Search

Most nuclear dyads are characterized by some degree of nuclear and conventional asymmetry. This paper argues that these asymmetries create an environment in which deliberate nuclear first use (DNFU) can be rational. This possibility has been discarded in the formal literature on nuclear escalation because of the common reliance on the assumption of mutually assured destruction (MAD). This paper develops a formal model that traces how and under what circumstances two types of DNFU are rational. First, nuclear imbalances and advancements in counterforce technologies create a damage limitation incentive for a strong actor. Second, conventional asymmetry creates an incentive for the coercive use of nuclear weapons by the weaker player. Moreover, this paper illustrates that these asymmetric conditions are a relevant characteristic in important and very different nuclear dyads: DPRK–US, Pakistan–India, and Russia–US. Thus, the model demonstrates the potential core drivers of DNFU in today's nuclear landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A systematic survey of the cost of corrosion and wear has been carried out in a major pulp and paper plant in India. It is shown that the annual direct cost of corrosion and wear in the plant under consideration is £20 000. By extrapolation, the annual cost of corrosion in the entire pulp and paper industry in India is estimated to be £1·5 million. It is further shown that opting for an alternative, corrosion resistant material such as duplex stainless steel in the bleaching unit alone could lead to annual savings of almost £130 000. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based upon research in the state of Bihar, India, this article argues that informal access to medicines in Northern India is a core element of the government of healthcare. Informal providers such as unlicensed village doctors and unlicensed drug sellers play a major role in access to medicines in Bihar, in the particular context of the dismantling of public procurement services. Building on recent works in the socio-anthropology of pharmaceuticals, the article shows the importance of taking into account the political economy of drugs in India, in order to understand local problems of access more fully. If informal providers occupy such an important position in the government of healthcare in India, this is partly due to the shaping of healthcare as access to drugs on health markets. Elaborating the argument from interviews with health professionals and patients, the article first shows the situation of public healthcare and public procurement in Bihar; then it presents the role of informal medicine providers; lastly, it shows how patients deal with the fact that they live in a ‘pharmaceutical world’ where access to health equates with access to medicines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the way the outbreak of coronavirus and the subsequent lockdown has egregiously impeded the Hindu death ceremonies and mourning rituals in India. It makes a comparative analysis of how Hindu death rituals get renegotiated, modified and reinterpreted across two vastly different regions of India, both of which have their local customs. Whilst death rituals in India are contingent on the deceased's caste, community, class, gender and age, the impediment to the major death rituals creates a central conundrum for all mourners. It results from the substitution of 'sacred' ritual guidelines with new 'profane' ones for the 'disposal' of deceased COVID-19 patients. Departure from many significant pre-liminal rites, specific transition rites, and post-liminal rites has eschatological, ritual and cultural ramifications. The inability to grieve in unison during a Shraddh ceremony denies mourners any scope to quell distressing feelings about mortality which serves as a source of consolation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 1 August 2002, the Allahabad High Court in India, adjudicating the Ayodhya Case, ordered archaeological excavations by the central government agency Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) at the site of the demolished mosque Babri Masjid in Uttar Pradesh. The order marked a new moment for the convergence of law and archaeology in India, with archaeological knowledge being produced on judicial demand as evidence in a civil dispute. This paper argues that this marked the emergence of a hybrid episteme of archaeology-as-legal-evidence which redefines archaeology within the framework of law. It traces these tendencies by a close reading of three documents: the judgements of the Allahabad High Court and the Supreme Court in the Ayodhya Case and an order issued by a lower court in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh on 8 April 2021 in the GyanVapi Case. I argue that the new role that archaeology is assuming in courtrooms in India is destabilising the standing of the ASI as the authority of archaeological knowledge and the protector of the nation's material past. It has also produced a category of assertive public that successfully demands production of archaeological knowledge towards ideological ends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of the developed economies, recent political economy scholarship has highlighted the growing role of intangible assets (brand equity, software, business processes, patents etc.) in corporate portfolios. Much of this literature has emphasized how intangible assets erect barriers to entry, produce artificial scarcity of key inputs, enhance the pricing power of firms and thus lead to greater and greater levels of concentration. Being as they are monopoly rights and privileges, intangible assets represent the relational power of their owner vis-à-vis those excluded from their ownership. While much of this literature has focused on the developed world, this paper turns its gaze to the case of a developing country and analyzes the patterns and trends of intangible assets for a sample of Indian firms for the period 2000–2022. The analysis reveals a substantial acceleration in the weight of net intangible assets relative to net physical assets, especially after 2008. It also suggests that the largest and most powerful corporations are the ones that have contributed to this spike. Ranked by assets, sales and ownership category, the results show that intangible asset accumulation has been the strongest in the highest echelons of the corporate hierarchy. Moreover, the patterns of intangible asset accumulation have been such that they have not been restricted to the traditional "rentier" sectors in the sense that their presence in the "productive" sectors has been as important if not more so. By focusing on firm-level patterns of intangible asset accumulation, the results show the internal and necessary connections between accumulation and value capture that undergirds modern day capitalism in the Southern peripheries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India has witnessed a dramatic expansion of higher education, and women have emerged as noteworthy winners in the process. This paper focuses on the role of female college education on four dimensions of marriage: age at marriage, autonomy in the choice of spouse, work and financial empowerment, and quality of marital relationship. The study uses a sample of 35,561 currently married women from the 2011-2012 wave of the nationally representative India Human Development Survey (IHDS). It demonstrates that higher education, particularly college education, enables women to lead lives substantively different from their less-educated peers. College-educated women marry at later