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Medical anthropologists have not paid enough attention to the variation at the level of the individual practitioners of biomedicine, and anthropological critiques of biomedical psychiatry as it is practiced in settings outside the Global North have tended to depict psychiatrists in monolithic terms. In this article, we attempt to demonstrate that, at least in the case of India, some psychiatrists perceive limitations in the biomedical model and the cultural assumptions behind biomedical practices and ideologies. This paper focuses on three practitioners who supplement their own practices with local and alternative healing modalities derived from South Asian psychologies, philosophies, systems of medicine and religious and ritual practices. The diverging psychiatric practices in this paper represent a rough continuum. They range from a bold and confident psychiatrist who uses various techniques including ritual healing to another who yearns to incorporate more Indian philosophy and psychology in psychiatric practice and encourages students of ayurvedic medicine to more fully embrace the science they are learning to a less proactive psychiatrist who does not describe a desire to change his practice but who is respectful and accepting of ayurvedic treatments that some patients also undergo. Rather than simply applying a hegemonic biomedical psychiatry, these psychiatrists offer the possibility of a more locally-attuned, context sensitive psychiatric practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historical research is challenging when studying informal spaces like urban slums, where extant scholarship is limited, government data are sparse or absent, and populations change rapidly due to eviction, environmental shocks, and the everyday churn of migration. Moreover, written materials and political ephemera generated within slums are rarely preserved in accessible state archives, limiting the usefulness of conventional archival research. In such contexts, the discovery of informal archives—unmapped, non-systematized collections of materials kept by individuals and groups in the spaces under study—can contribute to the reconstruction of local histories. This article draws on 20 months of fieldwork in India’s urban slums to offer insights on the collection and use of informal archival materials. These materials afford an intimate look at how the urban poor organize and make claims on the state. Their analysis, however, involves inferential challenges. Researchers must consider how processes of production, preservation, and provision shape the content of gathered historical materials and thus the inferences that can be drawn from them. Beyond urban slums, informal archives are likely to be useful sources of historical data for a range of studies in comparative politics, especially those that focus on informal institutions and local quotidian politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Servant leadership has emerged as a novel area of Management research. One of the most debated leadership styles is servant leadership, which indicates that a person must first be a human and then a leader. This literature review comprehensively examines the historical origins of servant leadership, its core attributes, the measurements that have been developed, and the findings obtained from pertinent empirical investigations. The primary objective of the present paper is to study the leadership style using various analyses, evaluations, and research from available sources to identify proposed facts about leadership activities using bibliometric analysis of servant leadership theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pandemic has undoubtedly affected almost every aspect of life for people around the world. However, the most affected are older adults living in developing countries like India. In fact, the second wave of the pandemic in India was the most devastating wave so far. Now that the worst appears to be over, there is a need to study the impact of the pandemic on the wellbeing of older adults recovering from the virus in the country. Hence, the aim of the present study is to examine the long-term impact of covid 19 on older adults, its connection with wellbeing, and the role of social workers in their recovery. A total of 203 older adults from India took part in the study. The results show that the majority of the respondents have poor wellbeing and have been more frequently plagued by chest pain, fatigue, and isolation, ever since they became infected. Moreover, respondents who are female, those with co-morbidities, and are suffering from other problems such as frequent chest pain, fatigue, and feelings of isolation, have lower levels of wellbeing. The implications of social work practice have also been discussed in the full paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a fuzzy Delphi-ISM approach to determine the enablers and establish a hierarchical relationship of the enablers of the three strategies suggested by National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog and Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) report i.e., cleaner technologies, modal shift, and operational efficiency. The enablers are categorized based on the PETTOHI framework. Twenty enablers each for cleaner technologies and modal shift, and fourteen enablers for operational efficiency, respectively, were shortlisted after the fuzzy defuzzification process using the fuzzy Delphi method. Three hierarchical models were then developed using Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM) to identify the interrelationships among the enablers of each strategy. A Cross Impact Matrix Multiplication Applied to a Classification (MICMAC) analysed the enablers based on their driving and dependence powers. ISM model for enablers of cleaner technologies reveals that the policy and organisation related enablers like implementation of BS VI norms, public private sector collaborations are the major enablers. Study on the enablers of modal shift identifies the importance of policy and infrastructure related items. The development of Multi-modal logistic parks, imposition of eco taxes are the driving enablers in this ISM model. Implementation of PM Gati Shakti, development of highways, waterways, freight corridors are the key enablers for improving operational efficiency. Enablers pertaining to policy, organisation, and infrastructure such as imposing eco taxes and infrastructure development are critical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mining is an important enterprise that will supply essential minerals for the country's infrastructural development. Mining is a key industry and a development engine in the Indian economy. The epidemic has had both immediate and long-term effects on the labour and industries in India. Short-term effects include the cessation of mineral production, salary loss due to absenteeism and pandemic limitations, unemployment, and the selling of minerals on the market. The reputation and economic health of industries, fresh mineral deposit exploration, and new mining complex development have all been impacted in long-term. Aside from the mining industry-specific impact of COVID-19, the social fabric of the mining workers has been impacted since they are living in an environment of fear and uncertainty. This paper attempts to analyse the effect of COVID-19 on extractive industries in India. It also focuses the steps which taken by the Indian government. The paper concluded with the negative effect of COVID-19 which disrupts the mining sector and the contribution declined during COVID-19. However, for instance from mineral rich-Odisha, the mining sector takes up by its growth in post COVID-19 period with remarkable increment from negative growth to high positive rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Macro-level studies on intergenerational mobility among women in India suggests that, there is a need to further probe certain excluded communities that have a higher likelihood of persistence of educational status among women through micro-level studies. The present study investigates the extent and drivers of high/low intergenerational educational mobility among young women (vis-à-vis their mothers) belonging to the weavers' community of Varanasi, India. Using transition/mobility matrices and mobility measures, along with qualitative methods, the paper builds on a mixed-methods study conducted among 364 households of weavers' community from Varanasi. The qualitative data includes a total of 8 respondents with 5 KIIs and 3 IDIs. The study shows that the overall intergenerational educational mobility among women (vis-à-vis their mothers) from the weavers' community of Varanasi is 0.30 and there is no downward mobility. The qualitative findings further highlight various reasons enabling or preventing high educational mobility in the given context. In conclusion, the paper illustrates several micro-level issues and disparities in intergenerational educational mobility that are not clearly evident through the macro-level studies and further helps in making informed policy decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The outcome of economic growth is visualised as the well-being of citizens or human well-being (HWB). However, it has been a great challenge to measure HWB. Though there are known reasons for considering GDP and its growth as a measure of overall development and progress of nations, yet mostly it is being used as a gospel indicator to compare nations and design appropriate policies. This paper is an effort to develop a comprehensive adjusted GDP to measure HWB through secondary data for thirty years (1990–91 to 2019–20) in India. We make thirty-five adjustments to net national income (NNI) to compute the adjusted national income (ANI) index based on the system analysis approach. The empirical findings show that the gap between NNI and ANI has been growing over time, and the ANI index shows an increasing trend. Through the analysis it is suggested that economic growth should be focused only if it improves HWB (full or partial). The paper attempts to make intervention into policy shift for improving HWB vis-à-vis happiness of people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Project “Saptarshi” was initiated by the National Centre for Geodesy, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur to set up the modern space geodetic