Дисертації з теми "India Money"

The proliferation of microfinance worldwide has been due to its claimed impacts on poverty reduction and women's empowerment. Conversely, it has been criticised for furthering the neoliberal policies of external agencies by using poor women’s entrepreneurship and mutual trust as a joint liability mechanism to reduce the costs and risks for the capital provider. Set against this, Indian microfinance exhibits a wide spectrum of delivery models, from subsidized to unsubsidized and commercial credit. Microfinance impact literature considers its impact to be neutral to the process of delivery and therefore contains few cross model comparisons. It privileges the dominant policy model of primarily positive impacts, and has overlooked rather than examined differing worldviews. This research questions external perspectives and explores actor perspectives. This research is located in a semi-arid livelihoods context, i.e. the Koppal district in Karnataka State, India. It takes a critical and interpretive approach and adopts a longitudinal case study methodology to examine use of money from women's own perspectives. The field work shows that loan demand is context dependent and low in a semi-arid region with uncertain and risky investment opportunities. Microfinance provided by informal sources was used for survival and social needs. Three models of formal microfinance delivery emerged, of which two relegated the poor to the margins but the SHG-Bank linkage model combined poverty focus and market orientation to offer a stable borrower lender relationship. The field research also considered the social learning process that takes place among Self Help Groups (SHGs) in the utilisation and repayment of microfinance. The women differentiate money delivered in different ways, and social relationships determined financial relationships. This research reveals multiple meanings of money, recognises new opportunities and vulnerabilities created by formation of SHGs, and highlights that microfinance models which provide women access and control over money enhanced their decision making ability and so were the most empowering.

The main aim of this paper is to measure the underground economy of India and to review previous attempts to do the same. In this paper I provide estimates of the size of the hidden economy of India for the period 1971 - 2004. Analysis on previous attempts is done with a focus on the dynamic multiple indicators multiple causes (DYMIMC) and the currency demand methods. I estimate the size of the Indian economy using indicator and causal variables chosen by Schneider, Chaudhuri and Chatterjee in their paper, “The Size and Development of the Indian Shadow Economy and a Comparison with other 18 Asian Countries: An Empirical Investigation”.