ages, enjoy greater autonomy in choosing their husbands, and have a more egalitarian relationship with their spouses. Furthermore, the study finds that educational homogamy and hypogamy afford greater autonomy to women. Even without a concomitant increase in labor force participation, college education among women appears to have a transformative effect on marriage in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The commercial surrogacy industry in India administers in a way where the women working as surrogate mothers live in surrogate houses. It is a space deliberately designed and run by either the fertility clinics or a third-party agency, where the surrogate mothers are required to stay for the entire gestation period. The surrogacy industry in India utilizes the vulnerability of couples who do not or cannot have children, in order to prepare valuable and docile bodies which can serve as a platform for accumulation of wealth. This paper draws from an ethnographic inquiry of the surrogate housing facilities functioning in two cities in India: Anand and Bengaluru. The paper will argue that the surrogacy industry in India produces geographies of carceral domesticity by deploying disciplining apparatuses governing the day-to-day mundane activities of the reproductive laborers. The medical experts often resort to the narrative that these women cannot be trusted with the safety of the babies they carry, hence, justifying their confinement in the surrogate house. Further, the possibility that the surrogate mothers may develop emotional attachments to the babies they carry, which in turn, will endanger the surrogacy arrangements, also runs through such narratives of regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Religious conversion and marriage across communal lines have long been contentious in India. The contemporary debate on 'Love Jihad' – the Hindu Nationalist conspiracy theory that accuses Muslim men of waging a religious war by seducing and converting unsuspecting Hindu brides – exemplifies the simultaneously geopolitical and biopolitical anxiety that religious conversion inspires. In this paper, I focus on the case of Hadiya, a young woman from Kerala, who, in 2016, found herself remanded first to her university's hostel – as dormitories are called in India – and then to her parents' home as various courts debated on the authenticity of her conversion to Islam, and her marriage to a Muslim partner. Through an examination of media discourse and court records in this case, the paper argues that in 'Love Jihad', the domestic and the carceral are rendered inextricably intertwined through an affective politics that presents desire outside the bounds of caste and religion as geopolitically misoriented. Drawing on Sara Ahmed's work on the phenomenology of orientation, I focus on the intimate geographies of the hostel, which I argue exemplifies a site of carceral convergence between nation and family, in the management of the affective disorder associated with religious conversion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unpacking the linkages between mainstream education and private tutoring is fundamental for advancing knowledge on tutoring's implications for learners and systems of learning. This paper explores the micro-processes of teaching-learning at schools and tutoring centres to provide a nuanced understanding of the dynamics between them, in the context of India. Using qualitative data from lesson observations, interviews and focus group discussions with 85 participants, the paper explicates the teaching-learning processes in these two settings. The findings and analysis illuminate how actors in one setting shape their responses based on their perceptions of the other, thus influencing their pedagogical practices. The cyclic nature of the resulting dynamics highlights the negative implications for mainstream education in terms of undermining the implementation of progressive pedagogical reforms and inhibiting the need for systemic interventions to resolve incongruities and misalignments within the larger education system. This could result in a potentially vicious feedback loop. The non-binary exploration of this feedback loop has wider global relevance in terms of the nuances added to the theme of private tutoring's negative outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several studies have found restrictions on minority faith-based communities to be related to the onset of violent religious hostilities. Absent from this work, though, is a consideration of the fact that minority religious discrimination can take different forms, and, consequently, may encourage violence in different ways. This paper seeks to fill this void by examining different forms of minority religious restrictions and their relationship to religious violence. Specifically, we analyze the comparative strength of three basic types of religious discrimination—restrictions on minority religious practices, restrictions on minority religious institutions, and restrictions on conversion and proselytizing —on violence carried out by both religious majority groups and religious minority groups. Interestingly, our analysis shows all three forms of restrictions encourage violence from religious majorities, but not from minorities. We supplement the statistical analysis with a case study of faith-based discrimination and violent religious hostilities in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

2008 can be considered a watershed year for generic medicine in India, as it saw the launch of the Jan Aushadi scheme, to provide cost-effective quality medicines to its populace, through special stores called Jan Aushadi stores. With more than 8800 stores, the scheme is touted as one of the world's largest pharmaceutical retail chains. Since then, many generic medicine start-ups have also launched operations in the country- Zeno Health, One India Pharmacy, Generic Aadhaar and StayHappi Generics. These supply side developments will however have to be complemented with commensurate demand side responses for it make a sustainable impact towards the push for affordable and accessible healthcare for all (Sustainable Development Goal 3). Many studies have established that, on the demand side, owing to the lack of requisite medical knowledge on part of the patients, there exists a strong agency relationship, where patients rely heavily on their physicians (prescribers) to make decisions on choice of treatments. Though promotion of generic medicines requires a coordinated effort from many stakeholders, analysis reveals that the prescribers, and hence their perception of generics, plays a pivotal role in their adoption. This study undertakes a bibliometric analysis of the top 100 most-cited research papers published between 2012 and 2022 on the perception of prescribers towards generic medicine from SCOPUS database. Suitable keywords have been incorporated to reach the relevant publications and VOSviewer (version 1.6.10) has been used for analysis. The findings of the study recommend further research on interventions aimed at improving prescriber's perception towards generic medicines to enhance their adoption and promote cost effective healthcare delivery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies in the United Kingdom have shown distinctions in intergenerational co-residency between UK-born and foreign-born individuals, however, little research has examined how factors such as immigrant incorporation, economic adaptation, and kin availability shape household formation patterns among immigrants. This paper uses data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study (2009–2010) to explore differences in the likelihood of UK-born and foreign-born working-aged adults to co-reside with at least one parent, highlighting distinctions by life stage (age) at migration and gender. Results show that, regardless of life stage at migration, foreign-born women and men are less likely to co-reside with parents than UK-born, however, intergenerational co-residency is high among some second-generation immigrant groups, particularly UK-born Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi individuals. These findings challenge cultural assumptions about household formation patterns and point to the need for additional research on how economic inequality, kin availability, and gender norms shape immigrant household composition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Commercial surrogacy marketizes life's work. In the era of neo-liberalism, women's work, which is often intimately performed within a heterosexual marriage in exchange of support, now remains a principal avenue to earn money. This form of feminization of labor has led to the emergence of markets for women's reproductive capacities. The present study stems from my ethnographic journey into the lives of the women who work as surrogate mothers in India. The narratives presented in the paper emerge from my prolonged fieldwork in Anand, Gujarat. It engages with the experiences, understandings, and the voices of these women, who I term reproductive laborers, in order to examine the notion of putting one's reproductive capacities in this intimate market for money. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last few decades, universities in India have witnessed the joining of a record number of students from marginalized communities and oftentimes struggle. This expansion of access has brought about changes within classrooms and college campuses, sometimes giving rise to contention and causing numerous conflicts as well. Centered around my experiences of teaching in a working-class college in Bangalore, a metropolitan city in Southern India, this paper offers reflections on education in challenging circumstances. Further, the essay explores the possibilities of democratic pedagogic practices through the theoretical framework of Maitri. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Participatory forms of policy-making have often been criticized for insufficiently theorizing the coproduction of publics and matters of concern. This paper seeks to investigate this relationship further by analyzing how the concept of civic epistemologies (CEs) can provide insights for understanding how political contexts shape both publics and contestable debates. Presenting fieldwork on cyclone governance in Odisha, India, based on the analysis of interviews with vulnerable fishing communities and state actors, the article shows how CEs influence the interdependent formation of vulnerable fisher and state subjectivities on one hand with representations of risk located in external biophysical atmospheric gases on the other, thereby sustaining reductive roles and futures. At the same time, the paper develops the concept of CEs by examining them as performative acts carried out by marginalized communities and state actors at the subnational level of a nonindustrialized country, thereby indicating sites at which epistemic agency can be increased and governed. Participatory knowledge production needs to understand how it is affected by CEs if it is to generate effective expertise for transformative futures in the face of increasing climatic risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between farm size and productivity has been a topic of interest in agricultural research for decades due to the significance of agriculture in rural economies and its potential to reduce poverty and promote inclusive growth. The relationship between farm size and productivity is influenced by factors such as the type of crop being produced, costs of cultivation, farm management practices, access to inputs and markets and socio-economic conditions. This paper aims to investigate the relationship between farm size and productivity in the context of farming households, their cost of cultivation and the types of crops they produce. Using the Cobb–Douglas production function, the present study estimates the regression function for principal crops such as cotton and paddy in the study area. The findings reveal strong evidence of an inverse relationship between farm size and productivity, indicating that small and marginal farmers are more productive in wetland cultivation (paddy). In contrast, medium and large farmers are more productive in dry land cultivation (cotton). The paper also investigates the availability and accessibility of credit facilities for different farm sizes. It concludes that small and marginal farmers depend mainly on non-institutional credit agencies compared to medium and large farmers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attacks perpetrated using acid are a particular form of interpersonal violence, possibly one of the most heinous manifestations of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV). Acid attacks are mainly motivated by extramarital cheating, marital conflicts, women's rejection of marriage proposals, and sexual advances. As these attacks are not well understood from a psychological perspective, we conducted a systematic review, following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, of 284 articles identified, 13 were eligible for inclusion. Three main focuses were identified: "Risk and vulnerability factors," "Consequences and implications," and "Interventions and treatments." Acid attacks seem to be more frequent in countries where social and economic development leads to greater tensions over traditional gender roles like Bangladesh, Pakistan, and India. Identified risk factors were young age, low socioeconomic status, low educational attainment, ethnicity, unemployment status of the victim, alcohol, and drug use of the perpetrator. Among the main psychosocial consequences of acid attacks, isolation and social exclusion emerged. Additionally, the paper will discuss the role of mental health consequences and specific treatments from psychological, clinical, and medical-legal points of view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Green hydrogen is gaining popularity as a clean fuel, and India is one of the countries that is exploring its potential. The paper analyzes the factors contributing to the adoption of green hydrogen in India. The government's policies to encourage usage of clean energy and cut down carbon dioxide emissions are a key factor driving the adoption of green hydrogen in India. Additionally, with the accessibility of renewable energy resources, the growing demand for hydrogen in various industrial applications, and the development of supportive infrastructure and policies are also contributing to the expansion of the green hydrogen sector. The study did a comprehensive literature survey to determine 21 variables that contribute to the green hydrogen development in India, which have been categorized under 4 blocks, namely, varied incentives, government support measures, R&D landscape, and green mandate. These blocks can be utilized to articulate and upgrade the green hydrogen policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Youth suicide is a significant public health problem in Low-and middle-income countries (LMIC), including India. It is a distinct phenomenon with various bio-psycho-social determinants. Despite this, comprehensive literature on this