Sustainable Water Management Through Pani Panchayats: Stakeholder Perspectives from Angul and Dhenkanal Districts of Odisha

This study evaluates the impact of the Pani Panchayat initiative, a community-based water management program, in the Angul and Dhenkanal districts of Odisha. Utilizing a mixed-methods approach, we gathered qualitative and quantitative data through structured interviews with diverse stakeholders, focus group discussions, and surveys. The findings indicate that the Angul district exhibited higher levels of fair elections and improved water access due to better canal maintenance, while the Dhenkanal district faced challenges from industrial water usage. The study also examines the potential of technological advancements, such as real-time water monitoring, to enhance governance. By identifying synergies and gaps with existing water policies, the research provides policy recommendations to promote sustainable water management in alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals 2030.

Impact of Environmental,Social,and Governance(ESG)Factors on Stock Prices and Investment Performance

This study examines the relationship between Environmental,Social,and Governance(ESG)factors and stock prices as well as investment performance.ESG factors have become increasingly relevant in investment decisions as investors prioritize companies with sustainable practices.Using a sample of publicly-traded companies,this research analyzes the impact of ESG factors on stock prices and investment returns.The findings suggest that companies with strong ESG performance tend to have higher stock prices and better investment performance than those with weak ESG performance.The study also highlights the significance of the individual components of ESG,such as environmental policies and corporate governance practices,on stock prices and investment returns.Overall,this research provides valuable insights for investors seeking to incorporate ESG factors into their investment decision-making processes.

Aqueous and organic extracts of Trigonella foenum-graecum L.inhibit the mycelia growth of fungi

Aqueous extracts from various plant parts of fenugreek(3%)(aerial parts:leaves and stems(LS),roots(R),ground seeds(GS)and not ground seeds(NGS))and petroleum ether,ethyl acetate and methanolic fractions of the aerial parts were assayed to determine their antifungal potential against Botrytis cinerea,Fusarium graminearum,Alternaria sp.,Pythium aphanidermatum,and Rhizoctinia solani.All fenugreek plant parts showed antifungal potential and the magnitude of their inhibitory effects was species and plant parts d...

Impact of CEO attributes on corporate reputation,financial performance,and corporate sustainable growth:evidence from India

This article investigates the impact of CEO attributes on corporate reputation,financial performance,and corporate sustainable growth in India.Using static panel data methodology for a sample of NSE listed leading 138 non-financial companies over the time-frame 2011 to 2018,we find that CEO remuneration and tenure maintains significant positive associations with corporate reputation,while duality and CEO busyness are found to be associated with corporate reputation negatively.The results also show that female CEOs and CEO remuneration are associated with corporate financial performance positively,whereas CEO busyness,as expected,holds a significant negative relationship with corporate financial performance.Moreover,the results demonstrate that CEO age is associated with corporate sustainable growth negatively,while tenure appears to have a significant and positive association with corporate sustainable growth.The results are robust to various tests and suggest that in the Indian context,demographic and job-specific attributes of CEOs exert significant influence on corpo-rate reputation,financial performance,and corporate sustainable growth.The empirical findings would provide a basis for the shareholders and companies to identify areas of consideration when appointing CEOs and determining their roles and responsibilities.

Household behavior in practicing mental budgeting based on the theory of planned behavior

Ajzen’s theory of planned behavior(TPB)suggests that planned behavior is determined by behavioral intention.Despite extensive literature based on TPB,household mental budgeting behavior explained by TPB is underexplored.The current study empirically tested TPB factors in light of mental budgeting behavior.The hypothesized model was tested using partial least squares structural equation modeling(PLS-SEM).PLS-SEM was employed using a Likert-scaled questionnaire administered to 275 households.The results indicate that mental budgeting attitude and mental budgeting past behavior strongly predict mental budgeting intention,and mental budgeting intention predicts mental budgeting behavior.Further,mental budgeting intention partially mediates the relationship between mental budgeting attitude and mental budgeting behavior,and mental budgeting past behavior and mental budgeting behavior.This study contributes to the academic interest in theoretical progress in household behavior.