infrastructure in the country. This project primarily focuses on the establishment of an Indian Geodetic VLBI network. The purpose of this paper is to anticipate the potential impact of the geodetic VLBI network in India to the national and international scientific products. Saptarshi proposes to establish three VLBI stations along with a correlator at one facility. In this work, we investigate how adding proposed Indian VLBI antennas will affect terrestrial and celestial reference frames as well as Earth Orientation Parameters (EOP). Additionally, we shortly demonstrate scenario of VLBI observations of one of the Indian regional navigation satellite system called Navigation with Indian Constellation (NavIC) to determine its orbit. Two VLBI networks were simulated to observe the NAVIC satellite along with quasars to check how well the orbit of this satellite can be recovered from VLBI observations. To investigate the impact on the terrestrial reference frame, three types of 24-h sessions, IVS-R1 (legacy), IVS-VGOS (next generation VLBI), and IVS-AOV (Asia Oceania VLBI), were studied to examine the gain in precision of geodetic parameters when adding the proposed Indian VLBI antennas. IVS-type Intensive sessions were also investigated with the proposed Indian antennas to assess the improvement in the estimation of dUT1 as one important VLBI product. Furthermore, the u-v coverage of some radio sources of the southern hemisphere was compared utilizing observing networks with and without the proposed Indian antennas. Apart from that, we briefly discuss other benefits of the establishment of Indian geodetic VLBI in the scientific fields of atmosphere, metrology, and space missions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global building sector, responsible for over 30% of CO2 emissions, necessitates urgent decarbonization efforts. This paper examines residential building decarbonization policies in three major economies—the European Union (EU), China, and India. It provides an overview of diverse policies through policy landscape analysis and delves into the design specifics with a detailed policy intensity analysis of building energy codes, information disclosure, and financial incentives in each region. Our findings reveal a diverse mix of policies targeting residential building decarbonization in all three regions. While the EU and China have long-established diverse policy instruments, India's building energy efficiency policies are relatively recent and limited. Detailed analyses of building energy codes, information disclosure, and financial incentives expose variations in ambition, scope, and implementation, even with shared policy instruments. Significant advancements in building energy codes, particularly in stringency and compliance checks, are evident in the EU and China. Conversely, India faces a notable obstacle with limited adoption of residential building energy codes, impacting its journey towards net-zero. The EU leads in building energy labelling policies, while China and India encounter various challenges hindering widespread implementation. Financial incentives across the three regions predominantly take the form of subsidies, potentially straining public budgets. The study concludes with reflections on the pressing need for future research extending beyond the operational phase of buildings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores the fragmented discourses in the Indian digital public sphere in a post-truth world. The normative concept of the public sphere by Jürgen Habermas has been brought under critical scrutiny in the era of emotional communication online. The digital world opened democratic and inclusive spaces that are desirable for a picture-perfect public sphere as imagined by Habermas. The low entry barriers and inclusivity of the digital public sphere changed the patterns of political communication worldwide. However, such a change is not an isolated event and must be located within the historical context of a changing political environment. Contemporary society has entered the post-truth era where opinionated, emotional outbursts downplay objective reality. The paper explores explicitly the public comments recorded under an infotainment video on the YouTube platform of a private channel in Kerala, the southernmost state of India. A case study method was adopted to analyze the theme, subtext, and visible structure of the discourse in the digital public sphere, which is a subset of the larger public sphere. Disconcertingly, the findings revealed fragmented discourses in a public sphere, characterized by unidimensional historical narratives, fallacious arguments, political apathy, and emotional or romanticized appeals, all of which are classic symptoms of a post-truth era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks at contestations over space in peri-urban India. It studies the acrimonious responses in defense of a local marketplace that occupied public land against the sovereign project of highway expansion in peri-urban West Bengal. It posits an opposition between two aspects of state governance-rational-legal and magical-that shape the contentions. In the rational-legal mode, the expansion of the highways represents the official development goals of progress. The magical aspects of the state engender the circulation of officially approved illegal chits that give occupying migrant villagers' claim to the space around the highway. The ethnography looks at the affective economy of illegal chits that political parties and local bureaucracies use to bring migrating villagers within their ambit. It explores how illegal chits embody the state's legible presence in the villagers' everyday lives, their kinnetworks, communities and transform individual affective orientations toward space. In these new modes of simultaneous 'space' and 'place' making, public land is understood less as commons, but more as a stretch that could be divided among individuals and households aspiring to be 'developed' or upwardly mobile by excluding others. The essay contends that emergence of the 'right to the city' as a collective right requires a double-edged critique. A simple celebration of the subversive potential of the magical aspect of the state vis-à-vis its rational-legal mode may not be helpful for a politics of value that seeks to challenge the idea of value (or what makes life worth living) embedded in the wider neoliberal development discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Maternal healthcare service utilization is a pivotal indicator of a nation's progress in safeguarding the health and well-being of its women and children. In this context, women's empowerment emerges as a critical determinant influencing the utilization of maternal healthcare services. The study aims to assess the relationship between women's level of empowerment and utilization of maternal healthcare services among currently married women in India. Data and Methods: The study uses data from the fifth round of the National Family Health Survey conducted in 2019–2021 and analyzed 26,552 (15–49 aged) currently married women who had a live birth in the last 5 years preceding the survey. Additionally, univariate and bivariate analyses, multivariate logistic regression, and the SWPER index were used for the analysis. Results: Over the years, utilization of antenatal care, skilled birth attainment, and postnatal care has increased extensively in India. However, the study found that utilization of services was higher among empowered women, and it varies across the state with the extent of empowerment. State-level analysis shows that the extent of women empowerment was higher in Goa, followed by Tamil Nadu and Kerala, and lower in Jharkhand, followed by Tripura, so as the utilization of maternal and health care services. The extent of empowerment and utilization of services also varies by level of educational attainment, employment, and socio-economic status. Conclusion: There is a need for comprehensive strategies to enhance women's empowerment through education, employment, political participation, self-awareness, and reduction in gender-based violence and child marriages, which may improve awareness demand for better public health structure, and may ensure higher utilization of maternal healthcare services. Ultimately, these strategies may converse the higher maternal death and child mortality. Significance: What is already known about this subject? Existing literature in India mostly highlights a clear connection between women's autonomy and maternal healthcare services utilization. Women with higher autonomy, decision-making power, and mobility are more likely to use these services. However, in exploring the link between women's empowerment and maternal healthcare, some studies focus on education, employment, and media access among Indian mothers, sidelining broader empowerment dimensions. What this study adds? This study is likely the first to investigate the relationship between women's empowerment and the level of maternal healthcare service utilization in India. It covers key dimensions of women's empowerment, including Attitude to Violence, Social Independence, and Decision-making Power. Moreover, it is possibly the first Indian research paper to employ a survey-based women's empowerment index in this context. Notably, the assessment highlights Social Independence as a significant dimension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The key objective of this paper is to emphasize the importance of acknowledging breastfeeding as an embodied social practice within interventions related to breastfeeding and lactation and illustrate how this recognition holds implications for public health ethics debates. Recent scholarship has shown that breastfeeding and lactation support interventions undermine women's autonomy. However, substantial discourse is required to determine how to align with public health goals while also recognizing the embodied experiences of breastfeeding and lactating individuals. Presently, interventions in this realm predominantly revolve around health-related messaging and the promotion of individual behaviors, often neglecting the systemic and structural factors that influence choices and practices. I closely examine breastfeeding interventions in India, in particular Mothers' Absolute Affection health promotion program, along with breastfeeding narratives. I argue that for such interventions to evolve, they must acknowledge