topic is lacking from India. Thus, the current paper aimed to review the available literature on youth-suicide from India and other LMIC, discusses the contentious issues, including potential solutions for the possible roadblocks, and provides recommendations for the national suicide-prevention policy and strategy (NSPPS) in the Indian context. We found that the magnitude of youth suicide in India is substantial with the distinct bio-psycho-social determinants. Although, youth-specific suicide prevention and therapeutic intervention do exist; its feasibility and effectivity in the Indian context are yet to be established. The is an urgent need for the NSPPS; experiences from other LMIC should be incorporated while framing such policies. More research is required from India in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarly work that seeks to theorize about fragmentation of media audiences has largely been restricted to the experiences of advanced democracies in the west. This has resulted in a preponderance of research endeavors that have sought to understand this phenomenon through ideas that are pertinent, perhaps solely to those contexts, and not as applicable outside, particularly in the Global South. This has potentially limited our imagination into various other ways in which audience fragmentation can manifest in these often-overlooked countries. In this paper, I use the case of online India as an example to offer a theoretical framework – that of news reading publics – for understanding audience fragmentation as a more global socio-political phenomenon that allows for rigorous comparative research, without being restrictive in scope. I draw from existing theories in communication and related disciplines and show how such a framework can be situated within existing social science theory. I argue that this framework should make us think of audience fragmentation in western contexts to be special cases of a more general model. I also show how network analysis can be used as a context-agnostic tool for identifying news reading publics and demonstrate the utility of such a method in complementing this theoretical framework. Finally, I discuss potential future research directions that this framework generates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autism is called "spectrum" disorder because there is a wide variation in the type and the severity of symptoms that people experience. India has a vast population, diverse cultures, and multiple languages, making it crucial to under- stand the unique challenges faced by individuals with autism spectrum disorder in the Indian context. This narrative review explores the current state of knowledge about autism spectrum disorder in the Indian context. Databases such as PubMed, Google Scholar, Sage journals, and other sources were searched with relevant terms for preparing this review. All published literature till January 2023 was studied and those which met the inclusion criteria were included. The resources included were original research articles, review articles, web pages, and book chapters addressing the purpose of the paper. Forty-eight such studies which met the inclusion criteria were included in the study. Results showed that the prevalence of autism varied across different studies in India. The study found advanced paternal age, fetal distress, gestational respiratory infections, labor complications, preterm birth, neonatal jaundice, delayed birth cry, birth asphyxia, late initiation of breastfeeding, neonatal seizures, use of maternal hormonal intervention, and consanguinity as some of the identified risk factors of autism spectrum disorder. Parents and families of children with autism have to go through a complex negative experience, both in the family and the community. This negative experience is further compounded by the lack of awareness and access to appropriate professional help and resources. It can be concluded that there is an urgent need for services that help parents cope with the stress of parenting a child with autism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Infrastructure-making in interwar India was a dynamic, multilayered process involving roads and vehicles in urban and rural sites. One of their strongest playgrounds was Bombay Presidency and the Central Provinces in central and western India. Focusing on this region in the interwar period, this paper analyzes the varied relationship between peasant households and town-centred modernizing agents in the making of road transport infrastructures. The central argument of this paper is about the persistence of bullock carts over motor cars in the region. This persistence was grounded in the specific regional environment, the effects of the 1930s economic depression, and the priorities of social classes. Pinpointing these connections, the paper highlights that "modernization" of infrastructure was not a simple, linear process of progressivist change, nor did it mean the survival of apparently "old" technologies in the modern era. Instead, the paper pays attention to conflicting social complexities, implications, and meanings of the connection between infrastructure and modernity that modernization assumptions often overlook. Here, the paper shows how technological change occurred as a result of real, material class interests pulling infrastructural technology in different directions. This was where and why arguments of road-motor lobbyists and cart advocates eventually clashed, and Gandhian social workers resisted motor transport in defense of peasant interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Credit rating agencies (CRAs) play an essential role in efficiently allocating capital in the financial system. However, several researchers have highlighted shortcomings of CRAs, leading to drastic consequences such as the 2008 financial crisis. The paper focuses on the competition among CRAs as one of the critical drivers of issues plaguing the credit rating industry. The paper uses quantitative and regression techniques to check the impact of competition on a firm's credit rating. The paper utilizes firm-level financial and credit rating data from India. The paper uses dual ratings to check whether competition leads to rating inflation and shopping practices in the credit rating industry. The paper finds that CRA inflates a firm's credit rating due to competition from other CRAs. Rating shopping is also evident in the credit rating industry, driven by competition between CRAs to gain new clients. The paper's findings also indicate that increased competition for large-size firms business leads to CRAs showing leniency when rating such firms. The results raise the need for regulators to actively monitor and control the competition among CRAs to ensure the accuracy of credit ratings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Mental health issues are common among college students, and structured services have been proven to enhance outcomes. Despite increased enrolment for higher education in India, college mental health services remain sparse. JEEVANI is the first structured state-wide college mental health service in India. This paper describes its framework and provides an overview of its functioning during the initial five months. Methods: In 2019–2020, the Directorate of Collegiate Education, Government of Kerala, implemented the program in 66 colleges catering to approximately 60,000 students. Qualified counsellors were trained to identify issues and provide interventions and early referrals, using a stepped-care approach. They conducted awareness programs to promote mental health and reduce