The shift towards capacity building and deteriorating governance may lead to poor service delivery which is a prime challenge for governing agencies. Different countries follow their own sets of governance parameters and often assess the outcome of policies based on them. In order to compose a uniform good governance framework, we have conducted a comparative analysis among 22 existing governance frameworks across the globe and shortlisted 13 major criteria along with 74 sub-criteria. We explored the method to measure these governance components with the help of various indicators and took expert opinions to distribute weight among these indicators. Finally, the case of Mumbai city is discussed with the examples of direct indicators, which may be used to measure a sub-criteria of any specific criteria. The quantification process is also demonstrated with three specific representative indicators. For example- the contribution towards good governance has increased from 0.001218 in 2016 to 0.004466 in 2017, for the indicator “conviction percentage of corruption cases” of sub-criterion “active anti-corruption commission” of criterion “accountability”. Researchers, as well as policymakers, will be benefitted from the method demonstrated here, which can help in assessing the governance of any public service towards further policy amendments.

As economic progress & provision of basic services do not guarantee certain happiness, it is necessary to measure citizens' aspirations & happiness-shortfall for policy amendment. Researchers tried to assess various aspects but overlooked composing as a whole, which was done here. Literature suggested that Health, Social Interaction, Governance & Services, and Living Standards are the measures of Subjective Well Being (SWB), which contributed remarkably to happiness at Individual, Community, National, & Regional levels. An Android app was developed to ideate citizen's happiness index by inclusive questionnaire, & to perceive disparities in SWB’s domains. Test values from Cronbach's-alpha & Spearman-Brown-split-half confirmed the reliable results, which reveal a predominant association of happiness with Education level, Health, Social ties (especially with family & friends), and Living standard (Income, work-life balance & Educational facilities). More samples may give better insights.

*Co-researcher: Prachi Jadhav, Dr. Nambram Sushibala Devi, Dr. Naveen Krishna Alla, Prof. Krithi Ramamritham

There is a necessity for healthcare facilities (HFs) to perpetuate human life from various kinds of diseases. The demand is growing briskly day by day with the budding population, which generates some questions like, are the HFs well distributed over the area based on their specialty, affordability, and service timing, if so then, how much area can be served by the existing HFs, if so then, are they able to provide 24-hour service, if not then, which areas are lagging or remain unserved and in which time window, and which are the probable areas to place a new HF. This paper analyzed the current situation of HFs both spatially and temporarily taking k-west ward of Mumbai as the study area. The spatial analysis demonstrates the spatial inequality, most of the HFs are situated beside the network, most of the unserved areas are slums in nature, and lack of affordable HFs (i.e. public). The temporal analysis shows that only a few out of 179 provides round-the-clock service, out of which only two are public, which means a lack of HFs, especially during night time. This spatial and temporal analysis gave an idea to HFs developers and planners about where to open new HFs, or what will be its operating time window. A similar type of analysis also can be conducted for other areas.

*Co-researcher: Dr. Naveen Krishna Alla, Prof. Arnab Jana

MOOCs are experiencing high enrolment statistics and academics are focusing on ways to improve the retention rates in MOOCs. e-Yantra imparts hands-on engineering skills in a highly scalable manner to undergraduate students in engineering, polytechnic, and science colleges. The e-Yantra MOOC takes the form of a Robotics Competition where students are mentored to solve problems modeled as “Themes.” We study the effect of “difficulty levels” on participant retention of two Themes (hands-on MOOCs). The performance of 800+ students that participated in each of these MOOCs (1600+ total students) offered in 2017 and 2018 is considered. In the light of the increasing popularity of online learning especially through MOOCs, this study contributes to the literature on the “funnel of participation” in MOOCs teaching conceptually difficult engineering topics in a hands-on Project Based Learning mode. Our study brings contrast with the general comprehension from prior literature that shows MOOCs teaching easier concepts to have high completion rates and MOOCs teaching difficult concepts to have low completion rates. We find the simplicity and coherence of MOOC design, regardless of the difficulty level of MOOC to have a stronger effect on learning outcomes. Conceptually difficult MOOC in our study has “2.75” times higher completion rate compared to the easier MOOC. This affirms that it is better to teach solving “one challenging problem” than to teach solving a series of easy problems since the latter leads to “conceptual clutter” among participants and as result fatigue and consequential increased dropouts.

