Search

The paper attempts to look at the factors leading to the victory of the Aam Aadmi Party which have not been taken up by the traditional political analysis. Making an ethnography of the Punjab assembly elections 2022 in the Malwa belt of Punjab, it chronicles the social and cultural impact of the farmer’s movement, particularly its far-reaching impact on changing the mood of the electorate. The paper also focuses on the novel digital election campaign which resulted in new election outcomes from the past trends and a massive victory for the Aam Aadmi Party in Punjab. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The key objectives of this research study are to construct a valid and reliable household-based Human Development Index (HDI) and to estimate human development disparities in 36 districts of Punjab (Pakistan) by analysing Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey microdata. The household-level HDI, a composite index, is constructed by applying the arithmetic mean of the household-level health, asset, and education indices. The district of Lahore, among all the 36 districts of Punjab, has the highest HDI score of 0.743, followed by districts Rawalpindi, Jhelum, and Gujrat. Four neighbouring districts from South Punjab: Rajanpur, Dera Ghazi Khan, Muzzaffar Gar, and Rahim Yaar Khan, have the lowest HDI scores of 0.492, 0508, 0.531, and 0.566, respectively. This paper has used the Palma-ratio and Gini-coefficient to estimate human development disparities in Punjab. The highest human development disparities are observed in the Rajanpur district with a Gini-coefficient of 0.38 and a Palma Ratio of 1.55. Both the Gini and Palma Ratio methods produce similar district rank orderings of inequality. This research recommends that additional efforts be made to uplift the districts with the lowest human development in Southern Punjab through local government restructuring and devolution of relevant powers, including the formation of a separate province. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artificial Intelligence is quickly emerging as a technological solution for the agriculture industry to surmount its classical challenges. Artificial Intelligence is facilitating farmers to refine their products and alleviate unfavourable impacts due to the environment. The central concern of this paper is predictive analytics to develop a machine learning model to identify and predict crop yield based on multiple environmental factors. In this paper, a hybrid learner 'RaNN' is proposed that combines the feature sampling and majority voting technique of Random Forest in-combination with the multilayer Feedforward Neural Network to predict the crop yield. Research has also ascertained the essential features responsible for accurate yield prediction. The proposed model works for rice yield prediction, one of the chief grains of India. The region chosen for the work is Punjab, which is among the largest producer states of India for rice. The dataset consists of 15 attributes comprising the weather and agriculture data collected from the Indian Meteorological Department Pune, and Punjab Environment Information System (ENVIS) Center, Government of India. The study has also made a comparative assessment of 'RaNN' with machine learning methods like Multiple Linear Regression, Random Forest, Decision Tree, Boosting Regression, Support Vector Machine Regression, Ensemble Learner, and Artificial Neural Network. Our model RaNN has listed a better prediction accuracy with minimal error among the other techniques providing a 98% correlation between the actual and the predicted yield. Abbreviations: AI – Artificial Intelligence; ANN – Artificial Neural Network; BR – Boosting Regression; Chem Fert – chemical fertilisers; DT – Decision Tree; EL – Ensemble Learner; ENVIS – Punjab Environment Information System; GBM – Stochastic Gradient Boosting Method; GPS – Global Positioning System; HMAX – highest maximum temperature in degrees C; IMD – Indian Meteorological Department; L1 – Lasso regression; L2 – Ridge regression; LMIN – lowest minimum temperature; ML – Machine Learning; MAE – Mean Absolute Error; MEVP – mean evaporation in mm; MLR – Multiple Linear Regression; MMAX – mean maximum temperature in degrees C; MMIN – mean minimum temperature in degrees C; MSSH – Mean sunshine duration in hours; MWS – mean wind speed in km/h; P1 – number of days with precipitation (0.1–0.2 mm); P2 – number of days with precipitation (greater than or equal to 0.3 mm); RaNN – Hybrid RF-ANN model; RMSE – Root Mean Squared Error; $${R^2}$$ R 2 – Coefficient of determination; RD – number of rainy days; RF – Random Forest; SVM Reg – Support Vector Machine Regression; TMRF – total rainfall per month in mm [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Commercialization of agriculture in patriarchal rural Pakistan has transformed women's critical roles in pulses production and has re-organised the gendered division of labour in what used to be widely known as a 'women's crop'. Pulses are grown in the marginal and arid lands by small-holder farming families where women care for the crops as an extension of their other caring roles for the households. Based on an ethnographic study of women pulse farmers in Pakistan, this paper examines the complex relations of women with the crop and the challenges they face. It argues that the restoration of a caring relationship between women and the pulses crop through a re-animation of multispecies contact zones may be a way to ensure everyday food provisioning in rural Punjab, maintain traditional socio-cultural and ecological relationships, understand the masculinity that has pushed women to the margins, and value women's contribution, experience, and knowledge in agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper backtracks many commentaries on Bhai Vir Singh's master piece novel Sundri, enunciated by scholars of Punjab studies, feminist studies, and critical theory. While contesting that these exegetical commentaries rendered by the scholars of aforesaid domains have displaced and decentered the spirit of the text, the paper presents a fresh lens that endeavors to redeem this important text and its spiritual essence. In doing so, we grapple to decolonize a subaltern voice, that we feel, has been reduced to a feeble murmur in the aura of assertive contestations and many interpretations dissecting the textual body of Sundri. The paper will also be published by Naad Pargaas as an introduction to Bhai Vir Singh's 'Sundri' that was translated from its 16th Punjabi edition by Prof. Puran Singh. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anglo-Indians are often overlooked in the discourse on the independence of India and Pakistan. However, despite their small numbers, Anglo-Indians punched above their weight and had a significant presence in various critical fields, as well as active and robust and political organisations. This paper traces the development of Anglo-Indian politics in the Punjab, a province which (like Bengal) was partitioned in 1947. Starting with the general Anglo-Indian quest to locate both their identity and nationality in the 1940s, this paper investigates why and how the community leaders in the Punjab not only broke with the central leadership but also argued for a very novel, 'Anglo-Muslim' identity, as they began supporting the Muslim League. This change of stance was much to the chagrin of the central leadership which, by 1947, was firmly tied to the Indian National Congress. This paper thus not only substantially improves our understanding of the politics of the Anglo-Indians during partition, especially at a provincial level, but enables us to understand the manoeuvrings for survival of small communities at a time when the focus seemed to be on only the Muslims and Hindus (and Sikhs in the context of the Punjab). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Shiromani Akali Dal has provided an important platform for the Scheduled Caste community which has been integral to the party's electoral success. This paper empirically shows that share of the SC community in electoral success of the Akali Dal has always remained one-fourth or more since 1962 except 2017 election alongwith better electoral success rate of the SC community leaders. Despite these contributions, the SC community perceives caste discrimination in the party while the Jats and rich families dominate the party. The paper suggests organic integration of the SC community and addressing their grievances in the party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analysed nine years (2012–2019) of fire observations from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) onboard the Suomi-NPP satellite to assess the post-monsoon crop stubble burning activities over northern India. The 2020 fire season (September-November) was analysed extensively, and spatiotemporal trends were examined. Our analysis indicates that about 60% of post-monsoon fires occurred in the state of Punjab, followed by Madhya Pradesh (11%), Haryana (4%), and Uttar Pradesh (3%). The year 2020 saw the greatest fire activity in Punjab and across the country since 2016. Over the nine years, Punjab did not show any systematic trends in fire activities, whereas Haryana and Madhya Pradesh demonstrated an overall decreasing (45% lower in 2020 compared to the 2012–2019 mean) and increasing (185% more in 2020 compared to 2012–2019 mean) trends, respectively. The high fire occurance in the Punjab are related to high percentage of crop area with specific variety of rice, which produces high straw load and mature in shorter time. The increase in Madhya Pradesh is directly related to an increase in rice crop planting area over the years, whereas the decrease in Haryana is related to changes in crop residue management. The uncertainty analysis in this paper shows that over a given region, day-to-day variability in fire counts can have sampling biases due to changing satellite viewing geometry. Furthermore, long-term trends can also be impacted by the reduced sampling of satellite fire detections under cloudy conditions. However, large scale spatiotemporal analysis of fires in this area provides crucial and well sought-after information for crop fire control and air quality management in north India. The district level analysis for the four states signifies the critical information that satellites can provide for identifying hotspots and planning regionally focused mitigation strategies to curb pollution from crop burning fires. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how the Australian press interpreted the 1947 partition violence. The coverage holds considerable interest both from the point of view of Australian press history and 'imperial relations' on Indian affairs. What aspects of the events represented and interpreted? Was there a tendency to follow the British colonial narrative of 'communal violence', rather than the Indian and Pakistan press interpretation of the events. Using Australia's two oldest continuing newspapers Sydney Morning Herald and West Australian, this documentation offers a refreshing perspective to the partition violence reporting that provides an insight into a human dimension of Partition studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1990, an irregular migration industry has flourished in different cities of Indian Punjab because of the eagerness among young men to emigrate at any cost and increased border controls imposed by the European Union. In Europe, the majority of irregular immigrants from Punjab end up in Spain or Italy due to continuous regularisation programmes, support from social networks and the availability of informal jobs. In this paper, with a thematic analysis of 72 in-depth interviews with irregular immigrants from Punjab in Italy or Spain, their relatives in Punjab and members of the host community, this paper explores the main causes and consequences of Punjabi irregular immigration in Italy and Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper brings forth cases of women in rural South Punjab, Pakistan who are exercising agency in even the most patriarchal areas in a Muslim country. Central to this paper is two groups of women: those who work outside the house, namely community health workers (Lady Health Workers or LHWs), and home-based workers, who perform care work and informal labor such as handicrafts primarily within the house. Through interviews, focus groups and participant observations, this paper argues that both groups of women exercise agency contingent on their positionality and available resources. In doing so, these women construct and re-construct social geographies that help them navigate power structures enacted through gendered expectations and hierarchies in their homes and communities. The findings of this paper disrupt ideas of women in developing countries, particularly in South Asia and/or Muslim, as a monolithic unit that is often portrayed as oppressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to look at the ongoing farmers protest movement in North India and focuses on their cultural dimension, particularly so on the creative response generated. This paper is divided into three parts: (1) the genesis of the movement (2) the cultural and creative response to the protest movement and (3) a focus on the newly emerging popular protest music as a symbol of dissent and hope. Through the prism of the protest music changing dimensions and evolution of the farmers participation in the protest movement is chronicled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stubble burning is a conventional technique of residue management that has affected the physio-chemical properties of the soils. In soil sciences, dielectric properties of soils using radio and microwave-based remote sensing have huge applications. Thus, presented paper has studied the burning effects of stubble on soil's physical, chemical and dielectric properties ($\varepsilon {^{\prime}} $ ε ′ and $\varepsilon {^{\prime \prime}}$ ε ′′ ). Moreover, the experimentally observed soil's dielectric data has been explored with various classical Machine Learning (ML) and Neural Network (NN) based regression models. The soil samples were taken