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The aim of this paper is to examine a kind of open-air museumization of topophilic aspects of football in the birthplace of the Mohun Bagan Athletic Club in North Kolkata, West Bengal, India. While dealing with some graffiti, memorial plaques, and relief sculptures implanted in some public lanes of the Bagbazar-Sovabazar-Shyambazar area, it explores a sports-landscape bonding, which becomes instrumental for reminiscing, representing, and interpreting the heritage of an age-old football club during the new millennium. In doing so, this paper not only differs from the extant scholarships, which perceive museumizing of football only within the narrow premises of modern museums but also postulates that museumization of sports in an urban public space does not always get swayed by the for-profit model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I document my fieldwork struggles in Kolkata India, to propose some common guiding notions of flexibility in the field. I argue that in moments of uncertainty, ethical judgment of the researcher should be a central guiding force while figuring out what flexibility looks like in the field. By detailing how I improvised research methods and ethics in the field based on the context of place, everyday lives of people in global South, and the political moment when the research was conducted, I offer two insights in the paper. First, I suggest that, apart from focusing on the prospects of information collection, it is important to be mindful of the daily practices of the potential research participants and the context of place while choosing qualitative methods, if the place is known to us prior to the fieldwork. However, having this awareness might not ensure that all methods choices will work in the field. Therefore, second, during the process of adapting to challenges and (re)strategizing research methodologies, I argue that being flexible should be viewed as more in line with being ethical and maintaining good practice in the field. In doing so, this paper calls for a broader ethical understanding that prioritizes compassion towards participants as well as oneself, which might necessitate going beyond institutionally defined regulations, to create a more inclusive geographical knowledge production process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses Mikhail Bakhtin and Homi K. Bhabha’s notions of hybridity as an interpretive tool in a traditional market area situated to the north of the center of Calcutta called Barabazaar or the Great Bazaar. More specifically, I study the changing effects of colonialization and globalization on a small group of Marwari paper traders in an area at the southern end of Barabazaar called China Bazaar. Acknowledging the overlapping geographies, both indigenous and foreign, that were and are constantly negotiated in places such as Barabazaar, I define a concept of hybrid space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban wetlands and waterways are vital for a city's defence, transport, water supply, environment, and culture. However, overuse, environmental stress, and management issues degenerate their condition, particularly in countries with high populations, limited funds, and improper infrastructure. A megacity in eastern India, Kolkata is blessed with two significant rivers, an efficient canal system, and a wetland of international prominence. Unfortunately, various factors disturbed their natural flow, slaying them with pollution, sedimentation, and reduced aquatic biodiversity, thus losing their socio-cultural importance. The paper analyses the interactions and inter-relationships between the city's main waterways in a comprehensive environmental, socio-economic, and cultural context. It also presents a prescriptive framework for the eco-restoration and management of the city's waterways. The target-driven strategies comprise the spatio-physical components of land, land-water interface, and water for physical, ecological, and hydro-morphological restoration of these waterways as an urgent step towards urban sustainability and resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India's coastal cities have been playing a pivotal role in international relations through culture, commerce, and connectivity since the hoary past. In modern times, coastal cities such as Mumbai (formerly Bombay) on the Arabian Coast and Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) on the Bay of Bengal have been active actors in international affairs. While Mumbai has been the hub of international trade and commerce, Kolkata has been the junction of cultural bonhomie with Bangladesh and Southeast Asian countries, which gained more traction due to cross-border movements of technology, information, education, trade and finance, and artistic tools bolstered by the New Economic Policy beginning in the early 1990s. Indian states and metropolitan cities are enhancing their positions in international affairs with tangible gains. Mumbai is referred to as India's financial capital and the home to the headquarters of great global business houses and financial organisations. Similarly, Kolkata is known as the cultural capital of India (Sri Aurobindo, Tagore, Shanti Niketan, Bengali folk art and culture etc.) and a destination for foreign tourists, artists and curious researchers. This paper examines the growth and impact of city diplomacy in India through the prism of federalism in advancing local interests in international politics. It attempts to assess the role of Indian cities from a comparative perspective in the conduct of city diplomacy from economic and cultural aspects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large-scale private real estate projects in the past few decades in vast areas of increasingly varied scales have been created that were once sparsely inhabited agricultural land and wetlands in the remote locations of these urban areas. This paper examines the reasons for India's peripheralization of real estate megaprojects. Such projects are typically constructed on agricultural land, notably paddy fields and wetlands. Developers' site selections are mostly influenced by the low cost of land and future