*Co-researcher:: Vivek Sabanwar, Avijit Pandey, Prof. Kavi Arya

As the pandemic COVID-19 has severely affected the entire world, it became the utmost necessity of careful prioritization and utilization of limited medical resources, especially for resource-constraint societies. This requirement along with the asymptomatic nature of COVID-19 in a significant proportion of the population has prompted the need for a risk assessment toolkit that can provide a rationale behind prioritization and allocation of limited available medical resources. The purpose of this study is to compose a scientific-rationale-based ‘COVID-19-Self-Assessment-Test’ (C19SAT) framework, which helps develop a basis for measuring the risk of COVID-19 exposure with self-assessment. The study comprises two major parts- (1) identification of key components of the C19SAT framework by studying various guidelines (WHO & CDC) and relevant literature, and (2) quantification of those components by assigning weight through the analysis of survey results and opinions from medical physicians and experts. A C19SAT framework is developed to measure the risk of covid-19 exposure, comprising a set of identified components (12 parameters and their corresponding attributes) and their corresponding weights. As the scientific rationale behind such an assessment framework has not been reported to date in the case of available mobile applications and web-based toolkits, the present study brings the novelty and reports the construction of such a framework. The study opens up untouched research and discussion on the composition of the COVID-19 exposure-measurement framework, which can help in vaccine prioritization and resource allocation. Further studies can be carried out on refining the framework for better understanding and effectiveness towards urban health governance.

*Co-researcher: Dr. Supreeta Arya, Prof. Kavi Arya

Following the advent of the novel Coronavirus, the governments and authorities introduced various mobile applications in the fight against COVID-19. However, these are either restricted by the developer country or not comprised of certain key features, due to which, a vast population from the low- or middle-income country, remains underprivileged from associated benefits. The purpose of this study is to explore and demonstrate how to build a comprehensive and easy-to-use application for mobile health service delivery especially fabricated to fight communicable diseases like COVID-19. Mostly open-source technologies are used to build a distributed scalable client-server application. Then the application is evaluated with the stress-test and usability-test. Besides COVID-19 advisories and guidelines, the study demonstrates the complete conceptualization and development of an IoT-based mobile application. It comprises three key features that bring comprehensiveness. One is the ‘contact logger & tracer’ that enables users to maintain a list of contacts who get notified if any of them reported COVID-19 positive in the last 14 days. Two is the ‘self-assessment' which helps users to predict the chances of COVID-19 infection using a scientific rationale. Three is the ‘infection tracker’ that guides users to identify infected hotspots to plan the route accordingly. The usability-test affirmed that the application is easy-to-use. Further, this study demonstrates how to construct such an easy-to-use application mostly with open-source resources. It can help the needy authorities or groups from resource-constrained countries to adopt and develop such applications quickly. Further research on the post-implementation effect will add value to this study.

*Co-researcher: Omkar Manjrekar, Aditya Agrawal, Nilesh Barandwal, Abhishek Gupta, Pranjal Chaudhari, Sharad Mishra, Kedar Anavardekar, Vikrant Fernandes, Prof. Kavi Arya

In spite of initiatives by developing countries and the United Nations, basic sanitation is still a dream for millions. This need for capacity-building has inspired our work to scientifically determine actual-demand and indicate locations for new toilets. We took data relating to 8417 toilet-blocks in Mumbai and investigated future sanitation (latrine/toilet) development in all city-wards using a combined demand-centric and geospatial approach. We found lacunae in the present sanitation scenario, where some wards need many more toilet-blocks (600–746) than have been provisioned. Certain wards require more than 100% provisioning, such as FN ward, which requires 340% (i.e. 3.4 times) more toilets compared to what it currently has. Besides demand-analysis, a geospatial assessment was carried out to find potential locations for new toilets. This study is useful to help us explore policy amendments for metropolises having similar characteristics as Mumbai. Further research may address location optimization considering ground-reality, societal-aspects and geophysical-constraints.