from the fields of Punjab, India, in the October-November months following a multistage soil sampling method. Then, Dak-12 open-ended coaxial probe (DOCP) has been used in alliance with a two-port Vector Network Analyzer (VNA) E5071C, Agilent Technologies, to investigate the dielectric properties of soil samples. The obtained results indicate that physio-chemical and dielectric properties have been strongly affected by burning as well as because of the presence of high concentrations of ash residues. $ \varepsilon {^{\prime}} $ ε ′ and $\varepsilon {^{\prime \prime}}$ ε ′′ variations with depth indicate that ash residues can seep up to depths of 10 cm in a single burning process. Moreover, the continuous burning of stubble can have permanent effects on soil's properties. Among considered regression models, the Deep NN-based regression model has given the most accurate predictions of the regressor variables $\varepsilon {^{\prime}} $ ε ′ and $\varepsilon {^{\prime \prime}}$ ε ′′ , with a root-mean-square-error (RMSE) of 0.06 and 0.07, respectively. Stubble burning has visible effects on physical, chemical as well as dielectric properties of soil. The burning of stubble damages natural ecosystem and essential nutrients which decrease fertility of soil. Also, the resultant residue ash becomes permanent part of soil profile and alters basic properties of soil. Moreover, exploration of ML-based regression models suggests the tremendous applications of data-centric models in soil and material sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In early June 2020, the union government of India enacted three legislations concerning agriculture. The new laws were intended to open up the farming sector to an increased commercial engagement by the big corporates, who could purchase, store and even decide through contract farming what crops to produce. Together they were designed to fundamentally change and reorient the pre-existing regulatory framework of Indian agriculture. The farmers, particularly those from the north-western regions see these laws as an attack on farming cultures and their livelihoods. They have been demanding withdrawal of the new laws and an extension of price security for all agricultural commodities. These protests have been on for more than a year. This paper provides a brief overview of the context and the possible implications of the ongoing farmers' movement, the biggest ever in the recent history of India, and perhaps also one of the biggest in the recent past, anywhere in the world. The paper focuses primarily on the agrarian context of Punjab, where it all began and where it remains most pronounced and popular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper focused on investigating the potential of indigenous Pseudomonas fluorescens strain CD5 isolated from manure-enriched soil as a bioremediation agent for chlorpyrifos biodegradation in semi-arid soil of Bathinda district of Punjab, India. The soil had sandy loam texture with slightly alkaline pH and low organic matter content of 0.36%. The growth pattern, alkaline phosphatase enzyme production and chlorpyrifos utilization capability of Pseudomonas fluorescens strain CD5 were screened in mineral salt medium and the results revealed degradation of 78.19% of 500 mg L−1 chlorpyrifos within 15 days. The pattern of chlorpyrifos degradation was further studied in natural conditions of semi-arid soil by the Pseudomonas fluorescens strain CD5 and photolysis by sunlight for a period of 105 days. The biodegradation of chlorpyrifos at 500 mg kg−1 sterile soil by Pseudomonas fluorescens strain CD5 was 59.68% in comparison to 26% of photodegradation and enhancing total degradation. The residual chlorpyrifos in sterile soil after biodegradation by Pseudomonas fluorescens strain CD5 under natural light condition was 14.33%. The alkaline phosphatase enzyme activity in soil was found positively correlated with the chlorpyrifos degradation. The Pseudomonas fluorescens strain CD5 can be an effective candidate for the bioremediation of chlorpyrifos-contaminated soil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chakwal is located in Potohar Plateau of the Punjab Province. Town Bhoun of District Chakwal has historic significance as it is famous for carding archaeological sites and monuments. A rich archaeological mound of Pind Kahoot is located on the periphery of town Bhoun in District Chakwal. The site is occupied for agricultural activities. Whenever the farmers plough their fields and stones stuck the plough, they put them aside. So, the borders of the mound are over laid by stones of various sizes and debris. The mound is spanning over a vast area and its surface is covered with potsherds of different wares, textures, and sizes. The findings from the site include pottery, terracotta figurines and pipes, grinding stones, game discs, metallic jewelry, terracotta, steatite and carnelian beads, and bones. The current paper focuses on an analytical and comparative study of artifacts. It will also trace occupancy of different cultures and their relative chronological sequence. Besides, it will also elaborate the ethnoarchaeological study by establishing a link between the recovered artifacts and contemporary traditional practices in terms of materials and techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Punjab, when viewed through the lens of culture, presents a multifaceted and multi-dimensional cohesion. Within the frame of a cultural phenomenon, Punjab appears to be many Punjabs at once, a geographical, a political, an online, a feudal, and a diasporic Punjab. All of these many phizogs appear to be in continuous dialogue, negotiating for the supremacy of one structure. The paper aims to examine these kaleidoscopic patterns of a changing Punjab through the negotiations occurring within the cultural phenomenon of Sidhu Moose Wala as a singer, painting a picture of an evolving Punjab that persists along spatial, temporal, and cultural axes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga (dir. Shelly Chopra Dhar, 2019) is touted as the mainstream commercial venture that cemented Bollywood's journey from creating queer homosocial and homoerotic moments on screen to representing a queer relationship between two women for the first time. This paper tries to understand how the film's liberal messaging about queer acceptance and anti-discrimination, through the coming out narrative of its queer protagonist, is made possible through the embodiment of sanitized class and caste markers, how Indian queer femininity is encoded in the film and what its relationship with the heteronormative biological family reveals about the film's messaging. It also tries to explore the figuration of Sweety, an upper-class feminine queer woman in small town Moga (in the North Indian state of Punjab), who is portrayed as the quintessentially 'good' queer woman. Even though Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga offers a queer visual and imaginative landscape, it limits itself by constructing discursive, narrative, and visual terrains where Sweety's dissidence is deemed acceptable on