the intrinsic embodied social nature of breastfeeding during their design and implementation. Furthermore, it is important to emphasize that achieving equity and justice objectives necessitates moving beyond the confines of both conventional public health frameworks and frameworks solely centered on private choices. Instead, a more encompassing approach that embraces the concept of embodiment should be adopted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hinduism is considered one of the most ancient religions in the world. Although the technological innovation of modernization has undermined the reliance on their traditions, Hindus may still rely on Hindu Scripture when making decisions. From their standpoint, contrary to Western medicine, human lives cannot be reduced to statistical and empirical facts. They focus more on preserving the spirit, rather than considering survival as one of the goals of medicine. Consequently, when a preterm infant is born, Hindu parents might struggle to understand the goals of Western neonatologists. This divergence may create misunderstandings when discussing end-of-life decisions. Since they value relational aspects to be of utmost importance, they may accept treatments only in the likelihood of good neurological outcomes. Being able to interact allows Hindus to act virtuously with the aim of purifying their soul toward moksa. When it comes to end-of-life decisions on behalf of newborns, Hindu parents may opt to forgo treatments and let the baby peacefully die, while praying for their soul to have a better rebirth. This paper aims to evaluate quality-of-life assessment in the Hindu tradition in comparison with the Catholic tradition. It draws parallelisms between these two different religions to investigate whether an inter-religious dialogue is possible. This work will help Catholic, and more broadly Western, doctors to have a better understanding of the Hindu end-of-life views. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India has a large population with the prevalence of many mental health concerns but faces a shortage of mental health professionals. This paper deals with this mental health crisis in India and how Mental Health First Aid and developing a first aid kit for mental health would help to address the issue. Mental health and mental illness in India additionally face stigma and backlash from the society. Due to this, very few people with mental ailments come forward to seek professional help. While we are aware of and trained in first aid for physical health, the concept of first aid for mental health is in its infancy. Hence, a review of literature was done to find the benefits of Mental Health First Aid and how it could benefit in solving the crisis in India. Creating a Mental Health First Aid Kit on a similar basis to its physical counterpart can also come in handy while administering mental health first aid. Results show that an individual trained in mental health first aid might act as a bridge between people with mental ailments and mental health professionals and assist in providing timely help. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globally, financial well-being has received considerable attention from researchers and policymakers as an indicator of financial health in the aftermath of financial shocks. Additionally, financial inclusion has been a priority for developing countries in their efforts towards poverty alleviation and bringing vulnerable populations into the mainstream financial system. Moreover, the shift in digital technologies and financial services has overcome access and usage barriers through the acquisition of digital financial literacy. This paper develops novel multidimensional indices and investigates the relationship between financial well-being, financial inclusion, and digital financial literacy. The study utilizes data from InterMedia's Financial Inclusion Insight (FII) 2016 Survey conducted in India. The results indicate that both financial inclusion and digital financial literacy have a significant positive impact on financial well-being. However, considering the potential endogeneity bias, instrumental variable 2SLS regression reveals that financial inclusion plays the most crucial role in defining financial well-being. Our findings help policymakers recognize the importance of demand-side financial inclusion and digital financial literacy in promoting financial well-being, which may be achieved through robust financial and digital literacy programs. Additionally, the study contributes to the financial well-being literature by incorporating essential attributes of financial inclusion and digital financial literacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numenes grisa Chao, 1983, previously recorded only from China, Laos and Thailand, is recorded from India for the first time. Comments on the other two species, N. flagrans Tams, and N. siletti Walker, that are known from India are provided with live habitus images. N. flagrans Tams, 1928 has been rediscovered from India after 95 years since its original description. A provisional checklist of Numenes species that are described so far is also provided in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we contend that urban middle-class older Indians engaged in "serious leisure" as a way to reimagine and reconfigure the structure of everyday life during the pandemic-led epochal downtime. In particular, we heuristically show that leisure activity patterns and constraint negotiation strategies among older Indians followed conceptual semblances with the dominant leisure-based typology of Serious Leisure Perspective. By thematically analysing household surveys (n = 71), time-use diaries and in-depth interviews (n = 15) of middle to upper middle-class individuals (55–80 years), we show how both men and women distinguished between serious leisure that is marked by motivation, agency and perseverance with that of unstructured, routinized free-time (or causal leisure). Time-use diaries suggested that despite the changed realities of heightened domestic time available to both genders due to the pandemic, women recorded higher proportion of their daily hours in household management and caregiving. Although women were governed by moral-cultural self-descriptions in their engagement with leisure, it was often associated with an enhanced sense of self-actualisation, self-management and identity. Overall, we show how the social codes of age and gender were inextricably linked with the practice of leisure during the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well established that the existing building environmental assessment methods and sustainability assessment methods are intended to foster detailed design stage while there is a need to support early design stages. This research intends to develop a framework that actively supports design development at the formative design stages. The paper reviews the well-established building environmental assessment methods: CASBEE, LEED, BREEAM and GRIHA, and the existing sustainability assessment methods: iiSBE's Sustainable Building Tool (SB Tool), German Sustainable Building Council's Certificate Program (DGNB), Living Building Challenge (LBC) and ARUP's Sustainable Project Assessment Routine SPeAR®. Further, well-known theories of ecological Sustainability are reviewed. The critical points of convergence and divergence of anthropocentric and biocentric approaches are identified to articulate the parameters of sustainability assessment. Specialists in the sustainable built environment assigned weights for assessment parameters (criteria) by applying the analytical hierarchy process (AHP). Their specialist opinions manifest the particular features of the Indian context. The paper delineates the Biocenosis, a novel framework for sustainability assessment of the built environment rooted in the concept of the synergy of nature with social, economic, environmental and cultural benefits for the context of India. It is intended to aid building professionals in the formative design phases as it enables an integrated and comprehensive assessment of the level to which the requirement of a sustainable built environment is satisfied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to provide an insight on effect of stringency in Covid-19 spread in India especially in Chennai, a city were more lockdown, and restrictions was imposed to control the infection. Even though the restriction was imposed in the country by the end of March 2020, the growth reduction was seen in the mid of June as the awareness was increased. The average Covid-19 case growth was got reduce from 3.43 to 2.62% by July mid. To analysis the impact of stringency, a detailed analysis was done on Chennai city which was imposed with more repeated lockdowns to flatten the curve. We tried to fit a regression line with three difference scenario of data. The results show a promising R-squared and p value, with a right skewed distribution normal probability plot. The impact of lockdown in people's lives in different sectors were also discussed in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study aimed to examine India's orthopaedic research output during 2002-2021 to analyze the research characteristics and publication performances of leading organizations, authors, and cities, the core journals publishing research, broad subject areas, sub-specialties, and the classification by anatomical location, the subject areas of research using major keywords and the sources of funding and the extent of international collaboration.Methods: India's orthopaedic publications data was identified and downloaded from the Scopus database ( https://www.scopus.com ) using a well-defined search strategy and keywords.Results: India's 4606 publications grew at a 20.8% annual growth rate and averaged 11.3 citations per paper. The 10.4% and 16.3% share of India's papers received external funded support and were involved in international collaboration. The USA and UK (31.8% and 21.3%) represent the highest collaborative share in India's international collaborative publications. AIIMS-New Delhi and PGIMER-Chandigarh produced a larger proportion of articles (5.2% and 4.3%) among contributing organizations. In terms of authors, R. Vaishya and S. Rajasekaran are the most productive ones, contributing 1.6% and 1.1% share respectively. Clinical studies, paediatric sub-specialty, and knee & leg anatomical location accounted for the