Cette thèse de doctorat étudie la façon dont les organisations, en particulier les entreprises sociales, créent et mettent en œuvre des technologies de l'information et de la communication (TIC) pour les populations vivant "au bas de la pyramide" (BoP) et comment de tels projets permettent de lutter contre l'exclusion (ICT4D). Ce travail de recherche est basé sur des données recueillies à partir de deux organisations situées en Inde, l'une opérant principalement dans les zones rurales et l'autre dans les milieux urbains. Ces deux organisations ciblent principalement les populations marginalisées, et opèrent dans un marché strictement réglementé. Ces données ont été collecté principalement à partir d'approches qualitatives. comprenant des interviews, et des documents d'archives. Après un chapitre introductif présentant les motivations et spécificités de ce travail, cette thèse est composée de trois articles. Le premier article explique comment les entreprises sociales répondent à la fois à une mission sociale et une mission de profit, en fournissant des services TIC aux populations marginalisées. Cet article explique comment les entreprises sociales utilisent différentes formes de bricolage pour faire face aux défis liés aux ressources disponibles et aux contraintes réglementaires. Le deuxième article examine l'importance des composants d'un modèle d'affaire dans la fourniture de TIC. Cet article suggère que, en plus de la proposition, l'architecture et la finance, le réseau "innofusion" et la valeur de co-création sont deux éléments supplémentaires essentiels à un modèle d'affaire pertinent pour les communautés marginalisées. Le troisième article propose une théorisation du rôle de l'innovation inclusive (une forme d'innovation émergente pour les marchés à faible revenu) pour permettre le développement des communautés marginalisées. Cette approche propose de tenir compte (1) du rôle des institutions financières dans les zones rurales et (2) de la prolifération rapide des TIC pour faciliter l'innovation inclusive, en prenant pour exemple les femmes en milieu rural. Enfin, cette thèse offre plusieurs contributions théoriques et pratiques. Tout d'abord, en mobilisant le concept de bricolage, cette recherche fournit des indications utiles à la compréhension des TIC pour les populations marginalisées, en particulier dans un contexte de ressources limitées et d'environnement restrictif. Le deuxième article propose également une contributions théorique majeure puisqu'il souligne l'importance des composants d'un modèles d'affaire en proposant l'addition de deux nouveaux composants pour l'introduction des TIC au sein des populations marginalisées à savoir le réséau innofusion, et la co-création de valeur. Et le troisième article fournit une analyse précise et détaillée de l'innovation inclusive pour les populations marginalisées. Enfin, cette thèse suggère aux professionnels comment structurer leurs opérations et leurs modèles de revenus pour des populations à faible revenu. De manière générale, cette thèse ouvre la voie pour l'étude des populations marginalisées, en terme de recherche en système d'information, qui a reçu jusqu'alors une attention trop limitée
This dissertation investigates how organizations (specifically social enterprises) create and implement information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D) projects for the people at the bottom of the pyramid (BoP) and how such initiatives achieve scale. Building upon the case of mobile money in India, it explains how organizations develop ICT4D projects for the BoP, and explores the issues of business models, inclusivity and scaling in such projects. It is based on data collected from two organizations, one with operations mainly in rural areas and the other one in an urban setting. These organizations which primarily target marginalized communities, operate in a strictly regulated market, and face initial resource challenges. The data is collected from multiple sources, including interviews and archival material such as organizational records, annual reports, formal project reports, etc. Following the introductory chapter, the dissertation comprises three related papers. The first explains how social enterprises that have both a social and a profit mission, provide ICT-enabled services to the people at the BoP and achieve scale. It discusses how ICT social enterprises employ different forms of bricolage to cope with resource challenges and regulatory constraints and scale up. The second paper examines the role of business models in providing ICTs to the BoP and discusses the key components of such business models. It proposes that in addition to the previously discussed value proposition, value architecture and value finance components, innofusion network and value co-creation are also crucial components of such business models due to the specific characteristics of the BoP communities. The final paper of this dissertation theorizes the role of inclusive innovation (an emerging form of innovation in low income markets) in enabling development for marginalized communities. Taking into account 1) the role of micro financial institutions in rural areas and 2) the rapid proliferation of mobile technologies, it studies the ways in which micro financial institutions leverage mobile technologies to facilitate inclusive innovation in marginalised communities, specifically those for women. The dissertation offers contributions to theory and practice. First, by investigating bricolage, it provides useful insights into understanding aspects of scaling for ICT social enterprises, particularly in resource constrained and restrictive environments. Second, it discusses the particular importance of business models for the BoP. Given the specificities of BoP communities, I propose five key dimensions of business models that are appropriate for delivering ICTs. Extending this, the third paper also proposes contributions to the emerging field of inclusive innovation and provides a novel way to understand innovation in marginalised communities. The dissertation also provides practitioners (that deal with BoP communities) useful insights into the ways in which they might structure their operations and revenue models and deal with the partners they could engage with to expand and scale. Finally, this dissertation argues for more focus on marginalised communities such as women in rural areas that have received limited attention in IS research

Paraffin is used as a main household energy source for cooking, lighting and heating by low-income communities in South Africa. It is highly inflammable and spillages from paraffin can be considered as one of the major causes of fires that lead to the destruction of dwellings in the informal settlement. The situation is made worse due to the close proximity of the dwellings to each other which cause the fires to spread very quickly from one dwelling to the next leaving suffering and most often death in its wake (Schwebel et al., 2009:700). It has been shown by Muller et al. (2003:2018) that most of the informal rural communities use paraffin in non-ventilated and windowless environments and this causes major respiratory problems. The government has made a huge effort towards replacing paraffin as main cooking fuel in rural and informal settlements with ethanol gel. Ethanol gel is a healthier, safer alternative to paraffin because ethanol gel does not burn unless it is contained within a cooking device that concentrates the flame. It also fails to emit lung irritants or other dangerous chemical vapours when burned indoors (Bizzo et al., 2004:67). Commercial ethanol gels are manufactured with imported gelling agents that make their costs unaffordable to the rural poor communities. It is the objective of this study to determine whether gelling agents extracted from the local endemic species of cactacea viz. Opuntia fiscus-indica and Cereus Jamacaru can be used to synthesise ethanol gel comparable or better than the commercial gels. The two species chosen have been declared pests (Nel et al., 2004:61) and are continuously uprooted from arable land and burned by local farmers (Van Wilgen et al., 2001:162) This study showed that Opuntia ficas-indica stems gave a better cellulose yield (15.0 ± 6.7 wt. %) than Cereus Jamacaru (11.5 ± 7.8wt %). Chemical composition analyses and FT-IR analyses showed that the hemicelluloses and lignin were completely removed from the extracted cellulose and the extraction was more effective for Opuntia ficasindica than for Cereus Jamacaru. Ethanol gel produced by using the extracted cellulose, as was investigated during this study, was compared to commercial gels with respect to viscosity, burn time, calorific values and residue and a good comparison was obtained.
Thesis (M.Sc. Engineering Sciences (Chemical Engineering))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012.