stigma. Results: The services were accessed by 2,315 students during the assessment period (October 2019 to February 2020). The beneficiaries were predominantly females (54.1%). Over a third (38.8%) belonged to the lower socio-economic strata, and 2.5% had significant vulnerabilities. Although no syndromal diagnoses were made, anxiety and depression were the most common presentations. The counsellors provided 3,758 individual sessions and facilitated support for students who reported academic difficulties or interpersonal issues. Severe mental illness was detected in 54 students, and referrals for specialist mental health input were initiated in 68. Conclusion: Describing the framework, sharing the technical material, and providing an overview of its functioning from a resource-constrained setting in India may encourage higher education institutions in low- and middle-income countries to consider similar projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Child sexual abuse is a detrimental experience that could cause deleterious mental-health outcomes in the survivor. Decades of research have revealed the complex nature of child sexual abuse in terms of its characteristics, dynamics, causes, and consequences. Efficacious psychological interventions for managing child sexual abuse-related outcomes in children exist. However, it is now well recognized that interventions alone are not enough for recovery from sexual or any other type of trauma; it requires an entire human service system that is well-informed about trauma and its effects. Given the lack of awareness about the consequences of child sexual abuse and the stigmatization that exists in the Indian context, which significantly contributes toward the evolution and severity of trauma outcomes in victimized children, this paper is an attempt to discuss the relevance of adopting a trauma-informed approach while responding to child sexual abuse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indian women are fast moving from conventional jobs to night-shift jobs in transnational call centers. Women working at night is a relatively new phenomenon and stands apart from the usual Indian lifestyle. Night work and the dual burden of work and family have adverse implications on women employees' physical and psychological health. The paper highlights the occupational health hazards of women employees of international call centers through a systematic review of 38 articles published between 2000 and 2018. Data and evidence from studies on women employees of international call centers in India reveal that odd working hours against the biological clock make women employees suffer from several health problems. Women were more prone to health problems as compared to their counterparts. The responsibility of balancing work and family leads to high levels of stress. Despite the attractive salary package, most women employees suffer health hazards and psychological disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sports and Crime are an integral part of the social reality of India. The recent case of Olympic medalist Sushil Kumar has again reinvigorated the public sentiments regarding the relationship between crime and the state of 'minor' sports in the country. This paper analyses the issue through an intersectional paradigm informed by the neo-Marxist analysis of sports and Classical Marxist Criminology. The paper argues that sports and crime are integrally related to each other in the rural hinterlands of India. This relationship is expressed in the processes in which sportspersons attempt to adapt to varying circumstances. Under neoliberal capitalism, where the dominant ideology proposes to normalise the idea of succeeding at all costs, sportspersons associated with 'minor' sports in India often resort to criminality because of their lack of social capital coupled with the faults associated with the process of management of these sports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we develop an extension of compartmental epidemiological models which is suitable for COVID-19. The model presented in this paper comprises seven compartments in the progression of the disease. This model, named as the SINTRUE (S usceptible, I nfected and pre-symptomatic, Infected and Symptomatic but N ot Tested, T ested Positive, Recorded R ecovered, U nrecorded Recovered, and E xpired) model. The proposed model incorporates transmission due to asymptomatic carriers and captures the spread of the disease due to the movement of people to/from different administrative boundaries within a country. In addition, the model allows estimating the number of undocumented infections in the population and the number of unrecorded recoveries. The associated parameters in the model can help architect the public health policy and operational management of the pandemic. The results show that the testing rate of the asymptomatic patients is a crucial parameter to fight against the pandemic. The model is also shown to have a better predictive capability than the other epidemiological models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 18th century, scholars have been claiming that Romani people originated from India. Folkloristists, ethnographers, linguists and demographers alike have sought to identify, classify and characterize the 'Roma traits' and map them onto an imagined notion of Indian-hood. Meanwhile, India has reappropriated the originary claim and started to embrace the Roma community as one of their 'own'. This paper focuses on the epistemic and political implications of ascribing an 'Indian origin' to the Roma. How do scholars and savants seek to understand Roma populations with reference to their purported Indian origin and what does it entail epistemologically? To what extent is the 'scientific' legibility of the Roma's origin structured around ideologies of the prevailing episteme? Here, I situate the theory of the Indian origin as a 'field' and argue that its foundation has revolved less around the question of 'scientific' methods and their validity than around reinforcing the episteme in question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Quotas have helped women achieve greater numerical representation in government around the world. Yet do they have indirect effects on representation elsewhere? We take advantage of plausibly exogenous variation in when and which states enacted legislation mandating 50% women's representation in the lowest level of government in India to analyze how quotas affect women's candidacy, vote share, and winning probability at the state level of government. We find that women are more likely to compete and win for the higher political office when women reservation is implemented at the local levels of political governance. This suggests that gender quotas have spillover effects onto other levels in politics. As women continue to be under-represented in politics, this paper highlights the role of policy instruments in shaping political careers for women and building inclusive political institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medical tourism is a field where healthcare and travel both coincide. Herein, people from different parts of the world travel to different countries in order to avail world-class treatment at an affordable price. With the onset of COVID-19 pandemic, this industry has been hit hard. However, this industry has still reflected back the waves of COVID-19 and has emerged better. This paper has made an effort to comprehend the viewpoints and opinions of the providers that accept medical tourism in India. The participants were selected using