largest share of papers (32.2%, 10.8%, and 7.5%).The most frequent keywords co-occurrences were "Orthopaedic Surgery," "Hydroxyapatite," "Biocompatibility," "Orthopaedic Procedures," "Bone," "Surgical Techniques," "Biomaterials," and "Osteosynthesis."Conclusion: This study revealed the characteristics and trends of research and core publications from Indian authors and organizations identified in the last two decades. This research should provide useful insights into the research hotspots of India in the present, past, and future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sacred physical landscape is significant in evoking emotions and experiencing an intense embodied connection specific to a place. In South Asia, widowhood has evolved from long-standing social inequalities; it is a performance and a life stage as well as a focal point of ambivalent intergenerational relations at the cusp of adaptation and disenfranchisement. The collision between gender and caste hinders Hindu widows from retaining assets, leaving them in financial distress. This paper weighs the continuities and discontinuities in dignified living in the backdrop of the ‘sacred geography’ of Nabadwip. Situated in eastern India, Nabadwip is revered as a pilgrim site. This sacred element aside, Nabadwip is also home to ageing widows abandoned by their adult children. They flank the temple gates and wait for alms while dabbing chandan (sandalwood) on their foreheads, immersed in the kirtan (devotional music) on the temple premises. The congregation of older widows, residents, and pilgrims shapes the layered geography of Nabadwip. Sifting through in-depth qualitative interviews and ethnographic findings, this paper frames arguments through the prisms of feminist geography, life course approach, and care poverty. Disruptions across the life course due to rifts with adult children emerge as the paramount reason for widows fleeing to Nabadwip. However, the grid of gender, age, and poverty worsens the widowhood penalty, thus leading to a descent into lifelong suffering. Although women are encultured to be the primary caregivers and kinkeepers, the lack of access to care and dignity for Nabadwip’s widows borders on the abject and calls for social concern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the implications of son preference on birth spacing intervals in India. Sibling sex composition provides a credible source of exogenous variation in the Indian context for births on or before 1990, as sex screening became widespread only after the 1990 economic reforms. I use the sibling sex composition of the first two children to capture its impact on the third birth interval. My analysis shows that, on average, families with two sons face an 8% lower hazard of a third birth relative to families with two daughters. Moreover, I find three channels of heterogeneity: religion, mother's age, and state of residence. Respondents from diverse religious groups respond differently to the sibling composition of the first two births regarding their likelihood of riskier births for the third interval. Moreover, older mothers with at least one son are less likely to have a shorter third birth interval than younger cohorts of mothers. Finally, the respondent's state of residence also drives some heterogeneity, with mothers from non-southern states less likely to have a riskier third birth interval once they have had at least one son among the first two births. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the impact of the flooding of the Kosi river on the timing of marriage in the Indian state of Bihar, one of the world's poorest regions. Using a difference-in-differences design, we show that the Kosi floods reduced men's age at marriage by almost a year and women's age at marriage by over 4 months. The Kosi floods also decreased the secondary school completion rates of married men and women and married women's command over economic resources. We interpret these results within a framework of marriage markets, where in the absence of complete credit markets, marriage market payments (dowry) help smooth consumption in response to adverse income shocks. In support of this framework, we find that the impact of the Kosi floods is more pronounced among Hindus (for whom dowry is the traditional marriage payment norm) and among the landless (who are more credit-constrained). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fish drying is a traditional method of preserving and utilizing fish in India. Small-scale women processors play a dominant role in production and marketing of dried fish. This paper analyzes the changes in the profile of India's fish processing industry over time focusing on the dried fish segment. We postulate that structural changes in fish production, including the rapid surge in aquaculture production, are closely linked to changes in fish processing and utilization in India. In particular, surge in demand for fishmeal and fish oil (FMFO) as an ingredient in aquaculture feeds has tilted fish utilization from direct human consumption towards feed. We pool data on India's fish production, utilization, and trade to describe these changes and their implications through descriptive analysis and regression modeling. Results from the regression analysis show that the FMFO segment gains market share mostly at the expense of the dried fish segment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The university is a highly politicized and fractious realm for students and academics. Amidst trade-offs between the processes of massification, democratization, commodification, and globalization, the question of transformation for sustainability has become crucial to the social good(s) of higher education. This paper considers academic citizenry within Indian public higher education — a context where the increase in the enrollment of first-generation students and female students, due to affirmative action policies, has not substantially translated into altering the composition of academic staff. Informed by a mixed-method study conducted in 2019 with the participation of academics and those in leadership positions at four higher education institutions, we found that the enactment of such policies was operationalized for the production of the "New Middle Class" by universities. Of concern is that neither the representation nor the participation of academics who are women, "lower" castes, or minorities meets the mark of just, inclusive institutions. Despite the rhetoric of inclusiveness and development, the implementation of related policies clothe subalterns with the veneer of the intellectual class, permitting access on condition that sociocultural identities are concealed, and the hegemonic status quo maintained. Terms such as "quality" and "equality" function as tools for social control rather than serving social justice, where assertions of caste identity and resistance are simultaneously repudiated and misrecognized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper intends to discuss India's humane cultural traditions and its animal protection laws, justify the current need for humane education in Indian schools and preschools, offer examples of humane education curriculum ideas, and highlight the work of animal welfare organizations in India. Since ancient times, reverence and compassion for animals have been woven into India's cultural motif. All major religions in India uphold these beliefs. Hinduism, in particular, has endowed animals with a sacred status and perceives animals within the same spiritual unity that pervades the cosmos. Although not presented formally in schools, children in India grew up listening to stories that highlighted compassion for animals and participated in family rituals that showed reverence for animals. However, such cultural beliefs and practices are losing ground for a host of reasons in recent years. For example, while pet ownership has increased in recent years, incidents of pet abandonment, as well as stories of cruelty towards animals, have also wound their ways into the news headlines. Many animal protection laws have been introduced over the years, yet violations of these laws continue. Laws will not protect the rights of animals in India, but humane citizens will. Humane education programs have the potential to help plant the seed of compassion and justice for all animals early in children's hearts. Teachers may implement a carefully crafted humane education curriculum based on free resources provided by animal welfare organizations worldwide. A review of the literature shows that humane education is still uncharted territory for scholars in India. It is hoped that the article will draw attention to the topic of humane education among Indian researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India has approximately 23 million children without parental care, who need alternative forms of care (MOSPI, 2018). Udayan Care, an NGO, designed an innovative group care model for children and youth in need of care and protection, implementing the indigenously developed LIFE (Living in Family Environment) strategy in 17 Udayan Ghars. (Sunshine Homes). With child participation as a core pillar, Udayan Care developed a Questionnaire to Assess the Needs of Children in Care (QANCC) in 2011, which is to be filled up by children annually, as a longitudinal study. The tool is conceived to ascertain whether children in the Ghars perceived if their rights were being fulfilled and that their needs were being addressed. With "meaningful participation" of children stipulated by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), the objective was to develop an evidence-based tool to assess the views of children on the services meted out to them, from their standpoint, and inform actual care practices annually. The self-assessment tool consists of questions, assessing the four dimensions of basic/fundamental, emotional, educational, and interpersonal needs, on a four-point Likert rating scale. A convenient purposive sampling is done on children, aged 10 to 18 years, who receive care and protection at the Ghars, and have resided there for a minimum of 6 months. This paper has two objectives, where at one end, the deductions of the previous years' data are made (2011–12 to 2016–17) with demarcating the differences with year 2018–19 data and at the second level, there is an update on the efforts made to establish the reliability and validity of the tool and create a