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The infrastructure sector is one of the major pillars for economic growth and development of a country. The responsibility to develop this crucial sector is shifting away from the public to the private sector. After the economic liberalization in 1991, India opened the infrastructure sector, among many others, to private domestic and foreign investment. The shortage of electricity, the poor state of roads, and limited telecom access necessitated a stream of persistent reforms, which were expected to play a significant role in the infrastructure sector's growth. Although some subsectors witnessed success, others continued to face hurdles. The paper highlights the role of infrastructure in socio-economic development through global literature. It also presents a story of infrastructure development in India since the inception of economic liberalization. It highlights various challenges that discourage private sector investments, thus providing a rationale for policy initiatives by the government. The paper also presents critical issues highlighted by multiple government committees over nearly three decades and identifies residual issues that merit attention. The outcomes of the paper are relevant in the context of developing and emerging economies.

In this paper, we extend the parametric approach of VaR estimation that is based upon the application of two transforms, one for handling skewness and other for kurtosis. These transformations restore normality to data when applied in succession. The transforms are well defined and offer an alternative to VaR models based on the variance–covariance approach. We demonstrate the application of the technique using three pairs of uncorrelated but negatively skewed and fat-tailed stock return distributions, one pair each from recent periods in US and international market, and one from the stressed period of US economic history. Furthermore, we extend the analysis to economic domain by calculating expected shortfalls and risk capital under different estimation methods. For the sake of completion, we compare the estimation results of normal and transformation methods to non-parametric historical simulation.

A primary source of renewable energy is solar energy. This is the one of the most resourceful sources of energy for the future. The photogalvanic cells as described in the present work are energy devices as they provide a route for simultaneous solar power generation and its storage. The study of photogalvanics of Aniline blue dye (photo-sensitizer)- Ascorbic acid (reductant)-Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (surfactant) has been done in basic medium at low intense light with aim of searching relatively proper combination of chemicals like photosensitizer, reductant and surfactant for further increasing the efficiency of these cells. The best conditions for cell have also been observed for optimal cell performance. The solar conversion efficiency, fill factor, cell performance (as t1/2), power at power point, open circuit potential and equilibrium current at 10.4 mWcm-2 have been observed of the order of 2.31%, 0.2445, 130 min, 240.24 W, 1485 mV and 750A respectively.