Using Test Employee Capability Maturity Model for Supporting Gaps Bridging in Software Testing

This study addresses the challenge of assessing gaps among the differences of test people in eight groups by matching them based on four scenarios. The proposed model called Test Employee Capability Maturity Model (TEC-MM) helps find the gaps and measure the capability and maturity levels of each sub-maturity models in four dimensions as technicality, management, business, and personality. We applied TEC-MM to a software company which has instituted test people improvement strategy and plans to be a front runner in software testing industry. The findings reveal that gaps existed and consequently affect software testing process quality.

Voluntary tax compliance behavior of individual taxpayers in Pakistan

Governments settle their financial obligations and pay for the public expenditures largely through finances generated from taxes.For many developing countries like Pakistan,the state authorities are still having difficulty to achieve tax compliance.Existing literature has yet to traverse individual’s tax compliance behavior on developing countries.The current study,however,explores the relationships among voluntary tax compliance behavior of individual taxpayers with selected economic,social,behavioral and institutional factors.This individual tax compliance behavior is studied through the multi-perspective lenses of the theory of attribution,equity theory,expected utility theory,and social exchange theory.Quantitative design using the survey method was employed to collect data from 435 individual taxpayers through questionnaire.For testing linkage between constructs,through mediation and moderation tests,structural equation modeling technique was used.The results suggest that tax compliance simplicity has a larger impact on tax filing than perception about Government Spending and tax morale.Furthermore,perception of fairness significantly mediates the strengths between morale,simplicity,government spending and compliance behavior.

Investigating liquidity constraints as a channel of contagion: a regime switching approach

The present study investigates the timing and repercussion of the subprime crisis of 2008–09 in a regime-switching model.The interdependence and co-movement of financial markets in different countries has been enhanced due to the globalization of international trade,and investment trends can spread globally as a result of investors owning international portfolios.This study uses a regime-switching model to illustrate the timing of the crisis regime and calm regime for United States(US)stock index returns and the corresponding impact on Indian stock index returns.The Indian stocks investigated are classified into“remote”and“reachable”stocks,and different effects are found for these two types.It is found that shocks originating in the US can be transferred to the Indian reachable market as a result of foreign investors.There is,however,a less persistent impact on remote stocks.Accordingly,the study contributes to the literature on the material impacts of the crisis resulting from liquidity constraints and fear of contagion among investors.

Transformation and risk assessment of the East Kolkata Wetlands (India)using fuzzy MCDM method and geospatial technology

The East Kolkata Wetlands (EKW) is located on the eastern periphery of the city of Kolkata and extends up to theBidyadhari-Matla River confluence. It is a Ramsar Site and acts as an absorber basin for a large number of con-taminants drained from Kolkata. Agricultural lands, sewage-fed fisheries, garbage dumping fields, horticulture,and built-up areas are included in this protected area, that covers approximately 125 km2. It reveals that climatechange reduces the variety of wetland ecosystem services and increases socio-economic vulnerability and eco-nomic stress. The human encroachment, reclamation of land for agriculture, aquaculture, and urban expansion inand around Kolkata has recently adversely threatened the EKW. The remotely sensed data, socio-economic data,and responses of inhabitants have been used to analyse the EKW’s risk and vulnerability. We employed geospatialanalysis by using the Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) method using nine risk factors. An in-depth analysisof the EKW using geospatial techniques and the Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP) helped to understandthe EKW transformations through vulnerability and risk analysis. The results show that the transformation of thewetland to aquaculture, eutrophication and pollution, road proximity, waste dumping, population density, andgrowth are the main factors for the deteriorating health, quality, and environment of the EKW. It also reveals thatquantitative and qualitative evaluations of ecosystem services, wetland degradation, transformation, and cause-effect rapport should be periodically assessed using scientific methods like FAHP, RS, GIS to formulate resilient,integrated plans and strategy for the sustainable management of the EKW.

The determinants of shareholders＇ wealth of acquiring firms in India

Corporate restructuring has become a major component in the financial and economic environment all over the world. Industrial restructuring has raised important issues for business decisions as well as for public policy formulation. Since 1991, Indian industries have been increasingly exposed to both domestic and international competition and competitiveness. The companies started restructuring there operations around their core business there M ＆ A. But M ＆ A is an area of potential good and harm in corporate strategy including manufacturing industry. Therefore, an attempt has been made to analyze the security returns and to find out the net wealth increase or decrease to the shareholders of acquiring firms. In India, there are totally 58 manufacturing companies which have undergone mergers and acquisitions during 2000, 2001 ＆ 2002. Thirty percentage from the total population was taken as sample size （i.e., 17 companies out of 58）. The present study is mainly based on secondary data. The Market Model and Market Adjusted Returns Model analysis are used as tools of analysis.

