Research Papers
Addressing Air Quality Spurts due to Crop Stubble Burning during COVID-19 Pandemic: A Policy Brief
Pandey Rita, Kedia Shailly , Malhotra Anuja
| 2020
World over the headlines are centered on COVID-19. The World Health Organisation (WHO) and various governments across the world see this pandemic sticking around for longer than everyone would hope for. Not a happy situation to be in (given the serious fallouts of the nature of COVID-19 management strategies on economies, employment, livelihood, health, and wellbeing of people). Yet, it demands that all stakeholders-governments, UN organisations, industry, people, civil society-to shift their strategy from reactive to proactive.
Gujarat’s Electricity Sector - The Fairy Tale Revival
Palit Debajit
| 2020
This paper details the major steps taken by the state of Gujarat in India to bring about the transformation in the rural electricity sector and provides a learning opportunity to other sector stakeholders from India and overseas. The paper attempts to unravel how did an inefficient state electric utility transform itself into one of India’s most high-performing electricity distribution companies? What are the factors that worked and what were those conditions that enabled the government to succeed in Gujarat?
Shaping the Post-COVID-19 Development Paradigm in India: Some Imperatives for Greening the Economic Recovery
Kedia Shailly, Pandey Rita, Sinha Ria
| 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown many challenges for governments across the globe. Building on an initial understanding of the fallouts of the pandemic and the learning from the coping and management responses so far, this article first identifies some necessary elements and notions critical in shaping the post-pandemic development paradigm. The article also examines India’s post-COVID-19 economic package to understand the gaps and the elements we need to build further on for greening the economic recovery.
A coevolutionary perspective on decentralised electrification: a solar mini-grid project in India
Sharma Karnamadakala Rahul, Palit Debajit
| 2020
Decentralised mini-grids can support household electrification needs in remote rural communities in developing countries. Adopting a practice-oriented perspective to research, we describe our experience in implementing a decentralised solar mini-grid project in India over a period of three years. Focusing on processes, we demonstrate how technical design, organisational mandates and project contingencies coevolve with business strategies, user practices, local institutions and ecosystems.
A Template for Long-range Energy Planning with Environmental Considerations for Developing Countries: A Case Study
Goswami Anandajit, Kedia Shailly, Gurtu Amulya
| 2020
Existing studies using energy accounting models do not undertake analyses at the subnational level due to data deficiencies. In a Lakatosian sense, by applying the long-range energy alternatives planning framework at the sub-national level for a developing country, this paper contributes by providing an empirical study to the body of knowledge on energy planning. This study addresses this gap by developing scenarios for energy demand and supply management for green growth in the state of Punjab in India.
Global Climate Change: Challenges for India
Rashmi Rajani Ranjan
| 2020
The global climate change is a huge existential threat to the world which requires urgent and immediate actions by the entire international community. India as a signatory to the Paris Agreement has an opportunity of influencing the global efforts when it assumes the presidency of G20 in 2022. India will need to respond to global expectations for enhanced actions while building consensus within G20 for low carbon transitions.
Examining Temporal Change and Prediction of Future Land Use Using Geospatial Approach: A Case Study of Talpona River Watershed in Goa, India
Panandiker Ashwini Pai, Gude Shubham , Venkatesh B , Kotha Mahender and Chachadi AG
| 2019
Land-use change leads to environmental change on spatial and temporal scales. For better water resource management, understanding the interaction between landuse changes and local hydrology is crucial. This study analyzed the land-use change over past years and predicted the future one in Talpona river watershed in Goa. Land Change Modeler was used for change analysis between satellite images of 1993, 2014 and 2019 map for validation. The Kappa co-efficient of 0.73 indicated acceptable accuracy. Multi-Layer Perceptron neural network was used for prediction of land-use for 2030 and 2040.
Exploring optimal strategies for aquatic macrophyte pre-treatment: Sustainable feedstock for biohydrogen production.
Karthikeya K, Sarma Mrinal Kumar, Ramkumar N., Subudhi Sanjukta
| 2020
Aquatic macrophytes; Water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) and Azolla, biomass have certain advantages over terrestrial plant biomass to use as non-edible feed for 2nd generation bioenergy production. This is mainly due to the lower lignin content and higher productivity of aquatic macrophytes. These macrophytes do not require arable land. Present study explored on development of factorial approach based optimal pretreatment process for mild acid hydrolysis of Eichhornia crassipes and Azolla microphylla biomass for conversion to fermentable sugars.
Exploring optimal strategies for aquatic macrophyte pre-treatment: Sustainable feedstock for biohydrogen production.
Karthikeya K; Sarma Mrinal Kumar, Ramkumar N., Subudhi Sanjukta
| 2020
Assessment of groundwater quality of CKDu affected uddanam region in Srikakulam district and across Andhra Pradesh, India
Lal Kanhaiya, Sehgal Meena, Gupta Vidhu, Sharma Aastha
| 2020
Uddanam region in Srikakulam district of Andhra Pradesh, India, is a CKD hotspot with high prevalence of CKD of unknown etiology (CKDu). A number of investigators have suggested that groundwater contamination could be one of the factors contributing to the high prevalence of CKDu in this region. This study was focused on the monitoring and assessment of groundwater quality of Uddanam region and also in identifying potential etiological factors of CKDu from drinking water.