission of Bangladesh (nhrcb), as the only State institution mandated to protect and promote human rights exclusively and impartially, is tasked with a crucial role to ensure respect for human rights. This article assesses the activities undertaken by the nhrcb during the pandemic and finds that the nhrcb evinced only a limited role in monitoring the violation of rights and provided formulaic recommendations to the government. It did not observe the implementation of their recommendations and has performed rather formalistically. While the country has experienced a deteriorating human rights situation, the nhrcb has failed to flex its muscles when compared to other national human rights institutions in South Asia. This article argues that the national human rights institutions (nhri s) in India, Nepal and Sri Lanka, embedded in a similar context and armed with almost identical mandates, have demonstrated a novel and strenuous effort intending to adapt to and fulfil their functions during the unprecedented crisis. The nhrcb may benefit by learning from these nhri s as well as taking lessons from its own past activities. Previously, it did not eschew politically sensitive issues and earmarked a strong leadership even with limited institutional capacities. The nhrcb has however responded to the changing dynamics and challenges posed by the covid-19 pandemic with silence. It needs to become more vibrant to enhance, regionally and internationally, the country’s image in upholding human rights norms and standards.

Peer Review Statement

All papers published in this volume have been reviewed through processes administered by the Editors. Reviews were conducted by expert referees to the professional and scientific standards expected of a proceedings journal published by IOP Publishing Publishing.• Type of peer review: Double Anonymous• Conference submission management system: http://confsys.iconf.org/submission/eree2022• Number of submissions received: 31• Number of submissions sent for review: 24• Number of submissions accepted: 11• Acceptance Rate (Submissions Accepted / Submissions Received × 100): 35.5• Average number of reviews per paper: 2• Total number of reviewers involved: 13• Contact person for queries: • Name: Suvy Li• Email: suvyli@saise.org• Affiliation: South Asia Institute of Science and Engineering

An overview of public health education in South Asia: Challenges and opportunities.

Over the past two decades, there has been an increased demand for Public Health Education (PHE) in South Asia. While this region has a large number of Public Health (PH) institutions, the quality of PHE has not been aligned with the core PH competencies. In this article, we present an overview of Master of Public Health (MPH) programs across South Asian countries. An extensive systematic search on various web search engines regarding PH course offerings was conducted, including specific institute and educational websites. By 2021, more than 180 institutions in South Asia provided an MPH degree. Most of these institutions/universities were found in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, and a few among these institutions were established as independent Schools of Public Health (SPH), separate from medical colleges, and had a multidisciplinary faculty. But, dedicated training facilities in the specialized field of public health were not found in most of these institutions. Generally, a well-defined MPH curriculum is not currently available except in India where the University Grants Commission (UGC) guideline for a model MPH curriculum has been proposed by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. The entry criteria for an MPH degree in India is accepting students in multidisciplinary fields, while in other South Asian countries this is primarily restricted to medical/paramedical students with a basic understanding of preventive medicine. The aim of this review was to document the current and future PHE opportunities and challenges in South Asia.

Peer Review Statement

All papers published in this volume have been reviewed through processes administered by the Editors. Reviews were conducted by expert referees to the professional and scientific standards expected of a proceedings journal published by IOP Publishing. • Type of peer review: Double Anonymous • Conference submission management system: Morressier • Number of submissions received: 46 • Number of submissions sent for review: 46 • Number of submissions accepted: 28 • Acceptance Rate (Submissions Accepted / Submissions Received × 100): 60.9 • Average number of reviews per paper: 2 • Total number of reviewers involved: 29 • Contact person for queries: Name: Carina Liu Email: aame_conf@126.com Affiliation: South Asia Institute of Science and Engineering

The power of the collective empowers women: Evidence from self-help groups in India.

Women's groups are important rural social and financial institutions in South Asia. In India, a large majority of women's groups programs are implemented through self-help groups (SHGs). Originally designed as savings and credit groups, the role of SHGs has expanded to include creating health and nutrition awareness, improving governance, and addressing social issues related to gender- and caste-based discrimination. This paper uses panel data from 1470 rural Indian women from five states to study the impact of SHG membership on women's empowerment in agriculture, using the project-level Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI) and the abbreviated Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (A-WEAI). Because SHG membership was not randomized and women who self-select to be SHG members may be systematically different from non-members, we employ nearest neighbor matching methods to attribute the impact of SHG membership on women's empowerment in agriculture and intrahousehold inequality. Our findings suggest that SHG membership has a significant positive impact on aggregate measures of women's empowerment and reduces the gap between men's and women's empowerment scores. This improvement in aggregate empowerment is driven by improvements in women's scores, not a deterioration in men's. Greater control over income, greater decisionmaking over credit, and (somewhat mechanistically, given the treatment) greater and more active involvement in groups within the community lead to improvements in women's scores. However, impacts on other areas of empowerment are limited. The insignificant impacts on attitudes towards domestic violence and respect within the household suggest that women's groups alone may be insufficient to change deep-seated gender norms that disempower women. Our results have implications for the design and scale-up of women's group-based programs in South Asia, including the possibility that involving men is needed to change gender norms.