Western patriarchy has become deeply ingrained in Indigenous Nations. Patriarchal ideology takes many harmful forms in Indigenous communities, most notably sexism, misogyny, family violence, and violence against women. Indigenous feminists are identifying and resisting patriarchy in Indigenous communities. However, Western patriarchy is so deeply rooted that many people believe it has always been there. Additionally, several Indigenous people resist all forms of feminism, believing the word "feminist" is synonymous with "white," and therefore suspicious. In order to increase trust in Indigenous feminisms, it must be proved that Indigenous feminist theories stand up to scrutiny. The characters in Debra Earling's Perma Red and Eden Robinson's Monkey Beach, particularly the protagonists Louise White Elk and Lisa Hill, are negatively affected by Western patriarchal ideology in their communities. By examining these texts through Indigenous feminist lenses, my thesis seeks to prove that Indigenous feminisms are viable additions to Indigenous Studies.

This thesis examines the presence of early Indian narrative elements in Japan through an analysis of tale collections and regional Japanese folklore. Focusing on the reception of the widely distributed monkey and crocodile story, the present study aims to elucidate the role of Indian tales within Japan, and will serve to demonstrate the position of Japanese folklore among globally present motifs and tale types. The project discusses literary and oral forms of the story, examining variants among the Indian Jātakas (ca. 3rd c. BCE – 5th c. CE) and Pañcatantra (ca. 300 CE), the twelfth century Konjaku monogatarishū, and nineteen oral retellings recorded from across Japan. Elements characteristic of the three primary literary versions are identified, while also recording transformations, additions, or omissions of thematic elements, as well as core motifs that have remained consistent across all known stories. This analysis demonstrates that Japanese variants of the tale were not drawn linearly from a single Buddhist text, but instead represent a fusion of themes from across various religious and cultural contexts. The present study also provides some explanation as to the extensive dissemination of the story within Japan, identifying characteristics of the tale that facilitated its lasting and widespread promulgation. The study examines similarly themed myths and legends from the indigenous Japanese tradition that provided the foundations for its assimilation into the existing storytelling culture and the integration of characteristically Japanese motifs into the core framework of this imported narrative.
Arts, Faculty of
Asian Studies, Department of
Graduate

The role risk taking has played in American history has helped shape current legislation concerning gambling. This thesis attempts to explain the discrepancies in legislation regarding distinct forms of gambling. While casinos are heavily regulated by state and federal laws, most statutes dealing with lotteries strive to regulate the activities of other parties instead of those of the lottery institutions. Incidentally, lotteries are the only form of gambling completely managed by the government. It can be inferred that the United States government is more concerned with people exploiting gambling than with the actual practice of wagering. In an effort to more fully understand the gambling debate, whether it should be allowed or banned, I examined different types of sources. Historical sources demonstrate how ingrained in American culture risk taking, the core of gambling, has been since the formation of this nation. Sources dealing with the economic implications of gambling were also studied. Additionally, sources dealings with the political and legal aspects of gambling were essential for this thesis. Legislature has tried to reconcile distinct problems associated with gambling, including corruption. For this reason sports gambling scandals and Mafia connections to gambling have also been examined. The American government has created much needed legislature to address different concerns relating to gambling. It is apparent that statutes will continue to be passed to help regulate the gambling industry. A possible consideration is the legalization of sports wagering to better regulate that sector of the industry.

This dissertation seeks to understand how democratic elections can coexist with a significant number of politicians implicated in criminal wrongdoing. Specifically, it seeks answers to three questions. Why do parties nominate candidates with criminal backgrounds? Why do voters vote for them? And what does their proliferation mean for democratic accountability? To address these questions, I draw on a wide body of quantitative and qualitative evidence from India, the world's largest democracy. I argue that parties are attracted to criminal politicians because they have access to financial resources that allow them to function as self-financing candidates. Whereas the prevailing consensus in political economy suggests that voters support "bad politicians" because they lack adequate information on candidate quality, I develop an alternate theory that suggests well-informed voters can display rational behavior by voting for such candidates. Specifically, in contexts where social divisions are highly salient, voters often desire a representative who they perceive can protect group-based interests most credibly. In such settings, criminality can serve as a useful signal of a candidate's credibility. As a result, parties selectively field criminal candidates in those areas where social divisions are most pronounced. The implications of this study are far reaching because they suggest that information about a candidate's criminality is not only available, but actually is central to understanding the viability of his candidacy. Thus, there are circumstances in which "bad politicians" can in fact be compatible with democratic accountability. Empirically, this dissertation makes use of a unique, author-constructed database of affidavits submitted by more than 60,000 candidates contesting state and national elections between 2003 and 2009. This dataset contains detailed information on candidates' financial and criminal records from 37 elections, which I analyze using state-of-the-art quantitative methods. I complement these quantitative analyses with qualitative fieldwork conducted in three states, including an in-depth exploration of the case of Bihar, a state in north India.