judgement and snowball sampling. The data was gathered through semi-structured interviews conducted using both face-to-face method as well as telephonic method. The data was then analysed using Atlas.ti software to highlight the various factors affecting medical tourism as well as its interaction with COVID19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: As a signatory of the United Nations Commission on Child Rights, India has enacted laws and policies to protect the child's interests. The Juvenile Justice Act of 2015 addresses the needs and well-being of the most vulnerable children, including those who do not have anyone to care for or have experienced a traumatic upbringing and those who are allegedly in conflict with the law. No research from India addresses these vulnerable children's mental health and well-being. The current paper describes a pilot project to create mental health awareness and improve children's care access in India's Juvenile Justice System (JJS). Methods: Permission was obtained from appropriate governmental agencies in Odisha and Tamil Nadu and Child Care Institutions (CCIs) that consented to participate. A co-creation model was utilized to create youth-friendly spaces and methods to deliver mental health literacy for all stakeholders and access to care. Results: Seven CCIs and 278 children across two states participated in the implementation of the project. 37.8% of the children had resided for less than six months and 34.5% for more than two years in the current CCI. Of the various adverse childhood experiences, neglect was the highest at 76.3% followed by parental issues at 32%. Conclusions: Children in the JJS have many risk factors predisposing them to develop mental health issues. This unique pilot project describes implementing a codesigned and co-created model of delivery of mental health literacy and access to care to this vulnerable group of children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background/Aim: The objective of the paper was to develop a comprehensive "Adolescence Stress Scale" and to examine different psychometric issues in the development, initial validation, and standardization of this scale. Method: Exploratory factor analysis was conducted on the data procured from a sample of 634 (11–18 years) school-going adolescents in India. Results: An exploratory analysis provided a 10 factor structure, namely, major loss induced stress, enforcement or conflict induced stress, phobic stress, interpersonal conflict induced stress, punishment induced stress, illness and injury induced stress, performance stress, imposition induced stress, insecurity induced stress, unhealthy environment induced stress. The 10 oblique factor solutions are found to be interrelated and interdependent with good indices of internal consistency, and content validity. Conclusions: This scale development is a novel and powerful measure that taps onto various aspects of stress experienced by school-going adolescents. The scale can facilitate researchers, clinicians, and teachers to identify and quantify the significant sources of stress in adolescents in school, or clinic settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In India, mental health rehabilitation centers run income generation programs (IGP) for therapeutic engagement, skills training, and income generation of clients. The centers have evolved IGP models relevant to their settings. There is a paucity of published literature on practices employed by the centers. Methods: This paper compiles data gathered from visits to 13 centers between November 2018 and April 2019. Information was collected through observation and interviews with staff involved in IGP, using a semi-structured pro forma designed for study. Results: Most centers were based in south India (n = 11) and urban areas (n = 12). Each center ran two to seven IGP. Each center involved 20–50 clients in IGP. Clients involved in IGP were aged 20–60 years. The centers ran a range of IGP, including the manufacturing of household consumables, paper products, textile products, handicraft products, food products, and jute products; animal husbandry and horticulture initiatives; and running cafeterias and petty shops. IGP were mostly selected based on market demand and sales value of products (n = 11); ease of doing (n = 5); interests, abilities, exposure, and experience of clients (n = 5); and availability of resources (n = 3). Products were priced primarily to cover input and labor costs (n = 8), and many centers sold products below the market rates (n = 5). Running stalls during public events was a common strategy for the sale of products (n = 9). Personal contacts and "word of mouth" publicity were used for advertisement (n = 6). Four centers involved family members in IGP. Conclusion: The nature of IGP varied in terms of setting, available resources, and profile of clients availing the services. Marketing and sales were a challenge. A supportive framework of policies and schemes is essential to promote IGP at mental health rehabilitation centers. This report may be helpful for professionals and centers planning to set up an IGP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates the determinants of remittances received by Indian households after considering the number of migrants as endogenous in the remittance decision. For this purpose, the paper uses the two rounds of India Human Development Survey conducted in the year 2004–2005 and 2011–2012. To account for the endogeneity of the number of migrants, the paper estimates the Two-Stage Residual Inclusion model. Here, initially the number of migrants are modelled using the negative binomial regression and then the residuals from this regression along with the original explanatory variables are included in the second-stage regression for the remittances. The results show that the number of migrants is endogenous and positively affects the total remittances received by the urban households. However, for rural households, there is no relation between the number of migrants and remittances. The findings also indicate the presence of altruism behind remittances for both rural and urban households. Along with this, some evidence of inheritance and insurance motives is also observed for rural and urban households, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A mobile-based messaging app (MMA) was implemented as a teachers' community of practice in the Indian context through a large-scale educational initiative. The development process adopted a Design-based Research approach to test underlying theories in real-world settings. The researchers theorised the pedagogical affordances of the MMA Telegram using Davis and Chouinard's theoretical framework of affordances, defined as a relational process among users, designers, the environment, and the artefact. This paper discusses the iterative design process in detail. The findings showed that the MMA encourages accessibility and for teachers to showcase their practice in the online community of practice and refuses (does not allow) the development of the online community of practice as an epistemic community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the intersections of memorialization practices and politics throughout a period of emergent social differentiation during the Neolithic and Iron Age periods in the Deccan region of southern India. Rather than focus on how mortuary architecture and grave assemblages might correlate with the status, rank, or class of the deceased individuals—as has often been suggested—we place emphasis on how mortuary practices and the production of megalithic places