Cardiovascular diseases are major causes of mortality and disease in the Indian subcontinent, causing more than 25% of deaths. It has been predicted that these diseases will increase rapidly in India and this country will be host to more than half the cases of heart disease in the world within the next 15 years. Coronary heart disease and stroke have increased in both urban and rural areas. Case-control studies indicate that tobacco use, obesity with high waist:hip ratio, high blood pressure, high LDL cholesterol, low HDL cholesterol, abnormal apolipoprotein A-1:B ratio, diabetes, low consumption of fruits and vegetables, sedentary lifestyles and psychosocial stress are important determinants of cardiovascular diseases in India. These risk factors have increased substantially over the past 50 years and to control further escalation it is important to prevent them. National interventions such as increasing tobacco taxes, labelling unhealthy foods and trans fats, reduction of salt in processed foods and better urban design to promote physical activity may have a wide short-term impact.

https://heart.bmj.com/content/heartjnl/94/1/16.full.pdf

Epidemiology and causation of coronary heart disease and stroke in India

Groundwater systems of the Indian Sub-Continent

Virtual water trade has been promoted as a tool to address national and regional water scarcity. In the context of international (food) trade, this concept has been applied with a view to optimize the flow of commodities considering the water endowments of nations. The concept states that water rich countries should produce and export water intensive commodities (which indirectly carry embedded water needed for producing them) to water scarce countries, thereby enabling the water scarce countries to divert their precious water resources to alternative, higher value uses.

While progress has been made on quantifying virtual water flows between countries, there exists little information on virtual water trade within large countries like India. This paper presents the results of two MSc theses which quantify and critically analyze inter-state virtual water flows in India in the context of a large inter-basin transfer plan of the Government of India.

Our analysis shows that the existing pattern of inter-state virtual water trade is exacerbating scarcities in already water scarce states and that rather than being dictated by water endowments, virtual water flows are influenced by other factors such as “per capita gross cropped area” and “access to secure markets”. We therefore argue that in order to have a comprehensive understanding of virtual water trade, non-water factors of production need to be taken into consideration.

http://www.ayhoekstra.nl/pubs/Verma-et-al-2009.pdf

Going against the flow: A critical analysis of inter-state virtual water trade in the context of India's National River Linking Program

Agricultural cooperatives have changed considerably in recent decades In witnessing these structural changes, scholars have proffered analyses of nontraditional ownership models focusing on residual claim rights However, crucial information on the allocation of control rights in cooperatives is missing This study sheds light on alternative ownership-control models adopted by agricultural cooperatives in different regions across the world In each of these models, we describe the allocation of formal control rights with a focus on decision management and decision control rights We thus provide empirical evidence on the “separation of ownership and control” in agricultural cooperatives We also analyze each of the governance models in terms of the associated ownership costs, including risk-bearing costs, the costs of controlling managers, and collective decision-making costs In doing so, we are able to better understand the forces influencing the organizational efficiency of each cooperative model

Control Rights, Governance, and the Costs of Ownership in Agricultural Cooperatives

Groundwater is a crucial resource for current and future generations but is not being sustainably used in many parts of the world. The objective of this review is to provide a clear portrait of global-scale groundwater sustainability, systems and resources in the Anthropocene, in order to inspire a pivot towards more sustainable pathways. We examine groundwater from three different but related perspectives of sustainability science, natural resource governance and management, and Earth Systems science. We propose that groundwater sustainability can be defined with a direct link with observable data, governance and management as well as the crucial functions and services of groundwater. An Earth System approach highlights the connections between groundwater and the rest of the hydrosphere, biosphere, atmosphere and lithosphere, and how these connections are impacting, or impacted by, groundwater pumping. Regional differences in priorities, hydrology, politics, culture and economic contexts mean that different governance and management tools are important. But a global perspective can support higher level international policies in an increasingly globalised world, that require broader analysis of interconnections between regions and knowledge transfer between regions. 1. Groundwater is depleted or contaminated in some regions and ubiquitously distributed which, importantly, makes it broadly accessible, but also slow and invisible and therefore challenging to govern and manage. 
2 
2. Groundwater is the largest store of unfrozen freshwater on Earth and is heterogeneously connected to a number of Earth System processes on different timescales. 3. A coherent overarching framework of groundwater sustainability is more important for groundwater governance and management than the concepts of safe yield, renewability, depletion or stress.

