Geography

This paper makes a micro study on the changing livelihoods of the Khuga Dam displaced communities in Churachandpur. It systematically assesses some of the crucial socio-economic constraints by evaluating the peoples' responses to the changes that have occurred and their ways of adaptation and consequent impacts on the new environment. It is found out that large sections of the people had to adjust with the newly introduced means of livelihoods in their relocated settlements. The construction of the Dam had disrupted and dislocated the once stable means of livelihoods of the people and compelled them to turn to their immediate surroundings for minimum sustenance. Activities like clearing of forests for jhum, cutting and burning of woods for fuel and charcoal, have been largely intensified. Intense pressure has been put on the existing forests and ecological balances. It is questionable that the changed livelihoods of the people would be sustainable in the long run.

The granting of scheduled tribe status to the Kuki-Chin people eroded their allegiance to clan and linguistic/dialectal identities. While they do not have any problem with a pan-ethnic identity, their primary loyalty is to their own clans and communities. Invocation of kinship ties by different groups does not necessarily translate into a common political agenda. There are at least 15 armed groups among them that have combined into two larger groups—the United People’s Front (UPF) and the Kuki National Organisation (KNO)—and signed a peace agreement with the state and central governments. Whereas the militant groups deviated from the macro-nationalist project of the Indian state, their micro-nationalist struggle is not informed by any coherent ideology. The root motivation of their armed struggle clearly originated in their fear of being marginalised by ethnic competition among various peoples of Northeast India in general and of Manipur in particular.

The Lushais maintained commercial contact with the surrounding plains traders in the eighteenth and nineteenth century The British administrators recognised the importance of trade and bazaar in relation with independent Lushai chiefs and to use them as a diplomatic tool to influence the behaviour of the Lushais. The British introduced riverine bazaars in the interiors of Lushai hills to satisfy Lushais' desire for tradable commodities; to facilitate the interests of plain merchants in a profitable rubber trade; and to provide security to their subjects within their territories The failure on the part of the Lushai chiefs to provide security to the marketplaces and resumption of raids in the British territories paved the way for the British to directly interfere in the Lushai affairs. This paper contradicts the Romantic notion of Lushai village communities being self-supporting and isolated autarchy and the notion of self-sufficiency of 'Indian village communities' as propagated in the nineteenth century.

The study of ethnicity goes beyond searching for its definitions and characteristics. Exploring the geographical pattern of ethnic groups is an interesting shift in the study of conventional and contemporary social sciences. This paper aims to analyse the nature of classification and spatial distribution of the ethnic groups in Manipur hill areas between 1991 and 2001, when the hills witnessed two ethnic conflicts between these decadal censuses. As per an official record, three tribal groups –Naga, Intermediate and Kuki-ChinMizo are found in the State. Internal dynamics on the discourse of ethnicity has different narratives on the ground reality. In terms of spatial distribution, the Naga group is more clustered than its counterpart Kuki-Chin-Mizo across the hills. The paper also looks into how the change in spatial pattern of distribution and redistribution of ethnic groups has largely contributed to ethnic homogenization in the hill areas of Manipur.

Abstract: This paper makes a micro study on the changing livelihoods of the Khuga Dam displaced communities in Churachandpur. It systematically assesses some of the crucial socio-economic constraints by evaluating the peoples' responses to the changes that ...

The Lushais maintained commercial contact with the surrounding plains traders in the eighteenth and nineteenth century The British administrators recognised the importance of trade and bazaar in relation with independent Lushai chiefs and to use them as a diplomatic tool to influence the behaviour of the Lushais. The British introduced riverine bazaars in the interiors of Lushai hills to satisfy Lushais' desire for tradable commodities; to facilitate the interests of plain merchants in a profitable rubber trade; and to provide security to their subjects within their territories The failure on the part of the Lushai chiefs to provide security to the marketplaces and resumption of raids in the British territories paved the way for the British to directly interfere in the Lushai affairs. This paper contradicts the Romantic notion of Lushai village communities being self-supporting and isolated autarchy and the notion of self-sufficiency of 'Indian village communities' as propagated in the nineteenth century.

Based on archival sources, this chapter gives detailed accounts of the Zou Gal (Zou War) with special emphasis on aspects of military history. Relying on W. A. Cosgrave’s Tour Diary, this chapter sheds a new light on the sequence of events that unfolded in the second year of the Zou Gal. The chapter also discusses the factors that led to the end of the Zou Gal against the colonial power. Moreover, the picture of the Zou resistance against the colonial government in their territorial domain – southern Manipur and northern Chin borders and their collaboration with their cognate Thadou-speaking communities – is the main focus of the chapter.