grounds of her class privilege, her reverence for her family, her respectable femininity, and the embeddedness of her queer subjectivity in the family and culture. This paper interrogates the nature of queer representation in the film, how it tackles anxieties around acculturation, queer opposition to the nation-state and the visual and narrative means by which it domesticates queerness by sanitizing and inviting it into culture, family, nationalism and the nation-state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Semantic analysis is a particular technique, which is an interesting area of research that associates with Natural Language Processing (NLP), artificial intelligence, opinion mining, text clustering, and classification. Numerous text processing techniques are being used to find out sentiments from the comments, such as social media tweets, hoax, fiction, nonfiction, novels, books, movies, health care, and stock exchange. Agrarian experts' opinions play a vital role in the agriculture sector that yields good crop productivity. This paper presents a descriptive analysis of agriculture experts' opinions through machine learning methods based on textual data collection. The data has been collected by surveying various academia, research institute, and industry of Punjab, Pakistan. The impact of various agricultural inputs such as seed quality, soil quality, soil-intensive tillage, climate changes, water shortage, synthetic fertilizer, and precision technologies on crop productivity have been collected through questionnaires. This research provides a descriptive analysis of collected agrarians experts opinions to increase the crop yield by providing awareness regarding current agriculture inputs to farmers by using machine learning. The current research provides a cohesive expert guideline for improving crop productivity, useful for agricultural policymaking, and conveys adequate farmers' knowledge. Consequently, the proposed method is an innovative way of discovering recommendations of agrarians through sentiment analysis in survey data using machine learning methods. Furthermore, to the best of our knowledge, agrarians experts opinions on enhancing crop productivity have been considered for the first time in Pakistan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents findings from household data collected as part of the Annual Survey of Education conducted in rural Punjab in 2015, which included questions on disability developed by the Washington Group on Disability Statistics. Data reported here focuses on the disability status of children aged 5 to 16 years, their access to school and learning outcomes on basic reading and maths tasks. Our findings highlight that children who were identified by their carer/mothers as having moderate to severe disabilities were less likely to be attending school and had lower levels of learning on basic reading and maths tasks, than their peers who were not identified as having any difficulties in functioning. More importantly, our findings also suggest that being a co-resident/sibling in a household with a child with moderate to severe disabilities was associated with lower levels of basic reading and numeracy for the co-residents/siblings compared to other children. We conclude by highlighting important policy considerations and identifying areas of future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to answering the fundamental research question, "Why do individuals participate in contentious ethnonationalist movements?" More specifically, it tries to ascertain which competing theory of human behavior—rational-chooser, socially-embedded actor, or instinctive psychological being—best explains this phenomenon. Based on over a dozen in-depth interviews with Sikh ethnonationalists from Punjab-India, this paper finds that social constructivism, and to a much lesser extent, the sociopsychological paradigm best explain why individuals join collective ethnonationalist movements. In contrast, the rational-choice theory finds only very limited support. Even when sociopsychological and rational-choice motivations are found for individual participation in risky ethnonationalist movements, they exist either intertwined or in close conjunction with social constructivist ones, thus giving even increased support for this dominant theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spontaneous combustion of coal in stockpiles of power plants has a significant problem worldwide which leads to several health hazards, environmental pollution and coal loss. Spontaneous combustion coal stockpiles depend on both endogenous (coal characteristics) and exogenous parameters (stockpile geometry, wind speed, wind direction, local temperature). This paper describes the laboratory experiments to study the suitability of firefighting chemicals on the spontaneous combustion/fire of coal in stockpiles. Coal samples were collected from four different heaps of coal laid in coal storage yards of Talwandi Sabo Power Limited (TSPL), Punjab. This study comprises laboratory analysis i.e., proximate analysis, ultimate analysis, critical oxidation temperature, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) analysis, gross calorific value (GCV), particle size analysis, and field studies i.e., thermal monitoring of fire-affected area before and after firefighting chemicals. Experiments on mixtures of coal and firefighting chemical having compositions viz. 1, 2, 3, and 5%, were carried out using DSC study for optimization of inhibitors as well as its efficacy. During the laboratory study the chemical composition of 3% was found to be optimum for field application to extinguish coal stockpile fire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sporadic rainfall and limited surface water sources have increased dependency on groundwater in semi-arid region of Punjab. The present paper is comprehensive study carried out in an intensive agricultural region of southwest Punjab to examine the quality and extent of contamination due to trace elements and nitrate in the aquifer system. Total 15 toxic elements are analyzed in groundwater samples (N = 129) covering both the shallow (<60 m) and deeper aquifers (>60 m). Elements such as As, B, Cd, Li, Mn, Pb, Sr, and Se exceed the prescribed limits. Overall, 68 and 13% of samples exceed the NO3− permissible limit (45 ppm) in shallow and deep aquifers, respectively. Contaminants concentration increases toward groundwater flow direction, that is, from northeast to southwest possibly due to arid climatic conditions. Relatively, shallow aquifer is more contaminated than deeper aquifer due to fertilizers input and irrigation return flow. Drinking water quality indices (DWQI) reveal that groundwater is unfit for drinking at most locations. Further, health risk indicate that comparatively, children are at higher risk in terms of non-carcinogenic risk posed by nitrate, and higher carcinogenic risk for As, Cr, and Cd is seen in all age groups. Multivariate analysis reveals the influence of anthropogenic activities on NO3−, Mn, Ni, and Zn levels, while geogenic factors control the, As and