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As in the most parts of the world, India of today also is governed and determined by a socioeconomic order where the profit is privatized, while the cost is socialized. The world has been witnessing a vulgar polarization of wealth in favor of a few privileged with a vast majority of the populace getting pushed into the deeper ends of poverty and destitution. India is traversing this trajectory, more aggressively in the last couple of decades, since she opened up her economy to the forces of neo-liberalization. The worsening economic conditions would obviously trigger unrest and anger against those in power, and the ruling class in turn pre-empt the possibility of any such upraising by preoccupying the mass with emotionally charged divisive issues that pit them against one another. "Nationalism" has always been one of the most effective "emotional tools" in the hands of the rightist forces world over in the past in their efforts to ward off mass resistance, and now it is India's turn to endure the enactment of the same. While capitalism is tightly preserving the economic structure that enables amassment of wealth for a few, fascism in the hands of the ultra-nationalists is acting as its gatekeeper to ensure that dispossessed do not gatecrash, revolt, and thrash the capitalist castle. The privileged work overtime to divide the very forces that could form a threat to their economic fortunes and system of loot. This paper is a detailed commentary on how the above said process is currently operating and how it is weakening the democracy, diversity, and sustainable development in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anthropological studies on causality in South Asia in the past decades have focused mostly on local idioms of 'mis fortune', with very little attention being paid to ideas of 'fortune' and 'luck'. This article, based on fieldwork carried out among astrologers and their clients in Banaras, shows that astrology provides an ideological framework for the conceptualization and management of fortune in present-day urban India. According to astrologers' analyses of horoscopes, 'destiny' (bhāgya, lit. 'allotted share') is conceived as a form of wealth acquired at birth that can be augmented or diminished as a result of planetary influences and personal choices. The author suggests that, beyond the Sanskrit tradition, the semantics of destiny can be linked to decisionmaking processes and values of achievement that mark the lives of middle- and upper-class families in contemporary India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the portrayal of man by director Satyajit Ray concerning contemporary society in the Bengali film "Agantuk." It states that the character of the film named Monmohan Mitra, played by Utpal Dutt, was a topper from matriculation to graduation, wherein he has every reason to look for fortune and fame. It says that "Agantuk" sets the culmination of long engagement of Ray with contrary pulls of the new and the old.

This paper is a sincere attempt to relate the modern labor relation practices with the thoughts of Indian ethos by tracing the Hymns of Shukraneeti. Five major areas which can strengthen the labor relations have been covered in this study. Then the relevant hymns of the Shukraneeti in Sanskrit have been used to elaborate on their respective spiritual sense and then interpreted and compared with modern management practices by presenting them in rhymed English translation. The corporate professionals are welcomed to reproduce and incorporate the spirit of these hymns for application in management practice and in the wider arena of labor relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article outlines the history of nabobish fortunes as a matter of cultural history of Indian wealth in Great Britain in the late eighteenth century. It is noted that this wealth fused the complicated questions about political and imperial affairs with concrete questions of daily economy. This led the British imperialism politics in South Asia a matter of concern for broader British public. The sense of anxiety surrounding the figure of nabob was a matter of political and economic and social concern. The rapid growth of so many Indian fortunes made domestic audiences noticed nabobish wealth and not always from a comfortable distance.

An experimental study addresses the propositions that nonmaterial beliefs, including supernatural powers and transcendental moral laws, function to enhance comprehension of life events, and perform this function selectively. Informal surveys of newspaper articles and two pilot experiments consistently indicated that the beliefs in fate , God , luck , chance , just reward , and just punishment are elicited to explain life events that are difficult to explain in material terms, and are more or less specialized in the life events they explain. In a final experiment, a sample of U.S. university students (N =103) was presented with 12 life event cases designed to match the belief specializations and asked to interpret freely. Analysis of the reliably coded spontaneous comments confirmed both predictions. In addition, subjects who personally held a given nonmaterial belief used it more selectively than those who did not. Finally, employing the same design and measures, a sample from North India replicated the major U.S. findings. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]