Impact of mergers on the corporate performance of acquirer and target companies in India

Mergers and acquisitions become the major force in the changing environment. The policy of liberalization, decontrol and globalization of the economy has exposed the corporate sector to domestic and global competition. It is true that there is little scope for companies to learn from their past experience. Therefore, to determine the success of a merger, it is to be ascertained if there is financial gain from mergers. It is very important to study the liquidity performance of those companies to test whether those companies have sufficient liquid assets to meet its current obligations. The present study is limited to a sample of companies which underwent merger in the same industry during the period of 2002-2005 listed in one of the Indian stock exchange namely Bombay Stock Exchange. It is proposed to compare the liquidity performance of the thirteen sample acquirer and target companies before and after the period of mergers by using ratio analysis and t-test during the study period of three years. The study found that the shareholders of the acquirer companies increased their liquidity performance after the merger event.

Simulation-Based Evaluation for the Impact of Personnel Capability on Software Testing Performance

This study presents a decision making process in three steps of knowledge management for test organization using process simulation and financial analysis. First, project cost assessment of test knowledge management process subjects to different project duration and number of staffs. Two knowledge management simulation models representing experienced personnel with knowledge sharing and inexperienced personnel with internal training respectively are employed to contrast test personnel capability. Second, performance evaluation of software testing process by different personnel capability is conducted to simulate system test using three project metrics, namely, duration, effort cost, and quality. Third, a comparative financial analysis is prepared to determine the best solution by return on investment, payback period, and benefit cost ratio. The results from three stages of finding are discussed to arrive at the final scenario. We provide a case study evaluating how software testing industry needs to build effective test organization with high quality personnel for sustainable development and improvement.

Followness of Altcoins in the Dominance of Bitcoin:A Phase Analysis

Due to the transparency,simplicity,and blockchain system,cryptocurrencies gained popularity in the modern world.This led to more use of cryptocurrencies for speculation and investment rather than a medium of exchange.It is crucial to analyse the nature of the crypto market before investing in such currencies.With this intention,the paper tried to know the extent of following(Followness)of altcoins to the bitcoin in the different dominance phases like High Dominance,Low Dominance,and Moderate Dominance.For this purpose,daily closing prices of the Bitcoin and five major altcoins(Ethereum,Litecoin,Namecoin,Doge,and Ripple)are collected for the last five years and analyse the relationship between bitcoin and altcoins.Pearson's correlation coefficient test is used to know the direction of the relationship,and Vector Error Correction Model is used to see the extent of the relation.In general,the empirical result of the study showed cointegration between bitcoin and Altcoin.It also depicted that Altcoin showed a high level of followness in the moderate dominance phase and low followness in the low dominance phase.The study developed a price estimation equation to predict the price of altcoins depending upon the price of bitcoin and its dominance in the crypto market.This paper concludes that the dominance of Bitcoin also has a significant role in the price movement of altcoins.

Cross-regional emergency scheduling planning for petroleum based on the supernetwork model

Petroleum, the most important energy source in the world, plays an essential role in securing economic development. If a petroleum shortage happens, it will severely disrupt production and life. Cross-regional emergency scheduling can effectively alleviate a petroleum shortage and further enhance the efficiency of the emergency response. Considering the general lack of focus on cross-regional petroleum dispatching management, we propose a three-layer emergency scheduling network for petroleum based on a supernetwork model that can increase the regional emergency correlation by adding a transfer management process. Then, we compare the total demand for petroleum and the emergency costs considered in the petroleum emergency scheduling supernetwork model（the single-region and the cross-region scenarios）.The result shows that the cross-regional emergency scheduling pattern can effectively enhance the efficiency of the emergency preparations and reduce the emergency costs in most cases. However, when the vulnerabilities in the crossregional link grow or the regional linkage decreases, the effect of single-regional scheduling is better. In addition, the advantages of the cross-regional emergency scheduling network will be strengthened with an increase in its maximum emergency capability. Nonetheless, this advantage will disappear when the petroleum demand in the crisis layer reaches the maximum emergency response capacity. Finally, according to the comparative analysis simulation among scenarios,certain strategic policy recommendations are suggested to improve the petroleum emergency scheduling ability in regions.These recommendations include strengthening the cross-regional coordination mechanism, increasing the modes of petroleum transportation and enhancing the carrying capacity of regional emergency routes.