Changes in Land use-Land cover (LULC) has directly linked to food security, human health, urbanisation, trans-border migration, environmental refuge, water and soil quality, and runoff and sedimentation rates, among other processes and it has been recognized as an important factor in changing the environmental modification worldwide. The continuous degradation of natural resources is observed through LULC at different corners of the earth. Enriched with natural vegetation the tribal-dominated, Golamunda block of Kalahandi district, Odisha is studied because of the noticeable changes in Land Use and Land Cover. The present study was aimed at studying the pattern and rate of change in Land Use and Land Cover in Golamunda Block of Kalahandi district during 2001-2016. The change has been detected while taking Landsat imagery as its input for the study. The Spectral-based classification approach i.e. the supervised classification has been performed for the satellite images of three different periods i.e. 2001, 2009 and 2016. The results reveal the fact that agricultural land, deciduous forest and water bodies have been decreased, while, barren land, scrub forest and settlement increased from 2001-16. The change detection matrix carves the fact that decrease in agricultural land has been converted to barren and settlement, and the significant portion of the deciduous forest diverted to scrub forest. Though this phenomenon is not new, still it's interesting to see the area under desertification has same as it is practised worldwide. Thus, there is a need to formulate better planning strategies and law enforcement actions to protect forests and scrubs and control the increasing barren land which causes desertification at national as well as regional level. Keywords: Land Use and Land Cover, supervised classification, deciduous forest, change detection matrix, desertification.

This is to certify that the thesis entitled, "FPGA IMPLEMENTATION OF FLOOD MONITORING SYSTEM" submitted by SUCHITAL DEBBARMA in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Master of Technology Degree in Electronics & Communication Engineering with specialization in VLSI DESIGN & EMBEDDED SYSTEM during 2013-2014 at the National Institute of Technology, Rourkela (Deemed University) is a study work carried out by him under my supervision and guidance. To the best of my knowledge, the matter embodied in the thesis has not been submitted by him to any other University / Institute for the award of any Degree or Diploma.

This article discusses asset bubbles, the Kansas and Illinois land markets, estimates land values, and develops a land price/earnings ratio. Current land sales data are also examined. Finally, we examine relationships between land values and interest rates, inflation rates, and cash rents. Results show that real land values increase substantially when inflation increases. Recent land values are explored for both Kansas and Illinois with somewhat differing results. Development of land price bubbles could be enhanced if inflation becomes more widespread and land values are viewed as having good protection from inflation. Market fundamentals would suggest that an increase in land prices due to inflation occurs because of an increase in cash rental rates and not through a dramatic change in the price earnings ratio.

Flood frequency analysis is an important mathematical modelling technique in determining the return period of the probability of witnessing a particular discharge in a river, especially a peak discharge. Floods as periodic events in a river basin are associated with high discharge. In flood frequency analysis the annual peak discharge in a river is fitted in different probability distributions. Three important statistical methods, most commonly used in flood frequency analysis, are - Gumbel’s Extreme Value Distribution, Log Pearson Type III Distribution and Log Normal Distribution. In this paper, 40 years’ (i.e., 1973 to 2012) annual peak discharge series of the Jiya Dhol river has been tried to fit in the above mentioned frequency distribution models and the best distribution model(s) for the basin has been identified with the help of D-Index test. The Jiya Dhol river basin is one of the most flooded river basins in the Brahmaputra valley of Assam (India). Floods cause heavy loss of life and property in the flood seasons (i.e., usually the monsoon season) in Lakhimpur and Dhemaji Districts of the north bank of the Brahmaputra valley in Assam. The selection of best probability distribution method in the studied river basin with the recent available records will definitely help the planners and administrators to estimate the major flood events and save life and property accordingly.

Basin morphometry is an important means of understanding a drainage basin using mathematically derived parameters. In the present study basin morphometry has been analyzed under three broad aspects and they are the linear, areal and relief aspects. Within these aspects there are many parameters which are being determined by using mathematical formula on data derived from Toposheets of the study area. It is covering an area of 1094.93 sq. km. The drainage pattern of the upper section of the basin is trellis pattern and the lower section is anabranching. Floods are common phenomena of the lower section of this basin. This paper explains the role of basin morphometry specially the linear and relief aspect in providing condition for occurrence of flash floods in the lower section of Jiya Dhol River basin.

