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This article charts the different modalities of political transgression that marked an act of religious conversion and inter-faith marriage performed by a Muslim female subject in contemporary India, and the subsequent misreading of this transgression; a misreading made possible by liberal political thought's delineations of the conceptual category of "interest". Existing legal, political, academic, and popular discourses have read the prominent 2016 event of the conversion of a Hindu woman named Akhila into Islam, as either the "false consciousness" of a "vulnerable" individual whose self-interests were unintelligible to herself, or, as an unambiguous case of a "mature" woman in a "modernising" Kerala "choosing" to opt for an inter-faith marriage and to convert; a liberal idiom of choice that thereby needs to be safeguarded via Constitutional provisions. The article, even while acknowledging the political need to adhere to the latter reading/constitution of the female (Islamic) subject's sovereign desire to convert, shows some of the limitations of both these ideologically antithetical positions. It argues that the desire of Hadiya (Akhila's new name after converting to Islam) to convert remains unreadable by both the right-wing Indian judiciary, backed up by Hindutva forces, as well as the "left-liberal" feminist intelligentsia that sought to support her autonomy. In fact, both these ideologically opposed stances often legitimised each other. By examining the legal debates that took place in the Indian courts, the article shows how construing Hadiya's act of conversion solely through the legal-juridical prisms of "religious freedom" and "choice", pegged to the concept of self-interest, is vigorously insufficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethical workplace climate has been extensively researched in the for‐profit context but neglected in nonprofits. Perhaps because nonprofits promote shared values, engage with people, and implement development interventions creating public good, they are considered implicitly ethical. This assumption has been questioned in recent studies. We attempted to develop a psychometrically valid scale measuring ethical workplace climate following a sequential research design to fill this gap. We interviewed 74 employees from 30 nonprofit organizations using the critical incident technique to generate statements on ethical workplace climate. The statements generated were categorized with expert judges' help, followed by a survey of 507 nonprofit employees across India. The exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and subsequent confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) resulted in a 43‐item scale, further reduced to 26 items using stepwise regression. Results of subsequent application of EFA and CFA confirmed a four‐factor solution: self‐interest, collegiality, internal legitimacy, and stewardship. A follow‐up study of 243 members of nonprofit organizations confirmed the hypothesized relationships that ethical work climate has a significant effect on affective commitment and job engagement. Finally, we discussed our findings along theoretical contributions, implications, limitations, and future direction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have been viewed as a game changer in the evolving ecosystem of the online learning environment. Despite MOOCs being heralded as an educational paradigm in the higher education landscape, scarcity of academic research capturing the mental map of student perceptions to identify the drivers and outcomes influencing MOOC enrolment has not been extensively studied. To address this gap in the literature, the current study adopted Interactive Qualitative Analysis (IQA) to extract a composite mental model of student perceptions influencing MOOC enrolment. Following the IQA protocol, our study conducted focus group discussions (FGD) to identify affinities and their relationships, and semi-structured interviews to methodically code their experiences while exploring the affinities, using student samples from a Business school in India. Findings of our study indicated that, while students perceived 'Self Interest' and 'Institutional requirement' as the primary drivers for enrolling in MOOCs, 'Employability' and 'Result Demonstrability' emerged as the primary outcomes. Understanding learner perspectives could encourage both academics and course designers to make necessary pedagogical affordances to MOOCs to support learner engagement and retention in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The case study presented in this article analyses the social construction of India's Right to Food Act of 2013 in light of the extant literature on the social construction of human rights. It argues that Lockwood's novel hypothesis – that human rights are created by elite actors using the enhanced 'moral and material resources' that they have at their disposal, not in their own self-interests, but in the interests of the less advantaged – is borne up by the present case study, (although less advantaged social actors were involved in the campaign for the Act). The article also seeks to extend Lockwood's theory by examining which moral and material resources contributed the most to the creation of the Act and why. Finally, drawing on Waters, the article proposes that political elites' need to consolidate political support was an important factor in securing the Act. In conclusion, this paper argues that further research on the perceived needs of the less advantaged in respect of the Right to Food Act's content must be undertaken if we are to be sure it genuinely reflects their interests. The article is based on in depth socio-historical research including a review of hundreds of documents and 37 interviews. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transformational leaders are leaders who 'transform and inspire followers to perform beyond expectations while transcending self-interest for the good of the organisation'. 