Indian Institute of Management Calcutta

About: Indian Institute of Management Calcutta is a education organization based out in Kolkata, India. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Supply chain & Emerging markets. The organization has 415 authors who have published 1354 publications receiving 21725 citations. The organization is also known as: IIMC & IIM Calcutta.

Choosing the appropriate project management structure, project financing, land acquisition and contractual process for Indian railway mega-projects: a case study of the Dedicated Freight Corridor project

Abstract: A large number of railway mega-projects are planned or are under implementation for capacity augmentation, for serving the needs of trade, specific regions or industry sectors. Since transport capacity is one of the main levers of economic progress, it is essential that augmentation of transport capacity is not held up. It is therefore essential to choose the appropriate project management structure, project financing, land acquisition and contractual process to ensure design, construction and commissioning of projects without cost and time overruns. These choices have to be made keeping in view the context of the organisational technical capacity, financial capability, contractor capacity, and industry and trade growth pattern. This paper examines the various project management structures, methods of project financing, land acquisition and contractual processes along with their advantages and disadvantages. The paper takes the specific case of the Dedicated Freight Corridor project to examine the appropriateness of options.

Understanding Ruralities: Contemporary Debates

Abstract: Amidst the growing scholarly pronouncements on the declining sociological significance of the village and the village studies, and the equally enticing postcolonial theoretical concerns about the de-spatialised cultural flows and diasporic hybridity, this paper makes a plea for a possible renewal of village studies. Although the village was hardly a container par excellence of the larger processes of rural/agrarian social change, it anchored much of Indian sociology as the real or perceived ontological entity without necessarily being an explanandum in sociological research. Obviously, the village is no longer the convenient methodological site for ethnographic fieldwork in the old ways thanks to the thickening and deepening of the state apparatuses in our times, and the attendant processes of migration and mobility. It is time we grafted new theoretical and methodological concerns onto existing preoccupations. To understand ruralities today we need new sites and modes of enquiry. We may be required to erect tents on railway platforms to understand the village and the villager than staying with the old village headman. To comprehend the village dynamics, we need to make many more visits to panchayat, taluka and district headquarters, and the local Thana, than we have been conventionally used to. Thus, tracking the trail of the villagers will definitely mean the demise of single-village studies, and recourse to methodological repertoire of multi-sited fieldwork and political ethnography. [

The Informal Sector in Kolkata Metropolitan Area: Appraisal and Prospects for Local Economic Development

Abstract: No plan for local economic development within the larger metropolitan region of Kolkata can realistically succeed unless based on an understanding of the informal sector and taking account of it in subsequent local development strategy. The objective of this chapter is to provide a detailed look at the state of the informal sector in the larger metropolitan region of Kolkata since 1991. This information would provide a means to understand the impact of economic liberalization on the local economies of the various smaller towns/municipalities that constitute the Kolkata Metropolitan Area (KMA) and to suggest ways to incorporate the informal sector in the growth process. The study is based on aggregate-level secondary data that present trends in growth and structure of the informal sector in the KMA. The study also considers informal manufacturing activities and informal service activities, and highlights ways to include the informal sector in the local economic development process.