S&P BSE Sensex and S&P BSE IT return forecasting using ARIMA

This study forecasts the return and volatility dynamics of S&P BSE Sensex and S&P BSE IT indices of the Bombay Stock Exchange.To achieve the objectives,the study uses descriptive statistics;tests including variance ratio,Augmented Dickey-Fuller,Phillips-Perron,and Kwiatkowski Phillips Schmidt and Shin;and Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average(ARIMA).The analysis forecasts daily stock returns for the S&P BSE Sensex and S&P BSE IT time series,using the ARIMA model.The results reveal that the mean returns of both indices are positive but near zero.This is indicative of a regressive tendency in the longterm.The forecasted values of S&P BSE Sensex and S&P BSE IT are almost equal to their actual values,with few deviations.Hence,the ARIMA model is capable of predicting medium-or long-term horizons using historical values of S&P BSE Sensex and S&P BSE IT.

China＇s Land System and Its Extraordinary Infrastructure Development

Over the past two decades, China's infrastructure development has been extraordinary in the sense that it far exceeds GDP growth rate and unconventional in the sense that it cannot be explained with existing theories on infrastructure development.This paper found that the transformation of China's land system is an important clue:China's extraordinary infrastructure development is a result that can be explained with the transformation of its land system. Theoretically, this paper proves that with other conditions held constant, the difference of land systems has a significant effect on the optimal infrastructure supply of regions. Empirically, it can be found through the test of cross-country panel data that the transformation of China's land system around the 1990 s indeed exerted an overall impact on China's extraordinary infrastructure development. This paper implies that China's "land-supported infrastructure development" model has been pivotal to its extraordinary infrastructure development. Under the Belt and Road Initiative,China's experience of land-supported infrastructure development is of broad significance for developing countries to boost their infrastructure development.

Automatic Real-Time Medical Mask Detection Using Deep Learning to Fight COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic is a virus that has disastrous effects onhuman lives globally;still spreading like wildfire causing huge losses to humanityand economies. There is a need to follow few constraints like social distancingnorms, personal hygiene, and masking up to effectively control the virus spread.The proposal is to detect the face frame and confirm the faces are properly covered with masks. By applying the concepts of Deep learning, the results obtainedfor mask detection are found to be effective. The system is trained using4500 images to accurately judge and justify its accuracy. The aim is to developan algorithm to automatically detect a mask, but the approach does not facilitatethe percentage of improper usage. Accuracy levels are as low as 50% if the maskis improperly covered and an alert is raised for improper placement. It can be usedat traffic places and social gatherings for the prevention of virus transmission. Itworks by first locating the region of interest by creating a frame boundary, thenfacial points are picked up to detect and concentrate on specific features. Thetraining on the input images is performed using different epochs until the artificialface mask detection dataset is created. The system is implemented using TensorFlow with OpenCV and Python using a Jupyter Notebook simulation environment. The training dataset used is collected from a set of diverse open-sourcedatasets with filtered images available at Kaggle Medical Mask Dataset by Mikolaj Witkowski, Kera, and Prajna Bhandary. To simulate MobilNetV2 classifier isused to load and pre-process the image dataset for building a fully connectedhead. The objective is to assess the accuracy of the identification, measuringthe efficiency and effectiveness of algorithms for precision, recall, and F1 score.

Foreign Investors Complaints Promote Improvements in Investment Environment

Recently, reports and comments on problems in Chinese investment environment by overseas media raised attentions and concerns. Financial Times of UK carried out a survey on March 23 under the title ＂Foreign Enterprises in China Having More Complaints＂, which said ＂Chinese governments excludes foreign-funded enterprises from some vigorous developing markets, which has already caused transnational corporations to complain more, especially on the implementation of protectionism actions in China.＂ At the end of July, Wall Street Journal reviewed complaints from foreign merchants in recent months on investment environment in China,