This thesis addresses remote island occupation during past globalizations, through an examination of the Maldivian archaeological record. The research is underpinned by three connected research objectives: (1) establishing from where and when Maldivian colonization occurred; (2) examining how globalization is reflected in remote island use; and, (3) exploring the impacts of globalization on ethnogenesis in remote island communities. The Maldives are situated on the Chagos-Laccadives ridge south of Sri Lanka and India in the Indian Ocean and were thought to first be occupied during a Buddhist expansion in the centuries around the BCE/CE transition. The Maldives have been the subject of limited archaeological research and have been exempt from investigations of Indian Ocean globalization and world systems despite their export of one of the earliest global commodities—cowry shell money (Monetaria moneta). The research aims are addressed through the study of Buddhist archaeological sites situated in the north-central, central and southern regions of the Maldives. A detailed assessment of the recovered ceramic material culture, faunal remains and non-ceramic material culture including beads, glasses, metals and carved stones enables an exploration of a global culture present in the Maldives during the early Buddhist occupation period and also the subsequent Islamic phase post-1153 CE. This research presents new radiocarbon dates and a revised settlement chronology for the islands, and offers evidence for human presence in the Maldives c.300 CE. Material culture remains support long-standing trade connections to South Asia (India and Sri Lanka). The thesis concludes that the Maldives were settled from South Asia during an expansion of Buddhism. It also suggests that globalization might be the impetus behind some remote island use and colonization in prehistory, in addition to stimulating ethnogenesis in islander societies. Thus, globalization which is often associated with cultural homogenization is better conceived as also having the capacity to generate significant cultural diversity, especially by implanting highly selected human groups into marginal environments such as remote oceanic islands.

