The expansion in world merchandise trade is highly influenced by the growth in world output, and every fluctuation in the world output is reflected in the volume of merchandise trade. The world seaborne trade has recorded a tremendous progress in the recent past thus revitalizing the shipbuilding activities. The global shipbuilding activities have shifted in favor of countries offering a comparative cost advantage and efficient shipyards. During the late 1990s, the share of shipbuilding activities made a significant contribution to the Indian economy. Since India has a vast coastline of about 8,000 km, the scope for private players in line with the public sector in developing the shipbuilding infrastructure is critical to make the Indian shipyards globally competitive and cost-efficient. The paper, “Shipbuilding Infrastructure: An Efficiency Analysis of Indian Shipyards”, by K M Chudasama, analyzes the shipbuilding infrastructure in general, and the efficiency of Indian shipyards in particular using the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). Further, the author attempts to present the various sources of inefficiency of the Indian shipyards and elaborated the scope of improvement in efficiency and increased output.

Energy is a very crucial factor for the overall economic development of any country. Research studies prove the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth. Approximately, one-fourth of the world population does not have access to electricity. While, there is an acute shortage of power due to high demand, driven by industrial growth and increase in consumer base, the sector is plagued by factors like inadequate installed capacity, heavy transmission and distribution loss, poor financial condition of the State Electricity Boards, etc. In addition to inviting private investments in this sector, alternative sources of energy have to be explored and popularized to bridge the gap. The paper, “Indian Power Sector: The Need for Demand and Supply Convergence”, by Ipshita Basu and Renuka Garg, examines the options available to combat the demand and supply mismatch. Delphi method was used to gather general opinions of the participants on the emerging challenges faced by the sector.

Communication technologies help to reduce poverty in three ways: (1) increasing the efficiency of the individual and, thereby, of the entire economy, (2) ensuring better delivery of public services such as health and education, and (3) creating new sources of employment, income and training, particularly for the poor. The maximum impact of economic reform in the post-1991 era was on the telecom sector. Telecom regulations, and competition explosion in the telecom market, raised the teledensity in India dramatically to 12.7% in 2006 from 1.94% in 1998. But there exists a wide gap between the rural and urban teledensity. In urban areas it is about 40%, whereas in the rural areas it is only 2%. This intensifies economic imbalances and inequalities. Private players contributed prominently to the post-1998 growth, where the public sector operators expanded their subscriber base in 1998-2006 by 32 million, the same for the private sector was 80 million. The public sector undertakings, whose growth was very slow during the monopoly period of 1948-1998 with about 0.3 million subscribers every year, increased to about 5 million subscribers every year during 1998-2005. The paper, “National Telecom Policy 1999: A Post-Implementation Appraisal”, by A S Sidhu and Harpreet Dusanjh, makes an appraisal of the National Telecom Policy 1999. The paper concludes with a positive note that the implementation of the new telecom policy has led to fueling competition for domestic and private players in the sector leading to building up of the world-class infrastructure affordable to the common mass.

Non-Motorized Transport (NMT) plays an invaluable role in stimulating the economic growth of any nation. NMT modes play a significant role in linking people of a city who are in pursuit of business, markets, education, social contacts, etc., and provide many benefits such as economic, health and environment, among other things. The Sustainable Urban Transport (SUT) is an all inclusive strategy that meets the mobility, access and safety needs of all groups in a society in a manner which is affordable to both providers and users of transport system. To meet the challenge of sustainable mobility, it requires the implementation of a common transport policy that is safe, efficient, competitive and socially and environmentally friendly. Urban transportation and mobility issues resulting from uncontrolled urbanization are of major concern to urban transportation authorities of the third world countries. The paper, “Towards a Sustainable Urban Transport System: An Analysis of the Epistemology and Planning Policy Direction for Non-Motorized Transport in Ethiopian Cities”, by Tendayi Gondo attempts to study the potentiality of SUT and NMT systems. The empirical evidence presented in the study is drawn from a sample of studies carried out on five Ethiopian cities. The study used a comparative study framework to compare and contrast the emerging issues.

-- Pradeepta Kumar Samanta
Consulting Editor