https://eartharxiv.org/repository/object/665/download/1480/

Global Groundwater Sustainability, Resources, and Systems in the Anthropocene

This article attempts to synthesize the research presented at the Fifth Annual Partners Meet of the International Water Management Institute (IWMI)– Tata Programme held in Anand, Gujarat, in March 2006. It specifically focuses on the prevalence and nature of inequities in water distribution. It shows that institutions in force create inequity in access to water in all the regions of the country; the landless and the dalits usually facing the brunt of the inequities.The inequities are more pronounced when water is considered as an input for economic activities such as agriculture. Geo-genic factors such as contamination of groundwater are compounded with inequities to severely impact the health and well-being of the poor and the weaker segments of the society. Finally, imbalance of social power allows industry to exploit water sources, producing inequities in use of water across sectors.

/pdf/water-equity-and-development-dejta2ucod.pdf

Water, Equity and Development:

The debate on India's ambitious river-linking project is highly polarized. While the proponents insist that scores of highly qualified engineer-years have been invested in studying the feasibility of the links, the analysis is not available in the public domain. On the other hand, the opponents argue that the project is a conspiracy to hide the past inefficiencies of the irrigation bureaucracy; and yet, the alternatives proposed by them for India's impending water challenge also seem far from concrete. This article critically examines the National Commission Integrated Water Resource Development (NCIWRD) report, which has repeatedly been cited as the basis for planning and justifying the project, and outlines a framework for research which will help in raising the level of this important national debate by helping to develop a refined, textured and nuanced understanding of ‘India's water future 2050’.

/pdf/india-s-water-future-2050-potential-deviations-from-business-56tgcnjxdf.pdf

India's water future 2050: potential deviations from 'business-as-usual'

This paper examines issues in the design of a co-operative member's contractual relationship with the other agents (including the remaining members) using organizational economics. The paper assumes that the central defining characteristic of a co-op is the residual claim specification. Agency theory identifies certain inherent problems of the co-op form, the horizon problem, common property problem, and non-transferability. Non-transferability both reduces the incentive to monitor and imposes limits on portfolio diversification. This paper argues that features such as claim incompleteness and non-transferability are not inherent to the co-op but may be transaction-cost economizing. The paper also argues that the pre-emptive payoff feature by which the residual claimants (the co-op members) also become fixed payoff agents can affect the risk of other agents, and is an important determinant of co-op risk. A co-op may have more than one potential residual claim base. Five generic design choices are available for handling possible multiple claim bases: battleground, pre-specified allocation, limited return, alignment, and fixed payoff. The paper uses the design of residual claims in sugar co-ops to show how a co-op can partly overcome some of the problems identified by agency theory. This illustration ties together the issues of claim incompleteness and non-transferability, pre-emptive payoff, and multiple claim bases.

Residual Claims in Co-operatives: Design Issues

Dalits or Scheduled Castes (SCs) of India still face multiple deprivation and discrimination with regard to access to natural resources.These disabilities are most pronounced with regard to access to water. In rural India, access to an imperative resource like water shows differential pattern across regions, where poverty, physical separation of hamlets, ideas of purity and pollution, poor access to government welfare programmes, discrimination in access to public water bodies and structures and so on play a critical role.The article focuses on probing current status of deprivation and discrimination of dalits’ access to water for domestic use across various states with the help of selected indicators, which can reveal this complex phenomenon. As the study covered different ecological zones, it also explores a relatively less studied domain—linkages of water scarcity and dalits’ discrimination and deprivation. The findings from the survey show variable expressions of these features in different regions an...

Sanjiv J. Phansalkar

Papers

Water, Equity and Development:

India's water future 2050: potential deviations from 'business-as-usual'

Residual Claims in Co-operatives: Design Issues

Dalits’ Access to Water Patterns of Deprivation and Discrimination

Mainstreaming the margins: water-centric livelihood strategies for revitalizing tribal agriculture in Central India