The lush green 500+ acres IIT Bombay campus generates about 10 Tonnes of waste daily i.e. 736 grams per capita per day. The waste management authority PHO (Public Health Office) workers are putting their best to make a clean campus. But still, there are some issues, like, are the existing bins enough to serve the whole campus, do the residents & PHO workers have sound knowledge about waste management, etc.? Geo-tagging of waste bins & waste sources, suggests that there are plenty of places where new bins need to be placed. The idea of putting various bins together, goes in vain, as 63% of campus residents don’t have sound knowledge of waste segregation. Though the rest of the residents have the knowledge, only 65% of workers do segregate at the time of collection. And the funny thing is that they often mix the segregated waste at the time of disposal, which affects improper & inefficient waste management. The waste-flow network and its questioning of all the stakeholders reveal that, though the PHO workers hold the maximum importance, influence, and interest, they have the least power. Because all the management-related decisions are taken by hostel council members and Dean IPS & officers, and thus they are playing a major role in terms of importance, influence, power & interest. This study concludes with a set of recommendations for a waste-free campus having a suggestion of placing a suitable number of bin-types as per available waste-type in any specific area. The decision-makers from various institutional or organizational bodies can use the same methodology to examine their waste scenario and they can also follow the recommendations for making a waste-free campus.

• It carries the safety measures during the water unavailability,

• Able to detect various kinds of errors,

• Able to control the electrical & mechanical appliances,

• Can log the data whenever an event occurs

• Send warning message/call over a large range

Billions are faced with poor sanitation in developing countries, forcing United Nations’ to miss sanitation targets over the years. This is mainly due to the poor condition of sanitation in the global south comprising mostly developing countries. International and national organizations are mainly focused on building sanitation infrastructure to target Sustainable Development Goal 6.2 (i.e., eradicating open defecation by 2030). But the service delivery in terms of monitoring & maintenance along with other governance issues is often overlooked in most cases. How can we arrange sustainable monitoring of a global sanitation community? In this paper, we discuss how information and communications technology (ICT) may be used to address sanitation governance. We outline the necessary governance criteria found in our field observations and then explore ICT options to address these issues. We conceptualized and created ‘Find A Loo’ – a mobile application designed to be a ‘good-governance’ enabler. We tested this application with the help of the System Usability Scale (SUS) and Potential Capability Scale (PCS), where it appeared as ‘Good’ with an ‘A Grade’ score, based on evaluators’ satisfaction with usability and capability. Overall the evaluation affirms that the application is not only useful and ready to use, but also capable of helping in addressing governance issues in sanitation. This work will be of interest to policy & decision-makers, researchers, service providers, NGOs, and people working in the sanitation space. Further, such a system lends itself to analytics that helps optimize the performance of sanitation infrastructure.

*Co-researcher: Prof. Kavi Arya, Vikrant Fernandes, and Tushar Shah.

Urbanization is a global phenomenon, and India is no exception for it. In fact, the growth of urbanization is more in developing countries compared to developed countries. The rapid growth of urbanization in developing countries has both positive and negative impacts on society. The positive aspects of urbanization are industrial growth, employment growth, and the rise in GDP. But the development cannot be sustained or successfully achieved until we realize the demographic consequence from a gender perspective view. This paper examines the nexus among socio-demographic variables from a gender point of view. Our study deals with the data of 641 districts of India. Here, an Ordinary Least Square (OLS) Regression has been performed considering various combinations of socio-demographic variables. Out of them, female literacy rate, infant death, population density, and percentage of scheduled class/tribe population have been found as the most impactful concerns for the social aspect, determined by various factors, such as R2 (0.551140), Adjusted R2 (0.547317), Multi-Collinearity Number (10.832944), etc. After that, Cluster maps and Moran’s I from the Univariate & Bivariate analysis, are used to better understand the spatial distribution. We also found a very high clustering of bigger household sizes with low female literacy and an under-five mortality rate. One of the key findings is that higher female literacy can lead to a higher under-five mortality rate. This study creates a base for researchers, policy & decision makers for their further study and policy amendments. The methodology is replicable and can be used further in other contemporary regions. Studying further on the other facets of quality of life by keeping a gender scanner, would be a nice advancement of this study.

*Co-researcher: Dr. Naveen Krishna Alla, Kamlesh Kumar