contributed to the establishment and maintenance of social collectives among living communities. More specifically, we identify at least two modes of political practice associated with megalithic production in prehistoric South India: one related to the constitution of collectives of labor and shared consumption activities involved in the process of making monuments; and a second related to the material legacy of monuments in constituting cultural and historical places of social affiliation. In making these arguments about the social significance of megalithic places, we also critically consider new materialist and posthumanist theoretical frameworks in archaeology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Places hosting religious sacred events provide opportunities for visitors to find spiritual growth and also afford glimpses into the local culture, community, and hosting religious group. This study looks at tourists' intended behavioral loyalty to a religious sacred event place as determined through motivations, shared beliefs, and emotional solidarity with other visitors, and memorable religious experiences. Data were collected from 985 visitors (556 domestic and 429 international) during the 2019 Kumbh Mela, held in Prayagraj, India. Contrary to previous studies, results indicated that emotional solidarity did not significantly influence attendees' intended behavioral loyalty (among domestic visitors). Furthermore, in employing an invariance structural test for paths mentioned in the model, results revealed that the effects of shared beliefs, motivations, emotional solidarity, and memorable religious experiences differed among domestic and international visitors. Study implications and limitations are provided at the close of the paper, giving way to future research opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the intersection of group-based expressions including digital moral outrage, collective guilt, and collective action on Twitter, following the tragic incident of 8 May 2020, in which 16 migrant workers were run over by a train after the Indian government imposed a sudden COVID-19-related lockdown. Twitter data were gathered immediately at three different times - May 8–15, May 16- 23, May 24-May 31, and 4598 tweets were manually coded. The analysis revealed that digital moral outrage was the most frequently expressed emotion. It, however, gradually decreased, signaling digital outrage fatigue. Collective guilt and sympathy constituted the second-largest portion of the total tweets, and tweets reflecting collective action by the community progressively increased. The network of relationships among different group-based emotions, the promotion of one-sided narratives and virtue signaling on social media platforms are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper critically examined the available research on role of family and school contribution in academic achievement and explored their social representations. People adaptation with the prevalent notions and thinking beyond the boundary of common sense is required to explain multidimensional picture of any attribute. Previous research applied social representation theory to understand educability, intelligence, academic achievement and failure, and teachership. This article showed a polysemic understanding of family and school contribution where roles and identity matters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Children with systemic lupus erythematosus have a more challenging and difficult course as compared to their adult counterparts. Today, the aim of therapy for any child with lupus is to keep the child in a state of sustained remission with minimal or no use of steroids. This laudable goal is often difficult to achieve for the child with lupus. In addition to the use of disease modifying agents, sometimes in combination, Rituximab (RTX) is also used as an off-label indication to manage such patients. Objectives: To study the use, efficacy and safety of RTX in a cohort of patients with pediatric lupus followed at a single tertiary level center in Northern India. Methods: This paper is a retrospective review looking at the use of RTX in children with systemic lupus at a tertiary level pediatric rheumatology center in North India over a period of seventeen years. This paper describes the indications, use, efficacy and safety of RTX in childhood systemic lupus erythematosus. Results: RTX was used in 17 of 225 pediatric lupus patients (7.5%), with the most common indication being resistant renal disease (53%). Significant improvement was seen in all domains studied: The mean SLEDAI was 16.25 prior to RTX and reduced to 1.43 six months after the RTX (p value 0.001), steroid use dropped from 100% pre- RTX to 33% at 2 years, there was a sustained reduction in proteinuria in the patients with nephritis from a mean urine spot protein creatinine ratio of 3.1 pre RTX to 0.4 at one year post RTX (p=.006). Finally, 82% of the children had no flare during the follow up (median 24 months). No patient had any adverse event. Conclusions: This study confirms that RTX is very effective in childhood lupus and can be safely used even in a country with a very high burden of infectious diseases. This data adds to the scarce literature in this area from the developing world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the post-Green Revolution era, numerous improved wheat varieties were released and disseminated to enhance tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses and increase productivity. Still, in the wheat-based farming systems of the Global South, gender-based and other social inequalities continue to undermine equitable access to improved varieties, especially for women, poor, and marginalized farmers. Here, we present a case for gender-sensitive technology development, dissemination, and evaluation as part of wheat varietal improvement programs. We take stock of the various challenges that persist in the uptake of modern wheat varieties by male and female smallholders. We focus on Ethiopia and India, two geographies with substantive wheat economies, widespread poverty, and gender inequalities. The socio-economic literature on wheat is relatively thin with limited and dated gender-sensitive evaluation studies on varietal technologies in these countries. Varietal technology evaluations could ideally cover gender differences in relation to wheat varietal trait preferences, technology adoption, and associated decision-making and labor-use changes related to new varieties and complementary technologies, as well as nutritional and economic benefits. The paper calls for a need to change the institutional arrangements in wheat research-and-development (R&D) programs to understand and pursue better paths for wheat improvement to proactively contribute toward gender equity and inclusivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the effects of WhatsApp as a mode of dissemination of political posters. It found that platform affordances that control the crafting and dissemination of political messages open up the possibility of vague political messaging by conforming to the social media's visual culture and limit the spread of these messages, restricting the ability to organically gather support for a political cause. Despite the growing appeal of social media in political campaigns, social media messages when used by individuals and small, independent social media groups, who are not a part of a larger, organized political party or movement, have little influence on electoral decisions of voters about a political cause that faces weak public support. This