Reimagining India's health system: a Lancet Citizens’ Commission

Reimagining India's health system: a Lancet Citizens’ Commission

Building an Engaged Himalayan Sustainability Science

The Himalayan region is facing a new crisis under climate change, rapid economic transformation, and escalating geopolitical tensions. A large body of Himalayan sciences has endeavored to understand this challenge but has failed to engage meaningfully with the local people and policymakers. I argue for a new engaged Himalayan sustainability science that not only understands and interprets the emerging challenges but also strengthens societal capability.

Preface for CEEPE 2020 Proceedings

The 3rd International Conference on Energy, Electrical, and Power Engineering (CEEPE) was planned to be held in April 24-26, 2020, in Chongqing, China, and was co-sponsored by the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China; Wuhan University, China; Shandong University, China; South Asia Institute of Science and Engineering (SAISE) and IEEE PES Chongqing Chapter.Due to the unexpected COVID 19 pandemic, that closed the world to national and international travel, the organization decided to hold the CEEPE 2020 totally online. It was a challenge, not only to the organizers, but also to the participants who were delivering their speeches using videoconference tools, under different time zones.This conference brought together researchers and engineers in academia and industry from China, Iraq, Japan and Portugal to discuss the latest developments and implementation, in these countries, of electrical power in applications ranging from commercial generation and distribution, to electric vehicles, with a particular focus on renewable energy integration in power systems, automation and control systems.Although there was not the opportunity to meet face-to-face under a live social environment, attendees from different areas of the world could interact under the videoconference tool, clarify their doubts and establish business and technical connections. The proceedings of these presentations are listed here in peer reviewed, written form.Nídia CaetanoCoordinator Professor of Chemical EngineeringSchool of Engineering (ISEP)Polytechnic of Porto (P.Porto)

Guarding the Sons of Empire: Military–State–Society Relations in Water, Sanitation and Health Programs of mid-19th-Century India

Drinking water supply and sanitation have had a strong association with military institutions in South Asia from the colonial period to the present. This paper shows how military-state-society relationships created spaces of differential water access and sanitation burdens in mid-19th-century cantonments in ways that involved complex gender relations. In comparison with previous research, we argue that privileged military enclaves were segregated but never fully separated from larger urban water and sanitation systems. We use historical geographic methods to review the evolving role of military sanitation regulations in cantonments from late-18th-century policies of the East India Company (EIC) through mid-19th-century rule by the British Crown, during which time military cantonments, regulations, and formal monitoring reports were established. Close reading of the British Army Medical Department’s Statistical, Sanitary, and Medical Reports (Sanitary Reports) in the 1860s then shows how military-state-society relations diverged from civilian public health programs in ways that persist to some extent to the present day. Health advisors, some of them women, pursued an ideology and tactics to “guard the sons of empire”, from what they perceived to be a disease-filled landscape of “lurking evils”, “choleric attacks”, and “native offensives”. We conclude with a discussion of both continuities and change in the relationships between military and civilian public health reforms beyond the barracks.

Knowledge management practice in South Asian higher education institutions

The investigation reported in this paper intended to explore the research on knowledge management in higher educational institutions in South Asian countries. A systematic literature review was conducted to identify, select and retrieve relevant scholarly literature, by following a detailed protocol and a systematic data extraction strategy. The findings of the study showed that limited research on knowledge management in the context of higher educational institutions was conducted in both theoretical aspects and practical implementations, denoting an imperative to conduct more research in this area. The findings also disclosed that multiple factors affect the knowledge management practices among primary higher educational institution agents: faculty, administrative staff, and information professionals. As the result of the analysis of the literature review findings, a conceptual framework is proposed, which is expected to provide a good foundation for future research as well as pave the way towards more successful knowledge management implementations in the higher educational institutions in South Asia and beyond.

Preface for CEEPE 2019 Proceedings

In 2019, the Conference on Energy, Electrical, and Power Engineering (CEEPE) was hosted at one of the greatest universities in the world, the University of California, Berkeley, in historic Bowles Hall on the University campus. The organizer of this conference was the South Asia Institute of Science and Engineering (SAISE). This conference brought together researchers and engineers in academia and industry from around the world to discuss developments and implementations of electrical power in applications ranging from vehicles to commercial generation and distribution. Attendees were provided the opportunity to meet and converse with colleagues from different areas of the world, and to establish business and technical connections. Technical presentations and keynote addresses were heard over a span of two days, and ideas were exchanged over meals, breaks, casual discussions, and private meetings. The proceedings of these presentations are presented here in peer-reviewed, written form.Dennis LieuProfessor of Mechanical EngineeringUniversity of California, Berkeley

The research output from medical institutions in South Asia between 2012 and 2017: An analysis of their quantity and quality