standardized tool that can be implemented by other child care organizations in India. The paper illustrates how listening to direct voices of children and incorporating their inputs into actual care practice, can go a long way in improving the holistic wellness of children living in an alternative care setting. The results indicate that all needs of the majority of the children in Udayan Ghars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the concept of fundamental breach under Indian law of contract. In doing so, it provides a comparative assessment with English law. It examines some plausible reasons for Indian law not being a favourable choice in the international community despite its wide-ranging similarity to English law. The paper accordingly identifies some mechanisms to develop Indian law in the interests of predictability. It considers the role that the provisions of the PICC on the subject may play during regulatory reforms to fill the gaps in Indian law. A close examination of the provisions of Indian and English law of contract demonstrates the requirement to prove that the breach was material before determining the consequences of the same as a necessary corollary. Simultaneously, although India resembles English law at many levels, the lack of legislative reform or judicial activism in the Republic to clarify the exact consequences of a breach may have contributed as a factor to render it an unpopular choice of law among parties to an international contract. On the contrary, English law has undergone significant development in recent years, and the choice of the legal system to govern international agreements is widespread. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Minority is well established as a form of legal incapacity across jurisdictions and laws. Some countries grant minors with limited capacity to contract while others consider all minors' contracts to be void. These rules were laid down in the pre-digital age. Minors today are entering into more and varied transactions than the generations before them, be it shopping on e-retail websites, creating social media accounts, or the more traditional employment contracts. This paper examines how the three jurisdictions of England, India and South Africa deal with minor contracts in the digital age. While South Africa permits minors above the age of seven years to enter into contracts with parental assistance, the English and Indian position is that minor contracts are unenforceable against minors, unless they are 'contracts for necessaries' or contracts for the benefit of the minor. Judicial interpretation of these categories has been fluid and indeterminate, creating its own set of problems. This paper argues from the Indian standpoint that the current understanding is inadequate to address the issues that will arise from the mismatch between law (where minority is almost synonymous with incapacity) and reality (where minors are increasingly entering into contracts). The author suggests that the definition for minority for contractual liability should be graded after the model of criminal liability and demonstrates that there are some, albeit imperfect, gains to be had from the South African system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In India, approximately 1.4 million new cases of cancer are recorded annually, with 26.7 million people living with cancer in 2021. Providing care for family members with cancer impacts caregivers’ health and financial resources. Effects on caregivers’ health and financial resources, understood as family and caregiver “financial toxicity” of cancer, are important to explore in the Indian context, where family members often serve as caregivers, in light of cultural attitudes towards family. This is reinforced by other structural issues such as grave disparities in socioeconomic status, barriers in access to care, and limited access to supportive care services for many patients. Effects on family caregivers’ financial resources are particularly prevalent in India given the increased dependency on out-of-pocket financing for healthcare, disparate access to insurance coverage, and limitations in public expenditure on healthcare. In this paper, we explore family and caregiver financial toxicity of cancer in the Indian context, highlighting the multiple psychosocial aspects through which these factors may play out. We suggest steps forward, including future directions in (1) health services research, (2) community-level interventions, and (3) policy changes. We underscore that multidisciplinary and multi-sectoral efforts are needed to study and address family and caregiver financial toxicity in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Tension (often times called “Tenshun” in Hindi) is a cultural expression used to convey feelings of distress and common mental disorders in India and among South Asia communities. This study compared the effectiveness of different intervention sequences in reducing tension among alcohol-consuming men living with HIV in India.This secondary data analysis paper utilized data from a randomized trial study titled “Alcohol and Antiretroviral Therapy (ART) Adherence: Assessment, Intervention, and Modeling in India.” The multilevel interventions, including individual counseling (IC), group intervention (GI), and collective advocacy (CA), were conducted sequentially over three cycles at three ART centers. Additionally, another ART center, serving as a pilot site, received all three interventions simultaneously in the final cycle. Participants completed surveys assessing demographic characteristics, tension, and other variables including HIV stigma, a 4-day ART adherence, HIV symptoms, and depressive symptoms at four time points: baseline, 9 months, 18 months, and 24 months. General linear mixed models were employed to assess the intervention effects on tension.Out of 940 participants, 666 reported experiencing tension, including 54% reporting high tension. At site 1, the GI-CA-IC sequence resulted in a slope of −0.06, indicating that this sequence reduced tension from T1 to T4 compared to the control group (p < 0.01). Additionally, the pilot site where the intervention package was conducted simultaneously had a slope of −0.06, indicating that the intervention package also reduced tension compared to the control group (p < 0.01). Conversely, the CA-IC-GI sequence resulted in a slope of 0.07, indicating that this sequence resulted in significantly higher tension levels than the control group (p = 0.008) contrary to the expectation that the sequence would reduce tension.This study contributes valuable insights on the issue of tension among alcohol-consuming men living with HIV. The significant reduction in tension observed at the site using the GI-CA-IC sequence, which began with a group intervention, underscores the importance of intervention order and the importance of group intervention within multilevel intervention programs for tension reduction. Further research is needed to validate these observations and broaden our understanding of effective tension management strategies among people living with HIV in diverse settings.URL: clinicaltrials.gov. Registration number: NCT03746457.Method: Tension (often times called “Tenshun” in Hindi) is a cultural expression used to convey feelings of distress and common mental disorders in India and among South Asia communities. This study compared the effectiveness of different intervention sequences in reducing tension among alcohol-consuming men living with HIV in India.This secondary data analysis paper utilized data from a randomized trial study titled “Alcohol and Antiretroviral Therapy (ART) Adherence: Assessment, Intervention, and Modeling in India.” The multilevel interventions, including individual counseling (IC), group intervention (GI), and collective advocacy (CA), were conducted sequentially over three cycles at three ART centers. Additionally, another ART center, serving as a pilot site, received all three interventions simultaneously in the final cycle. Participants completed surveys assessing demographic characteristics, tension, and other variables including HIV stigma, a 4-day ART adherence, HIV symptoms, and depressive symptoms at four time points: baseline, 9 months, 18 months, and 24 months. General linear mixed models were employed to assess the intervention effects on tension.Out of 940 participants, 666 reported experiencing tension, including 54% reporting high tension. At site 1, the GI-CA-IC sequence resulted in a slope of −0.06, indicating that this sequence reduced tension from T1 to T4 compared to the control group (p < 0.01). Additionally, the pilot site where the intervention package was conducted simultaneously had a slope of −0.06, indicating that the intervention package also reduced tension compared to the control group (p < 0.01). Conversely, the CA-IC-GI sequence resulted in a slope of 0.07, indicating that this sequence resulted in significantly higher tension levels than the control group (p = 0.008) contrary to the expectation that the sequence would reduce tension.This study contributes valuable insights on the issue of tension among alcohol-consuming men living with HIV. The significant reduction in tension observed at the site using the GI-CA-IC sequence, which began with a group intervention, underscores the importance of intervention order and the importance of group intervention within multilevel intervention programs for tension reduction. Further research is needed to validate these observations and broaden our understanding of effective tension management strategies among people living with HIV in diverse settings.URL: clinicaltrials.gov. Registration number: NCT03746457.Results: Tension (often times called “Tenshun” in Hindi) is a cultural expression used to convey feelings of distress and common mental disorders in India and among South Asia communities. This study compared the effectiveness of different intervention sequences in reducing tension among alcohol-consuming men living with HIV in India.This secondary data analysis paper utilized data from a randomized trial study titled “Alcohol and Antiretroviral Therapy (ART) Adherence: Assessment, Intervention, and Modeling in India.” The multilevel interventions, including individual counseling (IC), group intervention (GI), and collective advocacy (CA), were conducted sequentially over three cycles at three ART centers. Additionally, another ART center, serving as a pilot site, received