Mo concentrations. Present findings suggest regular monitoring of wells to lower the public health risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Area Development & Policy is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The paper attempts to understand the emergence of a New Sikh middle class in Panjab and its growing, transnational visibility in a transnational spread through the kaleidoscope of Panjabi cinema. The paper seeks to map this new middle class both locally and globally with the emergence of the icon of the New Sikh middle class, the turbaned Diljit Dosanjh. His persona and the popularity of his films give a vivid portrayal of the visibility of this transnational New Sikh middleclass, the imagination of which transcends local, national and transnational borders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My paper proposes to assess the contributions of Bhai Vir Singh to the newly emergent Punjabi print spheres in the late colonial period. Critical literature on the print and public spheres in colonial Punjab has described these as imitative of the prototype of western models and as 'derivative' discourses. It is through the example of Bhai Vir Singh that we can argue otherwise. This paper argues that the print sphere made it possible for newer subjectivities and modes of agency to emerge and it is through this politically critical idea of agency that Bhai Vir Singh's work can be examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The empowerment of women is an essential objective to fully engage them in economic life and achieve sustainable growth throughout the world. Providing basic facilities to women is one form of empowerment. This paper examines the extent of women's empowerment in Punjab, Pakistan and its divisions, along with rural and urban regions. In addition, we check the effect of the gender wage differential on the current dilemma by implementing Alkire et al.'s [2013.The women's empowerment in agriculture index (Working Paper No. 58). Oxford, UK: Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative. Retrieved from .] indexing on HIES 2013–14 datasets. Our results show that 34.91% of women are empowered in Punjab overall, with independence being the highest dimensional contributor, and ownership of assets being the least. Women are 31.43% more empowered in urban regions. The results indicate that Islamabad has significantly more women's empowerment, while Dera Ghazi Khan has the lowest percentage of empowered women. To assess particular impacts of different socio-economic and demographic variables on women's empowerment, logistic regression model is applied, revealing that most socio-economic and demographic variables have significant impacts on the current scenario, and variation in any variable causes significant variations in the status of women's empowerment, with increased wage differential in particular, decreasing the probability of women being empowered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to investigate the perception of female employees regarding workplace empowerment. The study also emphasized the alleged advantages of employee empowerment in the workplace and pinpointed the barriers to empowerment. This paper is based on qualitative data collected, through the semi-structured interview with female library professionals working in the higher education commission's recognized universities of Punjab- Pakistan, as a part of doctoral studies. According to the study, respondents most frequently defined "workplace empowerment" as having the freedom to do duties as they see fit. They also emphasized the benefits of workplace empowerment on both the personal and professional levels. Three categories—managerial, organizational, and individual factors—are used to categorize the obstacles cited by the participants. Although there is no study of this kind on the topic of workplace empowerment of female employees in the local context of Pakistan, this work adds significantly to the paucity of literature on the subject. This study is extracted from the Ph.D. thesis of the researcher. This study is limited in terms of its population as the data was collected from female library professionals in the Punjab province of Pakistan. The results may aid stakeholders and higher authorities in eradicating workplace empowerment concerns and in formulating evidence-based strategies or policies to enable women to execute their jobs more effectively. This qualitative study adds value to the literature by showing the actual situation of female employee empowerment in a developing country like Pakistan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that while fusion music in Shoaib Mansoor's film Khuda Kay Liye (KKL) (2007) serves to reclaim Pakistan's South Asian heritage, there are moments in KKL when non-Muslim South Asians are othered. I examine these contradictory elements in the film with respect to two songs. I first look at 'Bulleh Nu', an anti-casteist 'kafi' attributed to the seventeenth/eighteenth century Sufi poet Baba Bulleh Shah, born in present-day Pakistani Punjab. I then contrast 'Bulleh Nu' with the film's problematic representation of the Sikh as a 'villainous' other. Subsequently I analyze 'Neer Bharan', a 'bandis ki thumri' associated with the cosmopolitan ethos of the nineteenth century kingdom of Awadh, now located in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Alongside my analysis of 'Neer Bharan', I write about how KKL only partially distances itself from the conflation of religious and national identities in Pakistan. The minoritization of non-Muslims from the subcontinent in the film is consistent with how they are represented in certain Pakistani educational and cultural texts. Therefore the desire to embrace Pakistan's pluralistic traditions in Khuda Kay Liye is juxtaposed with a relatively uncritical stance towards non-inclusive notions of citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes IoT-based an enterprise health information system called IoTPulse to predict alcohol addiction providing real-time data using machine-learning in fog computing environment. We used data from 300 alcohol addicts from Punjab (India) as a case study to train machine-learning models. The performance of IoTPulse is compared against existing work using various parameters including accuracy, sensitivity, specificity and precision which shows improvement of 7%, 4%, 12% and 12%, respectively. Finally, IoTPulse is validated in FogBus-based real fog environment using QoS parameters including latency, network bandwidth, energy and response time which improves performance by 19.56%, 18.36%, 19.53% and 21.56%, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is on transnational migration with a focus on Punjab in North India. This essentially being a male-dominated phenomenon, I examine the impact of migration on the empowerment of women in "left-behind" families. The three dimensions of empowerment highlighted here are resources, agency, and achievement. Data was collected via interviews and case studies of five left behind women and a survey of 48 Punjabi households