'Discernment' is defined as the individual and communal practice of decision-making that is oriented on the future (educational aims), conditioned by the personal qualities of leaders (purity of heart), and which emphasises teleological ethics as source of reliance. In line with this concept, a scale of discernment was constructed and tested in a research study on 198 leaders of the Catholic schools of Don Bosco in India. Transformational leadership was measured with an existing scale which is part of the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire. The results show that discernment (as measured) is the strongest predictor of transformational leadership, while controlling for background variables (such as age, gender, religious background, leadership position, type of school, and private or government-aided schools). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main purpose of the present study is to identify and understand the objectives and factors that influenced LIS teachers to make academic and research contribution towards the profession in India. It also intended to know the opinions of LIS teachers on their overall academic and research contributions towards the profession. A survey approach was used in this study and structured online questionnaire framed. Response was found that out of 353 respondents, 287 (81 %) responses received. The scope of study was confined to in-service teachers of library and information science in state and central universities of India. A total of 287 respondents, 202 (70.38 %) was male and 85 (29.61) was female. The study found that, the self-interest and professional interest are the major factor responsible for contributing to the LIS field. The self-interest of the LIS teachers has positive direct effect on professional interest and positive indirect effect on overall professional contribution to the LIS field. The professional interest of the LIS teachers has positive direct effect and its positive effect on overall professional contribution to the library and information science profession is statistically significant. It also found that, the overall opinion of LIS teachers on their academic and research contribution towards the profession in India is stating 'adequate'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India and China are two powers in Asia, having common borders but different sense of entitlements and vulnerabilities. China's global profile has become much stronger than India's. How India and China deal with each other will determine peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region. The challenge for New Delhi is to factor its national self-interest and security into dealings with a rising China. India is threatened by Chinese assertiveness, given its outstanding boundary disputes with China, Belt and Road Initiative, uncritical Chinese support for Pakistan and China's increasing penetration into the Indian Ocean region. However, current Indian stance toward China is characterized by hedging, which has severe limitations dues to many structural constraints. The article argues that India should unhesitatingly increase its strategic engagement with America, Japan and Australia to strengthen the Quadrilateral. Despite some obvious differences, all four maritime democracies share a set of common strategic perceptions, which could deepen their security arrangements to manage China's growing assertiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks at how the objectification of religious imagination influences Muslim poor's coping of their changing worldly realities in a Mumbai slum. It looks at the role of new religious intellectuals in addressing the shrinking Muslim presence in the public sphere in urban India through newer styles of religious leadership embedded in a broader understanding of the religious imagination itself. These new religious intellectuals among the Muslim poor I argue see the role of secular education coupled with a religious imagination as essential in order to protect one's self interests as a Muslim yet be integral to a larger and diverse public. Islamic knowledge and behavioural conduct combined with secular education is hence seen as a way of fashioning the lives of the modern Muslim subject. By describing and analysing how universalistic principles of Islam have been realised in the local context of a Mumbai slum, this article illustrates how, embracing modernity emanating from Islamic values is seen as a way of refashioning the Muslim self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on direct private foreign investment (DPFI) in less-developed countries (LDC). DPFI can create problems in LDC, which react in their own self-interest by establishing restrictions on foreign capital policies that Western investors consider unreasonable. The issues are: DPFI providing permanent social benefit to the host country within its national economic development plan; conflict over the right of foreign investors to repatriate profits and investment; and the responsibility for foreign exchange costs. Six benefits of DPFI include creation of jobs, transfer of technical and managerial skills, and growth in the gross national product. An example is given of competition challenging an American company that does business in India.

The article presents a study which traces a pattern of a growth in elderly abuse among changes in the Indian family structure and function. It highlights short case studies which show that older people are meeting both physical and psychological distancing both in joint and nuclear families. It notes that individualism of the family members would insist for individual freedom which does not comply them to care for the physical and emotional needs of the elders.

The article discusses the importance of legislator integrity and the "Office of Profit" parliamentary issue in India. The author explains that legislators must take care with private situations that could affect their public or legislative duties or could imply self- or conflict of interest. He discusses legislators' role as agents of social change, defines Office of Profit, and explains legislation that regulates the behavior of legislators and interaction between branches of government.

Focuses on variations in stress levels in different cultures. Increase of the emphasis on individualism in western society; Importance of the notion of individualism to understand stress; Need for defining one's psychological and physical boundaries.