all three interventions simultaneously in the final cycle. Participants completed surveys assessing demographic characteristics, tension, and other variables including HIV stigma, a 4-day ART adherence, HIV symptoms, and depressive symptoms at four time points: baseline, 9 months, 18 months, and 24 months. General linear mixed models were employed to assess the intervention effects on tension.Out of 940 participants, 666 reported experiencing tension, including 54% reporting high tension. At site 1, the GI-CA-IC sequence resulted in a slope of −0.06, indicating that this sequence reduced tension from T1 to T4 compared to the control group (p < 0.01). Additionally, the pilot site where the intervention package was conducted simultaneously had a slope of −0.06, indicating that the intervention package also reduced tension compared to the control group (p < 0.01). Conversely, the CA-IC-GI sequence resulted in a slope of 0.07, indicating that this sequence resulted in significantly higher tension levels than the control group (p = 0.008) contrary to the expectation that the sequence would reduce tension.This study contributes valuable insights on the issue of tension among alcohol-consuming men living with HIV. The significant reduction in tension observed at the site using the GI-CA-IC sequence, which began with a group intervention, underscores the importance of intervention order and the importance of group intervention within multilevel intervention programs for tension reduction. Further research is needed to validate these observations and broaden our understanding of effective tension management strategies among people living with HIV in diverse settings.URL: clinicaltrials.gov. Registration number: NCT03746457.Conclusion: Tension (often times called “Tenshun” in Hindi) is a cultural expression used to convey feelings of distress and common mental disorders in India and among South Asia communities. This study compared the effectiveness of different intervention sequences in reducing tension among alcohol-consuming men living with HIV in India.This secondary data analysis paper utilized data from a randomized trial study titled “Alcohol and Antiretroviral Therapy (ART) Adherence: Assessment, Intervention, and Modeling in India.” The multilevel interventions, including individual counseling (IC), group intervention (GI), and collective advocacy (CA), were conducted sequentially over three cycles at three ART centers. Additionally, another ART center, serving as a pilot site, received all three interventions simultaneously in the final cycle. Participants completed surveys assessing demographic characteristics, tension, and other variables including HIV stigma, a 4-day ART adherence, HIV symptoms, and depressive symptoms at four time points: baseline, 9 months, 18 months, and 24 months. General linear mixed models were employed to assess the intervention effects on tension.Out of 940 participants, 666 reported experiencing tension, including 54% reporting high tension. At site 1, the GI-CA-IC sequence resulted in a slope of −0.06, indicating that this sequence reduced tension from T1 to T4 compared to the control group (p < 0.01). Additionally, the pilot site where the intervention package was conducted simultaneously had a slope of −0.06, indicating that the intervention package also reduced tension compared to the control group (p < 0.01). Conversely, the CA-IC-GI sequence resulted in a slope of 0.07, indicating that this sequence resulted in significantly higher tension levels than the control group (p = 0.008) contrary to the expectation that the sequence would reduce tension.This study contributes valuable insights on the issue of tension among alcohol-consuming men living with HIV. The significant reduction in tension observed at the site using the GI-CA-IC sequence, which began with a group intervention, underscores the importance of intervention order and the importance of group intervention within multilevel intervention programs for tension reduction. Further research is needed to validate these observations and broaden our understanding of effective tension management strategies among people living with HIV in diverse settings.URL: clinicaltrials.gov. Registration number: NCT03746457.Trial Registration: Tension (often times called “Tenshun” in Hindi) is a cultural expression used to convey feelings of distress and common mental disorders in India and among South Asia communities. This study compared the effectiveness of different intervention sequences in reducing tension among alcohol-consuming men living with HIV in India.This secondary data analysis paper utilized data from a randomized trial study titled “Alcohol and Antiretroviral Therapy (ART) Adherence: Assessment, Intervention, and Modeling in India.” The multilevel interventions, including individual counseling (IC), group intervention (GI), and collective advocacy (CA), were conducted sequentially over three cycles at three ART centers. Additionally, another ART center, serving as a pilot site, received all three interventions simultaneously in the final cycle. Participants completed surveys assessing demographic characteristics, tension, and other variables including HIV stigma, a 4-day ART adherence, HIV symptoms, and depressive symptoms at four time points: baseline, 9 months, 18 months, and 24 months. General linear mixed models were employed to assess the intervention effects on tension.Out of 940 participants, 666 reported experiencing tension, including 54% reporting high tension. At site 1, the GI-CA-IC sequence resulted in a slope of −0.06, indicating that this sequence reduced tension from T1 to T4 compared to the control group (p < 0.01). Additionally, the pilot site where the intervention package was conducted simultaneously had a slope of −0.06, indicating that the intervention package also reduced tension compared to the control group (p < 0.01). Conversely, the CA-IC-GI sequence resulted in a slope of 0.07, indicating that this sequence resulted in significantly higher tension levels than the control group (p = 0.008) contrary to the expectation that the sequence would reduce tension.This study contributes valuable insights on the issue of tension among alcohol-consuming men living with HIV. The significant reduction in tension observed at the site using the GI-CA-IC sequence, which began with a group intervention, underscores the importance of intervention order and the importance of group intervention within multilevel intervention programs for tension reduction. Further research is needed to validate these observations and broaden our understanding of effective tension management strategies among people living with HIV in diverse settings.URL: clinicaltrials.gov. Registration number: NCT03746457. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In India, the National Education Policy 2020 recommends ensuring universal access to high-quality early childhood care and education for children aged 3–6 years by 2030. Using the 75th round of National Statistical Office data (2017–2018), this paper analyses the regional and socioeconomic inequalities in access to pre-primary education. Also, we investigate the specific role of households' economic status and educational attainment in explaining these inequalities. We find considerable regional (rural/urban) and socioeconomic inequalities in access to pre-primary education in India, with girls and children belonging to historically disadvantaged social groups (scheduled castes and scheduled tribes) less likely to attend early childhood education, particularly in rural areas. We find that a substantial portion of the rural–urban gap in access to pre-primary education can be removed by controls for households' economic condition and household head's educational status. In addition, we find gender and socioeconomic inequalities in the household investment in early years education. These findings highlight the need to put policy efforts and commitments to reducing barriers to accessing pre-primary education for children in disadvantaged conditions in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines gendered experiences of established adulthood with reference to role-related responsibilities in urban Indian families. In-depth interviews were conducted with 30 married adults aged between 35 and 45 years, from educated, high socioeconomic class families of Vadodara, India. The aim was to examine participants' reasoning about similarities and differences in potentials of men and women; and gender differences in responsibilities. Qualitative analyses revealed that both men and women attributed equal potentials for both genders, in fulfilling a range of adult roles within and outside the family. All participants also agreed that even if responsibilities were 'shared', women's involvement in different roles was much more intense than men's. Women were critical of patriarchal norms that hindered participation in the workforce and led to role overload. However, they navigated diverse roles with increased efficiency and multitasking. Men, on the other hand, showed passive acceptance and reinforced traditional gender norms in spite of complete awareness of demands generated from a rapidly changing socioeconomic milieu. However, in what may seem like a push and pull between the two genders, decisions of balancing work and family were always contextualized and embedded in an ethos of maintaining strong social and familial networks, indicating a clear preference for doing what was in everyone's best interest. Overall, results suggested that navigating traditional gender role expectations in marriage and parenthood, without compromising social and familial harmony, was a significant cultural marker of maturity in established adulthood in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In India, where there is no centralized medical records system, biomedical care providers rely on families to explain their child's illness and to carry records of any previous treatment the child may have received. Drawing on discussions of documentation, I argue that in the context of medical treatment for pediatric seizures, (1) families collect medical records to enable and shape their child's medical treatment, and (2) such a merging of medical and familial care is necessitated by the nature of their child's illness and the structure of the Indian healthcare system. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Meerut and New Delhi, this paper attends to practices of record keeping to understand the demands biomedical institutions place on families for the treatment of their child's seizures. I examine the creation, maintenance, and movement of medical records to suggest that documents are a point of intersection between medical and kinship practices. They are artifacts of care that can narrate parallel histories of a patient's illness and family-clinician efforts to alleviate a child's suffering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coal mining and its unfavourable consequences have generated global attention. It has further stimulated the paradoxical debate of development and desolation in the contemporary scenario. Since the coal resources are profusely available in India and it is comparatively less expensive, the country has been largely relying on it for its essential and non-essential consumption needs. Coal resources indirectly fulfil many of the modern requirements and comforts. Consequently, mining of minerals in general and coal in particular has become the prime focus. It helps to generate revenue, augment industrialisation and promote employment opportunities in India. Despite these progressive features, the opencast coal mining activities impose serious threats to the livelihood of the local communities. Based on critical review of the relevant literature, the article seeks to exhibit the mineral reserves and coal mining activities at global, national and regional context. The paper has incorporated a special focus on Odisha—a resource-rich state located in eastern part of India. Particularly, the two existing major coalfields—Talcher and Ib valley, situated in western part of the state—have been emphasised. The manifold adverse externalities of the coal mining practices on the livelihood pattern among the affected people have been assessed. Furthermore, the paper aims to examine the mining-induced threats on different livelihood capitals which has given rise to multiple risks and challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Histoplasmosis, a systemic mycosis caused by Histoplasma capsulatum manifests clinically in immunocompromised subjects as acute or chronic pulmonary infection or as a progressive disseminated disease. In oral region it clinically presents as multiple, granular and painful ulcers or verrucous growth. It is rare to find primary oral lesion of histoplasmosis in immunocompetent patient free from systemic disease. In presence of any unusual oral lesion possibility of Histoplasmosis should be considered and prompt diagnosis be attained with exclusion of false negative results as non-specific manifestation of disease may lead to gruesome misdiagnosis of lesion and inadequate treatment. In the present paper two cases of oral histoplasmosis in immunocompetent host have been discussed along with updated review of literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I seek to explore the social nature of food in university hostels in India's capital city of New Delhi. With the increasing migration of students from smaller cities and towns to bigger cities searching for employment and education opportunities, hostels have become a preferred choice of accommodation because of their affordability and security. For many marginalised and economically poor students, these hostels are the only spaces where they can afford to live and eat. At the same time, hostels and university campuses have recently been in the spotlight as sites of resistance and social action. Discussions and debates around hostel fee hikes and food politics mean that there is a need to understand what hostel food represents for migrant students. While there is an attempt by universities to use hostel food to promote togetherness and belongingness, hostel food is also met with counter meanings. A study of hostel food offers us a lens to better understand the sources of contestation within the university and the reasons for protests by migrating students living in hostels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In India, the organization of the ancient glass industries that produced, starting around the mid-1st millennium BCE, huge quantities of small drawn beads that were traded both locally and all over the Indian Ocean and beyond, is poorly known. Elemental compositions conducted on glass beads found in India and on Indian beads found elsewhere show a great variability that could be linked in some cases to different production regions (Northern, Southern, and Western India). However, a more precise provenance attribution and the identification of regionally distinct production centers was not possible without additional research. Ethno-historical references show that glass was often produced from one single ingredient, called reh. We collected raw material samples from selected regions within the subcontinent. This paper reports on both the elemental compositions of these raw material samples obtained using laser ablation—inductively coupled plasma—mass spectrometry and their isotopic compositions including Pb, Sr, and Nd. The results were compared to elemental and isotopic data available for known Indian glass artifacts recovered from sites within and outside India. Our results show that some regions within India are more likely than others to have been the loci of glass production in ancient times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While India is entering the period of demographic dividend, female labour participation rates remain very low. This paper aims to provide the very first labour force projections for India and its regions up to the year 2060. Projections are achieved using a discrete-time microsimulation model in which changes in population size and composition come from the interaction between demographic characteristics, educational attainment, and secular tendencies. Labour force participation rates are estimated at the individual level using personal characteristics as predictors. Results show that under constant labour force participation rates, the labour force dependency ratio (non-workers/workers) is very unlikely to attain favourable levels, which compromises the potential demographic dividend that the country could gain from its favourable age-structure. At the subnational level, the forecast yields the most favourable dependency ratio in 2060 in the regions that combine both a low-age dependency ratio and a higher participation of women. Results moreover suggest that female labour force participation is a better driver of the labour force dependency ratio than the age composition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gynecological cancer originating in the female reproductive tract is one of the most common cancers among women, and its incidence is increasing every year in India. This results in high mortality, poor survival outcomes, and psychological effects. Several theoretical and empirical investigations examined gynecological cancer and its varied influences. However, no bibliometric attempts were performed to screen these publications to comprehend the most recent developments and trends in gynecological cancer research in India. Thus, this study aimed to examine the recent development of gynecological cancer research using bibliometric analysis of 3378 research articles collected from the Web of Science database from 2003 to 2022. The study used the Bibliometrix and VOSviewer software to inspect the performance and the science mapping analysis. The performance analysis findings indicate an increase in publication trends after 2008 in India. In scientific production, India collaborated with 116 countries worldwide. The most productive journal, author, and institution are Plos One, Rengaswamy Sankaranarayanan, and All India Institute of Medical Sciences, respectively. By using keywords, intellectual structure, and conceptual structure, the analysis indicates that future studies could focus on cervical carcinoma, ovarian cancer, human papillomavirus, and epithelial ovarian cancer. In light of the overall findings, it is recommended that academicians and practitioners interested in gynecological cancer-based research deliver an overview of the field by providing readers with essential papers, authors, universities, concepts, and sources. These outcomes will also help scholars in gaining a better understanding of current developments, trends, and issues in gynecological cancer research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Devising multi-pronged strategies for those highly prone to food insecurity in the future remains a challenge for food policymakers. This set of food-insecure households faces different kinds of shocks (economic, political, environmental, pandemic, personal, etc.), which render them vulnerable to food insecurity. This study identifies those who are vulnerable to food insecurity, and will be useful for policymakers to resolve food insecurity related challenges in crisis or no crisis periods on an ex-ante basis. This paper decomposes the total welfare loss resulting from vulnerability to food insecurity into components due to 'food poverty' (expected consumption of the current food secure falling below the food poverty line), and risk (variability of food consumption over time). The last term can be further decomposed into the aggregate (region or community-specific), and idiosyncratic (household or individual-specific) risks. The paper identifies the key determinants of the different components of vulnerability to food insecurity based on household consumption expenditure surveys conducted in rural India in 2004–05, 2009–10, and 2011–12. Expected utility-based measures, and pseudo-panel regression techniques were used to identify risk-prone households. The key findings are: idiosyncratic risk is the largest driver (a loss in the utility of almost 51%) as compared to the poverty and covariate shocks; states with poor Public Distribution System (PDS) performance are more susceptible, a rise in the price of staple food items increases the chances of food insecurity, gendered disparity persists over time, forward social and religious groups are more vulnerable, and finally a higher level of urbanization increases the exposure and sensitivity to shocks (like the spread of contagious diseases), disrupts the supply of food commodities from rural markets, loss in income, and increase in rural vulnerability to food insecurity. Our key policy suggestion is a mix of cash versus in-kind transfers to resolve rural food