was discussed in the context of electoral results of the Leftist political party in India in 2019 national elections. The paper then contributes to our understanding of the extent of the influence of social media platforms on political media messages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global clinical trials depend on a range of standards in order for research results to be comparable. As standardization is more than a mere technical exercise, tensions can arise when things are not uniform. This paper uses empirical data from interviews with principal investigators as well as Clinical Research Organization and pharmaceutical industry representatives working in India's clinical trial industry to critically examine the ways Indian researchers navigate quests for standardization. It turns the analytical lens to the often obfuscated work of standardization aiming to transcend the biological and cultural specificity of research participants and research sites. Drawing on the concept of local biologies, it illustrates that the universal body presumed by clinical trial methodology is, in fact, a specifically Euro-American one: Indian participants not only need to be made globally comparable but also aligned with the drugs' future consumers. Focusing on the tensions between biomedicine's postulation of bodily universality and trial participants' local biologies, this paper advances recent interventions problematizing the structural violence undergirding global clinical trials. It also contributes to the literature on local biologies in its discussion of how these are negotiated in Indian for-profit clinical trials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), 2019, in India was widely contested by both political parties and various civil society formations. Shaheen Bagh, a sit-in protest demonstration which continued for over a hundred days in the nation's capital from mid-December 2019 to late March 2020, occupied the central position within the corpus of these protest demonstrations. The protests at Shaheen Bagh were led by poor, Muslim working-class women, who had come out on the streets protesting and asserting their rights amidst the dominant ruling-class communal politics. The Shaheen Bagh protests were a potent force of the working-class and oppressed minorities of the country. The paper brings in Marxist and Gramscian perspectives to explain how Shaheen Bagh has contributed to Indian left-wing politics. The paper argues that the women in Shaheen Bagh have been successful in bridging the gap between the civil society and political society in the country and has to an extent, altered the very nature of Indian politics. Moreover, the assertive nature of the Muslim women regarding their religion and the support which they garnered from the Indian left, widely accused by many of being Islamophobic in nature, has wide repercussions as far as political and social alliances between the left and Muslim politics in India is concerned. The present paper locates the protest within the notion of subaltern unity and tries to analyse the possible impacts of the support for the protests, within and beyond the anti-CAA protest movement, from the Indian left. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Despite exponential growth in Indian research, Indian journals have low impact factors. A previous study by one of the authors (CA) of this paper showed that articles published in the Indian Journal of Psychiatry (IJP) under-referenced previously published relevant papers in the same journal. Based on this, we decided to investigate the citation characteristics of contemporary scientific articles published in the Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine (IJPM). Methods: The citation characteristics of scientific articles published in 2018 (Vol 40, issues 1–6) in the IJPM were examined to determine how well the authors cited relevant articles published during the past ten years in the IJPM and the IJP. Results: There were 145 and 142 citation-worthy articles in the IJPM and the IJP, respectively; of these, 85.5% and 65.5%, respectively, had not been cited. Conclusions: Authors publishing in the IJPM under-reference previous relevant research published in the IJPM and IJP. This suggests unawareness of, deliberate disregard of, or even disdain for prior Indian research in the field. Additionally, if Indian researchers do not cite previous Indian research in the field published in Indian journals, the citation metrics of Indian journals will not grow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mobility turn offers a rich terrain for research to investigate the exercise of politics and power in movement through attention to associated meanings and practices. Despite this, the ontologies that can anchor this research within a historical imagination remains largely uncharted. Happily for us, coming from the opposite direction history, and especially the field of transport history, has grappled with mobilizing history in the face of the mobility turn. Several scholars have offered "usable past" as a mode of mobilizing mobility cultures of the past to inform policy actors about future choices. But is the ontology of a usable past appropriate for countries enmeshed within pre/post/colonial histories of displacement in their society and culture? Employing a case of automobilization in the city of Bengaluru in India, this paper sketches an exposition of the "displaced past" in sedimented residues that continues to live and contest the enterprise of automobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic have been catastrophic internationally, with alarming rates of cases and deaths, as well as travel bans and countrywide lockdowns. While many industries are experiencing the deleterious effects of Covid-19, international surrogacy is facing enormous ethical challenges resulting from the pandemic. Drawing on the first author's reflections on research with Indian surrogate mothers, coupled with contemporary literature, this paper highlights the impacts of Covid-19 on surrogacy in India, particularly regarding the strict lockdown laws intended to protect civil society. This paper discusses the serious issues facing key actors involved in surrogacy, including surrogate mothers and commissioning parents. Focus is given to the psychological impacts on newborn babies caught in a liminal space as a result of lockdown laws. The authors conclude with reflections on the role of social work in protecting women and children in international surrogacy, particularly during a pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gender diversity and equality in the workplace has been much researched and spoken about in the corporate sector but the higher education sector in India remains largely untouched by it, probably because women seemingly far outnumber men in the teaching fraternity. However, data also suggests that most women in the higher education sector remain restricted to middle-ranking posts, rising as high as heads of department, deans, controller of examination and even registrars but hardly ever becoming vice-chancellors. In a sector which has traditionally attracted many women as their preferred career choice, lack of an adequate talent pool cannot be the answer. This paper is a study exploring the barriers and enablers for women academicians' ascent to leadership roles. It also presents strategies to close this gap and facilitate pathways for women to hold leadership roles in Indian universities. This paper is one of the first few on women's leadership in Indian universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]