Jiadhol river system is one of the most dynamic rivers flowing out of the foothills of Himalaya in Arunachal Pradesh and joining mighty Brahmaputra in Dhemaji district of Assam. This river has created flood havoc in the District of Dhemaji due to frequent avulsion over the decades. The focus of this study is to understand the pattern of channel avulsion in the Jiadhol River. For the analysis the data on river planform are collected from the survey of India toposheets and a number of satellite imageries. The time series of river planform is used to analyze the pattern of channel avulsion. The analysis shows that before 1973, the Jiadhol River had tendency to shift from west to east, from 1973 to 1993 the shift was from east to west and after 1993 till present time the channel avulsions are from west to east. The distance between the new and the old course has reduced over time. INTRODUCTION Channel avulsion is rapid abandonment of a river channel and formation of new river channel. According to Grade (2006), it is a sudden abandonment of part or whole of the stream for a new course at a lower level of floodplain. It occurs as a result of reduction in channel gradient of the existing channel due to aggradations. The mechanism of evolution of the present day avulsive systems includes (i) aggradation of channel and flood-plain by the accumulation of bed-load and suspended load, (ii) increasing but never the less subtle topographic differences and flood overspills; and (iii) avulsion due to over spilling and stream capture (Richards et al. 1993). Most of the avulsion activities are associated with those rivers which have high sediment load and lesser gradient (Jones and Schumm 1999). Many of the Himalayan Rivers, which have very high sediment load and witness drastic decrease in the gradient on crossing the Himalayas show rapid avulsion of channels in the lower catchments. According to Mitra et al. (2005) channel aggradations causes reduction of the channel gradient and reduced water carrying capacity of the channel, hence reduction in the velocity and sediment transporting capacity of the stream, which further enhances the silting up of the channel. The above sequence of events results in the abandonment of the existing course by the stream to seek a new course where it would get a greater hydraulic advantage. The stream initially becomes quite stable in its new path, as it is flowing along a topographically low area. However, with time the process of aggradations will proceed along this route also, making it vulnerable to avulsion. Eventually it will become a topographic high and a new avulsion will become progressively more likely. These alternate periods of stability and instability may last from a few tens of years to a few hundred years. The location and timing of avulsions are highly unpredictable. Similar concepts are also available in the works of Brizga and Finlayson (1990) on Channel avulsion the Thomp-son River and Mc Carthy and others (1992) on Okavango.

The effect of liberalization on the Indian economy is very much debated about. It was introduced in 1990 to the country's economy with the objectives of bringing economic growth and to bring micro stabilization and structural adjustment in the economy. Liberalization and privatization has limited the state's control in the economy and gave the private player much of the power. Also that the regional disparity in economic growth in India has substantially increased over time. This paper tests the convergence and divergence of regional disparity in economic growth after liberalization. This paper also validates the Inverted-U relationship between economic growth and interregional inequality given by Kuznets. The convergence test suggest of increasing divergence after liberalization. And the Kuznets's Inverted-U hypothesis is not applicable in India after liberalization.

Jiadhol River is one of the most frequently flooded north bank tributaries of Brahmaputra. There are many factors responsible for the intensification of floods in this basin. Flood management is very important in this river. Flood hazard zonation of the basin helps in proper management and adaptation of the foods in the basin. This paper aims to develop a simple method for flood hazard zonation of the basin by using GIS. The method used here is multi-criteria weighed overlay analysis of GIS. This method includes many factors such as geomorphology, elevation, slope, drainage density, drainage network, flow accumulation, soil, ground water table and land cover/land cover, lithology and also proximity to drainage, confluence and embankment breaching point for flood hazard zonation. All factors are weighted according to their role in the occurrence of floods. Using the mentioned method, four hazard zones are derived, they are the severely flood prone zone, moderately flood prone zone, less flood-prone zone and flood free zones. Most of the upper basin comes under flood free zone except the river valleys. There are two distinct severely flood-prone zones in the lower part of the basin. Introduction Flood is the most common hazard witness by the world today. The area effect by floods every year covers a large portion of the human inhabited area. These areas are also the most densely populated ones, and that is why flood hazards throughout the world are responsible for causing heavy damage to the human kind. These are the natural phenomenon associated with the flood plains of the world. Floods are unavoidable, so we have to adapt to it and proper flood forecasting helps in better adaptation and management of floods. The scholars from different fields are continuously contributing lots of knowledge for improving the methods of forecasting flood as exactly as possible. India is a country in which large part of the country experiences the problem of flood every year. The concentration of 70% of the total annual rainfall within a period of just four months of monsoon makes the situation worst. The mighty Ganga-Brahmaputra flood plain along with other major floodplains experiences seasonal floods in the monsoon season in almost every year. Along with that the occurrence of flash floods in the Himalayas Rivers due to cloud burst. There are also tidal floods associated with cyclonal activities in the coastal area of the country. It is difficult to predict different floods with one method so different studies are necessary to understand the nature of different floods. Flood plain zonation is very significant in management and development of river basins (Jana, 1997). Its effectiveness increases by many folds with the use of more recent high resolution multi sensor satellite data (Prasad, et al., 2006), but due to lack of accessibility imageries with lower resolution are used. Singh, et al., (2013) has used Microwave Passive Remote Sensing (AMSR-R) in parts of Brahmaputra basin for monitoring floods. Jana (1997) used Survey of India toposheets of 1:50000 scale and IRS LISS-II for preparing flood hazard zones in North Bengal. Besides using the data from the satellite imageries, the basin morphometry, such as Digital Elevation Model, flow direction, flow

Most of the north bank tributaries of the Brahmaputra River brings heavy loads of sediments to the plains and heavy siltation of riverbed become a major problem in the region. Jiya Dhol River is one among those rivers. It is very notorious in causing frequent floods, siltation, and channel shifting in the region. This paper is an attempt to understand the pattern of change of sediment load in the river. A Sediment rating curve has also been derived to establish an empirical relationship between Discharge and Sediment load of the river. The channel cross-section has been observed over a period of two years to understand the pattern of siltation in different sections of the river. Field measurements and photography are used to understand the actual scenario. The study shows fast siltation occurs in the riverbed during the rainy season while the river is dry for half of the year.