where the men had migrated to the Middle East. The respondents were classified into three age groups: 20–35 years, 35–45 years and 45+. These offered comparison to understand problems related to remittances and women's empowerment. The research revealed how migration by men affected their left behind spouses. Some of them faced several hurdles and remained constrained by social and familial norms of patriarchy, while others found opportunities to resist such constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper situates peasant struggles in a larger context to unravel the consequences of the accumulated agrarian distress in Punjab. The Punjab peasantry has a rich legacy of resistance against the injustice of the statecraft. The all-inclusive character of the present peasant movement, to engage people across castes, classes, creeds, gender, regions, religions and ethnicity is an outcome of this legacy. Beyond these features, the significance of the movement also lies in the understanding of the protesting people about the importance of land, food sovereignty and the responsibility of the democratic state to ensure food security for the marginalized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The farmers unions in Punjab protesting against the Three Agricultural Laws gradually consolidated into an All-India Kisan Andolan when they marched to Delhi and camped at its borders. The farmers stayed put for an year till the Three Laws were repealed. This paper looks into the broad contours of andolan focusing on its seminal feature, the primacy of politics. The Morcha realized the significance of politics in the declaration of these laws and decided to counter the government's strategy supporting the corporate houses politically. A nonviolent protest involving numerous sections of society, especially women, culminated in the farmers' success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper identifies and interprets the political and economic undercurrents of three farm laws passed by Indian Parliament in September 2020, triggering a year-long protest by farmers that eventually led to their repealing in November 2021. While the government argued that the farm laws were designed to foster private sector investment in agriculture, the protestors, opined that the laws were designed to pullback from the Minimum Support Price (MSP) (provided particularly on wheat and paddy). Through a close reading of Punjab's agricultural economy, we delve into understanding the economic and political undercurrents of [un]settling rubble of farm laws and protests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crop yield prediction is an important aspect of agriculture. The timely and accurate crop yield predictions can be of great help for policy makers and farmers in planning and decision making. Generally, statistical models are employed to predict the crop yield which is time consuming and tedious. Emerging trends of deep learning and machine learning has come up as a major breakthrough in the arena. Deep learning models have the inherent ability to perform feature extraction in large dataset thus more suitable for predictions. In this paper, a deep learning-based Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) model is employed to predict wheat crop yield of northern region of India. The present study also employed LSTM to unravel the vanishing gradient problem inherent in RNN model. Experiments were conducted using 43 years benchmark dataset and proposed model results were compared with three machine learning models. Evidently, the results obtained from RNN-LSTM model(RMSE: 147.12,MAE: 60.50), Artificial Neural Network(RMSE: 732.14,MAE: 623.13), Random Forest (RMSE: 540.88, MAE: 449.36) and Multivariate Linear Regression (RMSE: 915.64,MAE: 796.07), proved the efficacy of model. Also, predicted crop yield values were found to be more close to true values for RNN-LSTM model proving efficiency of the proposed work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to discuss the varying perceptions and interpretative responses of Jat Sikhs and Dalits of a Punjabi village with respect to Sunny Deol, the popular Hindi film star, and relates these variations to certain salient aspects of their respective identity constructions, in the context of their day-to-day patterns of being, including such identities as caste, class, gender, religion, age, education, exposure to media relating to ideas or values about masculinity, femininity, honor, shame, as well as propriety and morality. These factors become significant as Sunny Deol enters politics and attempts to make a transition from reel to real. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jathera worship is a popular devotional practice of Punjab in which obeisance is paid to ancestors of the got/gotra. This paper presents a case study of a jathera known as Baba Kala Mehar Sandhu in Faridkot. Its worship is marked by heterodox rituals such as offering and consuming liquor as parshad (oblation) to the deity. I argue that the continued persistence of the practice into the twenty-first century, despite facing proscription from the dominant religions of Punjab, is on account of the complex modes of negotiation that the jathera undertakes and the potentialities for subaltern resistance that it offers to its primary cultural agents - a caste of genealogists-musicians known as Dhadis and Mirasis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Selection of an appropriate hospital for availing medical treatment has become a very tedious task for patients these days. As the service quality of a healthcare unit involves measuring multi-faceted attributes, such as tangibles (infrastructure, apparatus, etc) and in-tangibles (waiting period, doctor expertize, trustworthiness, employee behavior, etc). SERVQUAL methodology has been successfully applied for measuring service quality for many years but due to its certain limitations many new approaches appeared for solving the issues related to multiple criteria decision making. In this paper, a novel model has been proposed based on six service quality dimensions i.e. tangibles, responsiveness, reliability, assurance, empathy [Parasuraman A, Zeithaml VA, Berry LL. A conceptual model of service quality and its implications for future research. The Journal of Marketing. 