IntroductionThe eight countries of South Asia share similar backgrounds, together with similar health care related problems and a lack of medical facilities. They also have a total of 828 medical institutions both in the public and private sectors but sadly, their research output is generally thought to be poor both in quality and quantity. MethodsWe analyzed the research output from this region in terms of the number of publications in indexed journals, their citations and the h-index of the institutions using the Scopus database between 201217. These were compared with ten randomly selected leading institutes of the world. ResultsOnly 353 (42.7%) had produced a single indexed research article in the six years of the study period. The cumulative research output of all the countries during this period was 97,170, the biggest contributor being India (86.3%) followed by Pakistan (9.9%) and Bangladesh (1.4%). In terms of the mean number of the citations and h-index, India led with 1775 citations per institute with a mean h-index of 12.1. ConclusionDespite the immense health problems facing the countries, the overall research output from the South Asian countries is poor as evidenced by the cumulative number of publications or a comparison on a global scale. This needs urgent and serious attention. We suggest that intercountry research collaborations, student exchanges, compulsory research projects in undergraduate and postgraduate curricula, adequate funding, and incentives for research publication may be some of the ways forward.

2019 3rd International Conference on Manufacturing Technologies (ICMT)

PrefaceThe 2019 3rd International Conference on Manufacturing Technologies (ICMT2019) was held in held in San Francisco, USA during January 4-7, 2019. This volume consists of selected papers presented at ICMT 2019, which are addressing diverse topics related to recent trends in the inter-related areas of Mechanical, Manufacturing and Materials Engineering. The conference provides opportunities for the delegates to exchange new ideas and application through face-to-face discussions, to establish business or research relations and to find global partners for future collaborations. We hope that you will find its contents interesting, stimulating and educative. ICMT 2019 is organized by the South Asia Institute of Science and Engineering.The technical objective of the conference is to address key issues associated with science and technology in these rapidly evolving fields of research and to promote contact between basic researcher and technological needs for real industrial applications.The conference program offers invited, oral and poster presentations. The invited talks are focused on the potential application of mechanical, manufacturing, mechatronics and materials engineering in various fields. Many excellent manuscripts were selected after peer review and were recommended for publication in this volume. Topics cover all aspects of the areas listed above.I would like to thank the members of the conference committee, the reviewers who spared their valuable time, for their advice which have certainly helped to improve the quality, accuracy, relevance and to enhance the technical contributions of each paper selected for this conference program and volume for publication. And thank you to each author and participant who has contributed to the success of the conference.Prof. Dr. Ridha Ben MradUniversity of Toronto, CanadaJanuary/4-7/2019

Impact of global financial crunch on financially innovative microfinance institutions in South Asia

The wave of global financial crises (2008–2009) caused a surge in the capital flows of developed countries particularly, between developed and developing countries. The crunch hit all financial sectors with unanticipated severity. The study evaluates the role of a country’s political practices in moderating the impact of global financial crunch on microfinance performance. Using the fixed effect panel regression method on the dataset comprising of 95 MFIs operating in South Asia from 2003 to 2012, we determine that microfinance operational capability shares a positive relationship with the institutional attributes of a country and our output reveals that impact of country’s political practices is pervasive on the financial output of MFIs, liable to different levels of implementation. The findings further reveals that MFIs situated in countries having vigorous political practices are less severely affected by the economic crunch.

Examining the Trade-off Between Social Outreach and Financial Efficiency: Evidence from Micro-finance Institutions in South Asia

The micro-finance institutions (MFI) have been successfully operating for poverty alleviation. The recent turmoil in financial sustainability of major MFIs worldwide has raised the question of whether trade-off exists: Financial performance cannot be achieved without sacrificing the main objective—social outreach. This article examines the presence of such a trade-off by examining the empirical evidence from 127 South Asian MFIs over 2009–2013. The findings of this article reveal that MFIs have neutral trade-off in achieving the double bottom line: financial performance and social outreach. Moreover, there is a mission drift which is caused by higher portfolio at risk and resulted in lower capacity in targeting the poorest segment of citizens. In case of social outreach, it is found that financial performance of MFIs is dependent on the size of MFIs, years of operations and lending processes (group lending).

Do institutions affect economic growth? An empirical analysis of selected South Asian countries

In this article we estimate the role of institutions in conjunction with physical capital stock, human capital stock, openness and liberalisation in economic growth of the four major economies of South Asia. We apply both time series and panel data analysis for estimation. The time series analysis shows that physical capital stock positively influences economic growth of the four major South Asian countries. The influence of the other factors varies across the countries in the long run. When we control for institutional quality, the speed of adjustment diminishes for every country. The panel data analysis shows that voice and accountability and regulation impart positive and significant influence while government effectiveness and rule of law imparts negative significant influence on PCGDP of the countries. The study shows the need for higher investment in human capital, physical capital. Additionally, the quality of institutions in South Asia needs attention, to sustain growth in future.