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Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century railroads were considered important, perhaps essential, to the development of those regions whose transportation system they augmented. The present work tests the validity of this statement in the instance of European rail development in India. This is accomplished by examining the origins, implementation, and functioning of railways in a colonial setting in northern India, focusing upon Awadh, a province recently absorbed into Britain's overseas empire. The study assesses the extent to which rail development mirrored colonial policy, and the degree to which rail service affected Awadh's commerce, society, and agrarian economy. To achieve the analysis, each chapter is directed at one of these topics. Accordingly, the first chapter explores the policy considerations and implications of pre-rail road-building by the British and their predecessors, the nawabs of Awadh. The next chapter treats the policies which motivated the financing, building, and functioning of the province's rail system, the Oude and Rohilkund Railway. It examines the chief problems inhibiting profitable operation of private trains in a tropical colonial environment, and culminates with an assessment of the circumstances leading to public take-over. Chapter 4 continues the discussion of the railways' financial difficulties by highlighting the interactions of trains with Awadh's vital and established road transport system. Comparisons of road and rail traffic statistics permit a number of conclusions regarding the railways' appeal to potential users and the trains' relative inability to overcome competition. Chapter 5 provides a detailed analysis of the varying ways railroads intruded into Indian society. The chapter offers give selected case studies which illustrate the degrees to which social institutions and processes were disrupted by rail service. By examining the trains' effects on rural fairs, travel conditions, transporting agents, railways employees, and social and environmental stability, it is possible to demonstrate the enormous diversity of responses to technological change and the resiliency of certain time-tested social patterns. The final chapter ascertains the trains' impact upon provincial agriculture by discussing changes in cultivation and evaluating the railways' influence upon provincial movement of goods. The work concludes that contrary to the railways' enthusiastic backers' expectations, trains had generally failed to attain their objectives. The Oude and Rohilkund Railway had neither dislodged its road competition nor succeeded in functioning profitably. In the course of their operation, moreover, the railways had caused a number of unexpected social disturbances.

published_or_final_version / Urban Planning / Master / Master of Science in Urban Planning

Anthropological fieldwork conducted in two North Indian villages focused on cultural differences attributable to recent irrigation development. The study of introduced irrigation systems is distinguished from studies of traditional irrigation systems. The varieties of impacts due to irrigation development are reviewed from the literature and hypotheses formulated relating to economic change (cropping patterns, labor demand, profitability), socio-economic behavior (occupations, patron-client relations, household composition), and cultural values (modernization and traditionalization). The methodology of controlled comparison was adopted as a means of isolating the effects of canal irrigation (Bhakra canal) in the Bagar region of Northwest India. A mostly unirrigated village served as a control to measure the effects of irrigation in a "wet" village. Data on agricultural practices, labor use, occupations, household composition, and material culture were collected from a systematic sample of 40 households in each village. The primary irrigation effects have been economic: higher yields, new crops (wheat and cotton), and much higher profits. Labor demand is much higher in the irrigated village, though cropping intensity is actually lower. Residents of the drier village have diversified into non-farm work both within and outside the village. A few families have migrated out, in contrast to the wet village which has experienced a dramatic rise in population, largely from immigrants. Sociocultural measures, including jajmani relations, household composition, and religious shrines show relatively few contrasts between the villages. Both villages have undergone significant changes in the past generation, in one case due primarily to agricultural intensification, and in the other case due to economic diversification. The villages are more remarkable for their present similarities than their differences.

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Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

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"February 2000" Bibliography: leaves 235-239. "Several key questions are considered in this thesis. Is it possible that sacred places had a design philosophy or theory that was used to establish and develop them? How do various natural forms influence and/or structure existence of sacred places? This thesis considers specifically the role of nature in sacred places and not sacred places as a whole." -- abstract.

This thesis tries to build a set of theoretical and empirical premises of the important issues pertaining to a decentralized government structure. While the questions that we attempt to answer in this thesis are varied, the common theme that runs through the essays is its focus on issues from a regional perspective. Our empirical outcomes are based on the Indian federal system, more specifically, the 15 major states of India, which account for over 90 per cent of the population and 95 per cent of GDP. The period under consideration is 1985 - 2000. We consider this to be a crucial period because a lot of stress in state finances emerged during this period. The research questions we broadly seek to answer are the following: 1. What are the causes of differences in developmental levels across the major Indian states? 2. What is the role of political alignment in determining the budgetary considerations of states? 3. What accounts for differences in human developmental outcomes across the states? 4. In normative terms, can it be argued that a decentralized structure need not automatically lead to the iformation of a hard budget constraint? Further, can it be claimed that under certain circumstances, particularly when dealing with State-run natural monopolies, that a soft budget constraint may lead to better outcomes? The starting point of our analysis or the first essay (Chapter 2) deals with the question as to why have Indian states had different levels of development and growth? The existing literature argues that states, which have followed better policies in terms of macroeconomic probity and identification of developmental issues, have had better outcomes, which we feel is an inherently circular argument. The existing literature does not answer the basic issue of what prompted certain states to follow better policies? We add to the burgeoning literature on growth in Indian states, by looking at institutional quality. We argue that some states in India have better institutions than others, and these have set better policies. We suggest that the level of political accountability and the quantum of 'point resources' such as minerals would have an impact on the quality of institutions. The idea being that a region can be 'cursed' with high mineral wealth and having unaccountable politicians. This can lead the politician to try to subvert institutional quality in these regions to facilitate 'rent seizing', leading to lower developmental and growth prospects for such states. We try to prove this through a theoretical model as well as an empirical exercise. The second essay (Chapter 3) is more empirical in its construct and analyses the impact of political affiliations and the quality of fiscal institutions on regional budget constraints. While we do not make any normative judgments here regarding the welfare implications of soft budgets, we argue that the correct political alignment and poor fiscal institutions might combine to lead a state to greater fiscal profligacy. This is because of the inability to have institutional checks on expenditures and due to a higher probability of an ex post bailout by the central government, through higher ad hoc transfers. The third essay (Chapter 4) considers not merely ' budgetary output' levels such as the quantum of expenditures, in isolation, but looks at the 'outcomes' of such expenditures, viz. the impact of expenditure on health on an 'outcome' indicator like Infant Mortality Rates (IMR). across the major Indian states. We argue that analyzing the budgetary allocations on any expenditure tells us merely half the story. Since the Indian states are constitutionally required to spend more on human development expenditures such as health and education as compared to the central government, the correct way to look at 'effective' expenditure would be to analyse the determinants of variation in 'outcome' indicators. We in our essay, consider variations in IMR to be our measure of 'outcomes'. We suggest that political accountability might have a major role in determining human developmental outcome levels through better utilization of expenditures. Since we argued in the second essay that the potentially harmful impact of poor fiscal institutions and political alignment, is softening of the budget constraint, our final essay (Chapter 5) is a theoretical piece of work, which looks at the micro-foundations of a 'soft budget constraint' and tries to analyse the normative issue of the welfare considerations in this regard. We try to prove two concomitant factors in the federalism and soft budget literature. First, contrary to some of the existing literature, decentralization, need not automatically increase a commitment to the hard budget and second, in normative terms, under certain circumstances, a 'soft budget' is preferable to a 'hard budget'. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--School of Economics, 2004.