1985;49(4):41–50.] and trustworthiness and twenty-eight sub-dimensions for measuring the performance of four multi-specialty hospitals of Punjab, India. The service quality performance of these hospitals has been measured and ranked using Fuzzy Set Theory, Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchical Process (F-AHP) and Elimination and Choice Translating Reality (ELECTRE-I) technique. The weights of the six dimensions and sub-dimensions were generated and then the performance of each hospitals was ranked by applying F-AHP & ELECTRE–I technique. The results showed that the patients have given their priority towards trustworthiness and empathy aspects before selecting any hospital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geogenic contamination of Arsenic (As) poses major health threat to people living in Indus Plain of Pakistan particularly in Punjab. In this paper, we described in detail the hydrogeochemistry of As contaminated groundwaters in selected sites from Lahore, Kasur and Okara districts and its associated potential health risks. Sampling was done in 2019 and 141 groundwater samples were collected. High variability in As concentrations was observed varying between below detection level (<0.1 µg/L) and 655 µg/L. More than 85% of these samples exceeded WHO limit of 10 µg/L while 30% exceeded national limit of 50 µg/L. The results of statistical analysis and agglomerative hierarchical cluster (HCA) analyses indicate mainly pH-dependent desorption of As from mineral oxide surfaces under alkaline conditions to be responsible for As pollution with some minor controls from NO3− and Fe-reduction in groundwaters was also seen. Furthermore, higher potential health risks were found to be associated with elevated As levels in terms of estimated average daily dosage (EDI), hazard quotient (HQ) and carcinogenic risk assessment (CR). The average values for HQ for adults, teenagers and children were found to be 9.06, 13.6 and 13.07, respectively. Meanwhile average CR values were found to be 0.004, 0.01, 0.006 mg/Kg/day in adults, teenagers and children respectively. These results suggest an increased risk of adverse health impacts in current study sites and require effective remedial measures at urgent basis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent laws introduced by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government aim to centralise India's federal structure, for the goal of a unified (Hindu) national market, and to corporatise its agro-food system at the expense of smallholder farming and small-scale trade. These laws are being challenged by mass mobilisations led by farmers' unions from northwestern states—once-booming agricultural regions where, in recent decades and in the aftershocks of the Green Revolution, agrarian suicides have become endemic. The roots of this catastrophe are rapid marketisation in the 1960s (installing monocropping dependent on petrochemical inputs, destroying local agroecology) followed by post-1980s neoliberalism (with highly inequitable contract farming, alongside defunding of public infrastructure). Farmers and labourers now face interwoven crises of social reproduction—ecological depletion, precarisation, and chronic indebtedness, with no post-agricultural future in sight. The new laws claim to redress this by employing populist rhetoric against "exploitative middlemen"; in reality, markets are re-regulated in favour of large export-oriented agribusiness, thereby endangering food security, livelihoods and climate. The laws also herald digitalisation in agriculture and retail—further subsuming smallholders into productivist, financialised and outsourced logics. Their promulgation has triggered substantial FDI from global Big Tech, including Facebook and Google, aided by Indian conglomerates with close ties to the BJP built during PM Narendra Modi's prior tenure as Chief Minister of Gujarat. This paper details the above and concludes by contextualising the ongoing protest movement. We focus on southern Punjab, a region that has suffered acute crises of health and ecology, as well as violent political conflict and state repression. Decades of left-wing rural union activity in this region, fighting debt and dispossession as well as in support of anticaste land struggles, have laid the organisational groundwork for hopeful new political trajectories, including potentials for grassroots red-green coalitions centring women and landless labourers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, single portraits representing Guru Nanak are very popular among the Sikhs and are frequently hung on the walls of houses and temples. It is during the Singh Sabha Movement from the 1870s that portraits of Guru Nanak came to be hung on the walls of Sikhs' temple and house by the urban middle class. Wall-hung portraits of Guru Nanak symbolises the uniqueness of Sikhism and, since they were painted both in a unique three-quarter face and in a Hindu-like frontal, Guru Nanak portraiture has played a pivotal role in social cohesion among the Sikhs who belonged to different factions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extensive use of pesticides in agricultural production results in increased health risks and health costs, productivity loss, and degradation of the environment. Farmers' risk perceptions of pesticide residues can help mitigate these issues. This paper applies an ordered probit model to analyze farmers' perceptions of pesticide residues using a cross-sectional dataset of 209 vegetable cultivators in Punjab, Pakistan. Important determinants of farmers' perceptions include their educational level, family labor, ratio of self-consumed foodstuffs, health effects, integrated pest management (IPM) training, knowledge, and awareness. Among these determinants, farmers' awareness and IPM training programs are the principle indicators of risk perception. These results have significant implications for policymakers because farmers' perceptions including overuse of pesticides tend to worsen if supported by the internalization of social norms, which, in turn, is restricted by farmers' awareness and knowledge. The study findings suggest that special attention should be given to farmers who are limited to receiving information directly from agricultural extension officers. Moreover, intensive IPM training programs should be designed with the aim of conveying precautionary measures for human health and a sustainable agro-ecosystem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an exploration and investigation of the frescoes that decorate the majestic haveli (mansion) of Baba Sir Khem Singh Bedi (1832–1905), a Sikh social and education reformer and religious leader. The haveli was constructed in the late nineteenth century. The frescoes are beautiful and interesting in themselves and fill the walls with a plethora of colour and design. They are unique because they represent three religions and cultures, i.e. Sikhism, Hinduism and Islam. Thus this art work is evidence of cultural syncretism. This study used ethnographic field research of the subject at the site and analysis of secondary data. Through close examination of and interpreting these icons this study concluded that this collection must have been Baba Khem Singh's tribute to the religious and historical personalities he admired; his intention to depict the Sikh religion in its truer sense of belief in a more inclusive theology and his own practical and benevolent religious idealism and also to promote cross culture/religious harmony. This study surmised that displaying these frescoes in his domestic environment gave this 'pilgrim of the soul' a transcendental sense of security, protection and certitude in portraying a broader and friendlier universe. The condition of the historic haveli is deteriorating rapidly and the government has not designated it as a heritage site so that it may be protected. Therefore, this study would like to suggest that perhaps UNESCO might consider this site worth conserving. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an attempt to determine the factors which influence the willingness of the students to use academic libraries after lifting the COVID-19 lockdown. A quantitative study design has been opted to conduct a cross-sectional survey from students of the BS (4 Years) program of five public sector universities in the Punjab province, Pakistan. A stratified random sampling technique has opted and a sample of 1288 students has been sampled. A well-structured questionnaire having close-ended questions has been constructed to measure the response in terms of (dis)agreement. Multiple regression analysis has been applied to predict the dependent variable. The study findings assert that students are willing to use the academic library for their academic work along with the following protective measures after the COVID-19 lockdown. It depends on the enforcement of the COVID-19 related aspects. These aspects include social distancing, wearing a face mask, seating arrangements in the library, and availability of hand sanitization in the academic libraries. The study findings conclude that students have practiced physical distancing in the library, wear a mask, hand hygiene, and also have a lack of fear of infection of COVID-19 pandemic that enhances their willingness to use the academic library. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The performative space of svang is primarily located within a prison house of male values, perspectives and judgments. In these performances, females are often revealed through male guts, literally and metaphorically, in their androgynous transformations wherein less of a woman and more of a man, they become a specimen of collective male consciousness on the stage. One important pattern of these representations is idealization of females as mothers/sisters and their devaluation as wife/beloved, revealing a significant ideological drive towards a dualistic image construction. The play of violence in these dramatic representations becomes manifest through a representational ideology, demarcating the feminine from the masculine in a set of attributes which become instrumental in constructing an on-stage image of females as unreliable and primitive. These popular dramatic representations constitute a space which largely remains in contrast to the practical and physically active world of the rural women and imagine a fantasy land where the male imagination cuts and fits females into fixed parameters of a make-believe world. Controlled and created by male imagination, watched by a male audience and often represented by males themselves, these representational spaces produce a curious impression of a group-controlled male fantasy in which females become a victim of a concerted psychological violence. The present paper seeks to dwell on the imaginative violence which is produced by these representations on the popular performative space of North India by focusing on examples from dramatic performances of svangs on the rural stages of North Indian states of Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Rajasthan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bhai Vir Singh's didactic play Raja Lakhdata Singh (1910) is one of the earliest modern Punjabi plays. The play was written in order to make the Sikhs aware of the ills assailing the community and to help set them on a path of reform. As an early play, the text is worthy of analysis in terms of the message it tries to propagate as well as its textual form and structure. This paper pursues this line of inquiry and will also comment on the dramatic and theatrical conventions prevalent in Punjab at the time, in order to understand the formative years of modern Punjabi drama. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how notions of intertextuality and reception history unfold in a Sikh literary context by examining interactions between Bhai Vir Singh's Srī Kalgīdhar Camatkār and gurbilās literature. These texts' portrayals of an important battle of Sikh history, the battle of Bhangani, illustrate how the various historical circumstances of the seventeenth to twentieth centuries shaped the modes and content of historical representation of the Sikh past at different points in time. It also sheds light on the life and reception of gurbilās texts beyond the nineteenth century and allows us to further interrogate the relationship between the literary premodernity of gurbilās texts and the literary modernity of Bhai Vir Singh's historical writing in colonial Punjab. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine the afterlives of insurgent and counterinsurgent violence in Punjab and the US. We explore how the period of the 1980s and 1990s came to have effects that linger into the present, and how violence is remembered by ordinary people, especially non-elite women. We argue that memories unfold in relation to the slow and structural violence that has manifested through years of Punjabis living with the after-effects of insurgency and counterinsurgency. Our research on remembering and forgetting shows that the period of violence of the 1980s and 1990s remains alive and formative in contemporary forms of community, gender, and identity across Punjab and its diasporas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

CoJ 85 is an early-maturing, commercial sugarcane (Saccharum spp. complex) variety grown in Punjab, India. Farmers have adopted it because of its high sucrose content. However, it is shy in tillering and produces a low number of millable canes. It is also prone to lodging at maturity. Conventional breeding approaches are not feasible to further improve this variety, as it does not flower even under optimum tropical conditions. In this paper, we report on the use of gamma radiation-mediated in vivo mutagenesis to generate variation for cane number in CoJ 85.Contrary to general practice of irradiating tissue culture-derived calli (in vitro approach), single-bud cane setts (in vivo approach) of CoJ 85 were exposed to gamma rays to induce mutations for cane number. Our in vivo, standardized approach avoided tedious tissue culture cycles that cause undesirable somaclonal variation. Based on the germination data of buds, 25 Gy was found to be the 50% lethal dose (LD50). Thus, a mutant population of CoJ 85 was generated using 25 Gy gamma radiation and advanced to M1V2. The effects of different radiation doses were evaluated for number of tillers, number of millable canes, cane height (cm), cane weight (kg), and Brix (%) [Brix refers to total soluble solids content in juice; expressed in percentage) in the field-grown M1V2 population. A total of 38 elite mutant lines, which exhibited a significant increase in number of millable canes and Brix, were advanced for field evaluation and possible commercial use. We have demonstrated gamma rays-induced in vivo mutagenesis to be an effective method to generate stable mutants for increased cane number in CoJ 85. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]