insecurity related issues, tend towards resiliency, and simultaneously tackle the triple burden of malnutrition and SDG-2 related goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is growing attention to science diplomacy among scholars, policymakers, and scientific associations around the world. However, there continues to be contestation around the concept of science diplomacy, currently framed alternately as a new understanding of diplomacy, part of the global challenges discourse, central to the internationalization of science, and typifying competitive innovation. This contestation is furthered by the involvement of a broad array of policy instruments and actors in science diplomacy. In response, this paper focuses on a single policy instrument, examining eight bilateral and multilateral scientific cooperation agreements led by Canada, India, Norway, and the United Kingdom. Kingdon's multiple streams framework is employed to explain how the interplay between policy actors, the policy agenda, policy problems, and policy alternatives leads to the creation of science diplomacy policies. Across the cases, all of the current science diplomacy discourses were applicable, holding stronger explanatory power in the problem and policy streams of the policy process while not obviously matching processes seen in the political stream. The findings also identified a gap in the current framing in understanding how geopolitical dynamics impact the creation of science diplomacy policies and how different policy actors negotiate, exploit, or are subject to these forces. By stabilizing one element of the ongoing debates around science diplomacy, the paper contributes a deeper examination of the array of policy actors and their involvement in different stages of the policy process leading to the formation of scientific cooperation agreements as tools of science diplomacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the impact of cigarette prices on adults' smoking and smokeless tobacco (SLT) use initiation and cessation decisions in India from 1980 to 2017. We use individual-level data from the 2017 Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS) to recreate the smoking history of current or past adult tobacco users using self-reported data on the years of tobacco use, initiation, and cessation merged with historical data on cigarettes, bidis, and SLT product prices. To estimate the effect of price changes on smoking and SLT use transitions, we use a pooled linear model and propensity score matching (PSM) to construct an artificial treatment group where weights capture the likelihood of being an ever-smoker. We find that price increases are a statistically significant deterrent to smoking initiation, with price elasticity of initiation being on average -0.0236 (CI: -0.024 -0.023) and -0.000428 (0.0 – 0.0) for smoking and SLT, respectively. This implies, for example, that a 10% increase in prices results in a 0.24% smaller smoking initiation and 0.004% smaller SLT use initiation. We find that prices can also encourage quitting, but the effects are not always significant, with elasticities of 0.0218 (CI: 0.017 0.026) and 0.0026 (CI: 0.001 0.004) for smoking and SLT, respectively. This implies that a 10% increase in prices will result in a 0.22% increase in the probability of quitting smoking and a 0.03% increase in the probability of quitting SLT use. The elasticity varied by income group, gender, and between young and all adults, with larger effects among lower-income adults and especially among young females. Higher cigarette prices that can be achieved by tobacco tax increases can significantly reduce initiation and encourage cessation, thus improving public health, especially among the most vulnerable population subgroups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the relationship between international law and national law, the normative framework enshrined in the Indian Constitution is of formal dualism. Thus, international law does not become part of the Indian legal regime until it goes through a process of transformation i.e. the parliament passing a legislation to implement international law. However, the Supreme Court of India has moved away from this formal dualism to the monist tradition of incorporating international law in the domestic legal regime provided the international law is not inconsistent with domestic law. This paper traces this journey. It argues that while the Supreme Court has indeed moved towards the doctrine of incorporation, this shift is riddled with several inconsistencies and incoherence. While judicial incorporation of international law may not be a bad thing, the court needs to demonstrate greater analytical rigour in dealing with international law, both treaty law and binding customary norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to census 2011, India had nearly 104 millions of 60 years and above population. The share is projected to increase from 8 per cent in 2015 to 29 per cent in 2050, which is a matter of concern as rapid population ageing is accompanied by serious social and economic implications which are often linked with different health outcomes in general and lower subjective well-being (SWB) in particular. This paper aims to focus on how socio-economic inequality affects lower SWB among older adults. Bivariate, binary logistic regression and decomposition analysis were used for carving out the results using data from the Building a Knowledge Base on Population Ageing in India (BKPAI). The effective sample size for the analysis was 9181 older adults. The value of the concentration index for lower SWB was -0.28 in India, depicting that lower SWB was concentrated among older adults with poor socio-economic status. Educational status (22%), living arrangement (13%), trust over someone (13%), self-rated health (6%), instrumental activities of daily living (6%) and cognitive ability (5%) explained significant portion of socio-economic inequality for lower SWB among older adults. Our research highlights the urgent need for more empirical exposure to socio-economic inequality and its dynamic impact on lower SWB among older adults. Moreover, the present study recommends strengthening the current government programme to focus especially on older adults from lower socio-economic status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Farmers submit claims to insurance providers when affected by sowing/planting risk, standing crop risk, post-harvest risk, and localized calamities risk. Decision making for settlement of claims submitted by farmers has been observed to comprise of type-I and type-II errors. The existence of these errors reduces confidence on agri-insurance providers and government in general as it fails to serve the needy farmers (type-I error) and sometimes serve the ineligible farmers (type-II error). The gaps in currently used underlying data, methods and timelines including anomalies in locational data used in crop sampling, inclusion of invalid data points in computation, estimation of crop yield, and determination of the total sown area create barriers in executing the indemnity payments for small and marginal farmers in India. In this paper, we present a satellite big data analytics based case study in a region in India and explain how the anomalies in the legacy processes were addressed to minimize type-I and type-II errors and thereby make ethical decisions while approving farmer claims. Our study demonstrates what big data analytics can offer to increase the ethicality of the decisions and the confidence at which the decision is made, especially when the beneficiaries of the decision are poor and powerless. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a dependence-switching copula model is used for the first time to analyse the dependence structure between sectoral equity markets and crude oil prices for India, one of the largest oil importing countries. Specifically, we investigate the dependence and tail dependence for four distinctive states of the market, i.e. rising oil prices—rising equity markets, declining oil prices—declining equity markets, rising oil prices—declining equity markets, and declining oil prices—rising equity markets. Our results reveal that the tail dependence is symmetric (asymmetric) in positive (negative) correlation regimes. Based on the copula results, we estimate the systemic crude oil price risk to different sectors using CoVaR and delta CoVaR. A fleeting positive sectoral CoVaR and delta CoVaR across all sectors implies a time-varying oil price systemic risk. Yet, little difference between CoVaR and VaR across the sectors reveals that a bearish oil market does not add additional systemic risk to a bearish sectoral equity market. The carbon sector is found to be the safe haven investment when both the equity and the oil markets are in a downward phase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Australia and the UK, contracts with minors in sports and entertainment are not uncommon. Generally, such contracts are voidable at the option of the minor. However, when contracts fall within the category of beneficial service, as is the case with most professional sports or entertainment contracts, they will be enforceable against the minor. Indian courts do not prescribe to this view holding contracts with minors, void ab initio and unenforceable against contractual parties, with few exceptions. The policy rationale is embedded in protecting minors from their own rash decisions and preventing unscrupulous parties from taking advantage of a minor's nascent mental capacity. By analysing divergent approaches on the validity of minors' contracts in three common law jurisdictions—Australia, India and the UK—the authors highlight inadequacies in legal pronouncements by Indian courts. In India, the legal non-existence and unenforceability of service contracts with minors renders it futile for them or their representatives from negotiating favourable contractual terms beyond welfare measures provided by law as these are unlikely to be upheld. This paper argues that India's narrow approach fails to acknowledge practical realities of minors' participation in the increasingly commercialised sports and entertainment industry. In light of more practical approaches in other common law jurisdictions, the authors set out policy recommendations and suggest reforms to the legal position on minors' capacity to contract in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]