When people in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta are gathered around the hearths of their houses, it is common to hear the sound and movement of the women's spindles whirring on the earth floor as they pull out threads of material, and the rhythm of men's hardwood rods rubbing continuously against the mouth of their gourd containers. It is at this point of intimacy and flowing vitality at which the familiarity of the indigenous Sierra comes alive. According to Kogi, Wiwa and Ika cosmology, there is a life force that grows in people, as much as animals and plants, which like the thread of a spindle extends from the center of the cosmos. "It is here where the Universal Mother planted her gigantic spindle across the highest peak," as she said: "this is Kalusankua, the central post of the world." This vital thread, like an umbilical cord, holds all living elements as they fulfill their fate on Earth. It is a very different strand from the one that Walter Benjamin mentions in the story of the genie who gave the boy a ball of thread and said: "This is the thread of your life. Take it. When you find time heavy on your hands, pull it out; your days will pass quick or slow, according as you unwind the ball rapidly or little by little. So long as you leave the thread alone, you will remain stationary at the same hour of your existence." But the boy started pulling the thread and before he knew it he became a man, married the girl he loved, saw his children grow up, passed over his anxieties, lived honors and profits, and then cut short his old age, all in four months and six days. Pre-Columbian materials -many times sonorous and full of detailed expressions; made of gold and copper, ceramic, jade and stone quartz of different luster and color- are said to be the medium through which people, plants and animals are able to concentrate the necessary life force to fulfill their fate on Earth. Buried all around the vast mountainous terrain of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, these ancient materials sustain the interconnections to the creative energies in the cosmos. However, as these materials are looted and pulled out of ancient indigenous grounds, they cease to hold together the center from which this vital force grows. As they are sold as commodities, they appear in the international art market, independent of their place of origin and devoid of any life force. With the new modes of industrial production, observes Karl Marx, the creative energy or central force of people disappears in the things that they produce. Matter severed from its producer acquires a second life independent of its source of energy and equivalent to all other things in the form of commodities. As capitalist societies begin to measure the output of energy in terms of this second life of things, individual skills and creative energies become irrelevant to the process of growth. "The individuals are now subordinated to social production, which exists externally to them, as a sort of fate," notes Marx in the Grundrisse in 1857. Walter Benjamin then extends this idea and points out: "In `fate' is concealed the concept of `total experience.'" He quotes the following passage in The Arcades Project: "It is not a question of `the triumph of mind over matter'...; rather, it represents the triumph of the rational and general principles of things over the energy and qualities proper to the living organism." Even though Pre-Columbian materials are not produced in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta today, they are believed to mediate the energies and qualities proper to living beings. These energies are lost as they are dug out, and as the holes in the Mother Land of the Ika, Wiwa and Kogi people grow, so does the value of these pieces in the market. It is only in the realm of the inorganic that we can begin to fathom this concept of value. Walter Benjamin's notion of a "new kind of 20th C fate" helps us observe this vast contradiction now lived in the native Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, whereby the threads that like umbilical cords connect living beings throughout their life to the sources of energy around their territory, no longer seem to be growing out of experience but rather out of money. Benjamin points out "a new field force," which opens up in the form of planning... To `plan' is henceforth possible only on a large scale, no longer on an individual scale - and this means neither for the individual nor by the individual." Property is depersonalized in such a way that it is caught up in a whirlpool, lost by one and won by another. Successes and failures arise from causes that are unanticipated, generally unintelligible, and seemingly dependent on chance. He observes this new fate as it plays out in the experience of figures like the gambler, the private collector, the student and the flanneur, that are not completely subordinated to the labor process, but are idlers residing both within and outside the marketplace, between the worlds of magic and money. He observes how "Fortuna" in the double sense of chance and riches is always on the side of these figures. When a gambler wins for example, we don't say it is a consequence of his work activity but it is a matter of luck or chance: "Fortuna" that is on his side. It is this "total experience" as Benjamin calls it, concealed in the form of "Fortuna" which feeds the gambling instincts and animates the myths that consume "guaqueros," people who dig out ancient indigenous burial sites in search of Pre-Columbian treasures, looting enchanted and dangerous places all around the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. Even though guaqueros climb a mountainous terrain as high as 19,000 feet, and traverse rain forests inhabited by wild animals and plants, these treasure hunters are not so much at the mercy of the mysterious forces of nature, as at the hands of the "inexplicable" in bourgeois society. "The `inexplicable' is enthroned in bourgeois society as in a gambling hall..." notes Benjamin. Like gamblers, guaqueros are risking a hand-to hand encounter with fate, where the stake is money. They can lose or win immediate and infinite possibilities: money equivalent to anything. Only in response to such fate, like the boy with the ball of thread, is it possible to pull out the material from the place where the earth has been gestating it for centuries and bring it into a new inorganic existence. The guaqueros, like the gamblers, produce in a second, the changes that fate ordinarily effects only in the course of many years. "Isn't there a certain structure of money that can be recognized only in fate, and a certain structure of fate that can be recognized only in money?" asks Benjamin. Such encounter with this new kind of fate occurs as "immediate experience" or das Erlebnis, which comes in the form of shock and discontinuity, points out Benjamin, as opposed to "connected experience" or die Erfahrung which presupposes tradition and continuity. Idlers, like the guaqueros are open to this type of experience. They are not so much following a sequence, as attentively tracing a dynamic that leads them through the excitement of their chase, step by step from one coincidence to the next. They "follow nothing but the whim of the moment." The Ika Mamos, as much as the Kogi and Wiwa Mamas or high priests who inherit the places where these Pre-Columbian materials are buried, along with the knowledge necessary nourish and connect to the cosmic life force in them, ask: if this is the new fate of the world, then what will happen to these creative energies which need to be sustained in order for the threads of life to continue growing? Will there come a point, they ponder, when the threads of life will cease to grow and all the rivers, as much as the streams in human, plant and animal veins, will dry up? According to Ika, Wiwa and Kogi cosmology, only the ancestors can feed on these ancient materials, so the Mamas and Mamos wonder: is it that people believe they can eat gold too? It is only in terms of this "new kind of 20th Century fate," that we can begin to understand the fantastic transformations and disjunctions of the value of these materials as they move from the native sites where they are buried and nurtured, to the hands of guaqueros who dig them out and sell them. By following this passage between experience and money, Between the Magic of Magic and the Magic of Money, rather like the flanneur that moves in between spaces, inside and outside the marketplace, I want to inquire: what is the fate of these ancient materials and forces, and how does "Fortuna" in the double sense of chance and riches, then reflect back upon current Ika, Kogi and Wiwa existence?