development potential. In contrast to the disarray of existing urban spaces, "bypass urbanism" creates restricted and unique city spaces that allow more contented or high-status lifestyles. They avoid large parts of the city area as part of their daily lives, reinforcing socio-economic isolation, peripheralization, and uneven urban development. With the help of two case studies, this paper explores how peripheralization has created a restricted and exclusive space that facilitates middle-class life while bypassing and neglecting existing urban areas. This massive bypass urbanism constitutes a new quality of urban growth with far-reaching and uncountable repercussions, resulting in the creation of islands and the reshuffling of the entire metropolitan region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically analyses complex arrangements of actors, infrastructure technologies and practices to argue that co-production of urban service delivery entails a mutual, but contested dependence of state and non-state actors. We present two empirical cases based on in-depth qualitative fieldwork highlighting the role of Councillors regulating formal hydraulics and the fragile, volatile relations of private water provisioning in Baruipur Municipality, a small, peripheral town in the Kolkata Metropolitan Area. Characterised by groundwater arsenic, iron risks and heterogeneous urban waterscape, our analysis shows that powerful socio-political intermediaries shape everyday provisioning and access, 're-politicisation' complicating notions of collaborative alliances, equitable benefits and sustainable, material improvements. While gaps in piped water provisioning in the global South cities do find nascent community-led, collective service delivery efforts, in a socio-political context where water is understood as a public right, a state provision, does the continued reliance on the state allow joint service delivery to manifest? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is based on ethnographic field work conducted in Kolkata during 2019–2021 with queer and trans people during the COVID pandemic. This article develops a new framework of queer patchworks and discusses the various ways through which queer and trans communities are navigating survival during these non-normative times. This paper particularly responds to how digital media is being used by individuals and organisations as a form of witness, belonging, intimacy and care. Queer people in India live within different forms of marginality and precarity, homophobia, caste violence, unemployment and homelessness. This article brings together patchworks of whatsapp texts, broken zoom conversations, cooking gossip and addas on the banks of river Hooghly as a nod to these new realities which are reshaping queer identities; thus, offering new ways to also acknowledge, accommodate and 'queer' what counts as knowledge. A particular focus was moving away from totalising narratives and instead examine the tensions of being queer in contemporary India alongside the many contradictions. In turn, this engenders wider questions about queer desire, nationalism and belonging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Immigrants use food blogs to construct and maintain their ethnic identities. During the pandemic in spring of 2020, the Indian food blog Bongmom's Cookbook, which showcases food from the Kolkata region of India, was my go-to for coping with the sense of uncertainty in the world. The blog and Facebook posts used humor to document meals and family life during the pandemic, while avoiding more difficult topics surrounding the pandemic. Using Bongmom's blog as an example, this paper argues that the topic of food is fraught with politics. On the one hand, the blog fulfills readers' emotional needs by helping them connect with their homeland and providing a space for self-care during a crisis, but on the other hand, the absence of discussion on issues such as economic inequality, healthcare, unfair immigration practices, and institutional racism highlights the economic and social divides within the immigrant community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cities are the physical embodiment of power, capital and state control. Yet urban centres are heterogeneous and multiple counter-cities are created within the bounds of the city – contesting the mainstream logic of capital accumulation and hierarchical relationships of power. While one may first envision counter-cities as large sites of protest and consciously alternative communities, everyday counter-cities are also possible. This article combines three theories to develop a framework of everyday counter-cities, drawing together subaltern urbanism, prefiguration and reciprocal relations of care. This paper uses this framework to analyse qualitative research conducted with communities in two informal settlements of migrant communities in Kolkata to explain how these seemingly ordinary places form counter-cities. This paper draws on these examples to argue that a counter-city founded on an ethos of care and anticipatory action for the future is possible, even within situations of high income disparity and inequality. • Everyday subaltern communities create counter-cities based on hope and care. • A counter-city illustrates reciprocal care, prefiguration and subaltern urbanism. • A counter-city represents the intersection of social relations, space and temporality. • Migrant communities in Kolkata are ostracised but resist the label of 'slums' of despair. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Narratives on children's independent mobility (CIM) from developing countries remain limited and under-researched. This is the first paper from India that examines CIM across three urban neighbourhood typologies, taking a case of Kolkata. The study reports from the comparative analysis of the data provided by 384 parents of children aged 7–12 years from four schools on their CIM licence scores and neighbourhood perception. Logistic regression was employed to examine the association of CIM with the built environment (BE) and social environment (SE) variables of the neighbourhood. The results reveal that older children (10–12 years) were found to enjoy higher CIM licences irrespective of their gender. Low-rise neighbourhood inheriting an organic spatial growth fosters higher CIM than planned mid-rise or high-rise neighbourhoods. When all variables were taken together, the influence of neighbourhood social cohesion and safety on CIM was found to override the influence of BE variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tackling air pollution has become of utmost importance since the last few decades. Different statistical as well as deep learning methods have been proposed till now, but seldom those have been used to forecast future long-term pollution trends. Forecasting long-term pollution trends into the future is highly important for government bodies around the globe as they help in the framing of efficient environmental policies. This paper presents a comparative study of various statistical and deep learning methods to forecast long-term pollution trends for the two most important categories of particulate matter (PM) which are PM2.5 and PM10. The study is based on Kolkata, a major city on the eastern side of India. The historical pollution data collected from government set-up monitoring stations in Kolkata are used to analyse the underlying patterns with the help of various time-series analysis techniques, which is then used to produce a forecast for the next two years using different statistical and deep learning methods. The findings reflect that statistical methods such as auto-regressive (AR), seasonal auto-regressive integrated moving average (SARIMA) and Holt–Winters outperform deep learning methods such as stacked, bi-directional, auto-encoder and convolution long short-term memory networks based on the limited data available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reports a study on the air quality over Kolkata, India during the transition period from post-monsoon to winter. A fuzzy binary relation based approach is implemented to O3, N O2 and P M2 5 and the overall air quality index (AQI). Individual pollutants have been converted to fuzzy sets based on their concentrations as elements of the universe of discourse with appropriate fuzzy membership functions defined on them. AQI has been divided into categories based on the recommendations of the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), Govt of India. After defining the fuzzy relations, the fuzzy composite relations have been derived to construct fuzzy membership matrices based on the composite binary fuzzy relations. Afterwards, the membership grades of the matrices for the composite fuzzy binary relations have been studied and N O2 along with O3 have been consideblack as having highly significant influence on the overall AQI over the polluted study zone during the transition from post-monsoon to winter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sex work can offer a quick way of making money and is the only profession in which women may earn more in fewer hours when compared to other available jobs. However, most studies with sex workers in India are based on socially biased assumptions about sex work; that is, women are either coerced or trafficked into sex work. Limited attention has been paid to the voices of non-brothel-based sex workers in India. Drawing data from a larger ethnographic study conducted between December 2009 and July 2010, this paper analyses how women sex workers operating from non-brothel-based sex work settings in Kolkata, India, foresee their future. Unlike the popular 'victim imagery' of women sex workers in the Global South, this study found that women are not passive recipients of the trade; instead, they employ agency - sometimes transgressing the normative boundaries and at times reinscribing these boundaries to secure a future for themselves and their families. Therefore, to promote HIV preventive behaviour programmes reaching out to sex workers, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) must proactively inquire about women's future plans and assist them in materialising their future goals, which are mostly concerned with their children's future, a life free of stigma/shame, and financial security in old age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study assessed the research output on Bamboo for a period of 29 years (1989-2018). The web of science database has been used to retrieve worldwide publication records on bamboo research. The records were analysed using the descriptive statistics. Based on the retrieved data, various aspect of literature on bamboo research analysed and interpreted. The performance of the most productivity countries, authors, journals, Institution wise, and Growth rate and doubling time have assessed. The articles were classified as Research, review and others and grouped under 22 subjects to identify the subject coverage of bamboo research. The study found a positive growth in research and review article while very sharp decrement was observed. The growth rate and doubling period were estimated 8.5 and 8.34 respectively. Most of the articles written on Agriculture, Material Science, building technology and chemistry. M. Das (Presidency University, Department Life Science, Kolkata) is the most prolific primary author while R. Kumar (National Institute of Technology, Department of Mechanical Engineer, Silchar, India) mostly occurred as secondary author. Local and National collaboration mostly observed in the paper. India is the most productive country of world followed by china and Tamilnadu is most productive state of India. Indian Institute of Technology, India is a premier institute in bamboo research activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper, based on a primary sample survey over 1925 earning individuals in the cities of Kolkata, Cuttack and Bengaluru, examines how the individual and household characteristics influence the acts of giving in urban India. The regression results indicate income, family size and property ownership affecting likelihood and extent of giving. Likelihood to give is more with females, though males tend to donate more. There exists threshold income beyond which likelihood to donate is less. Characteristics like age, education, dependency ratio and marital status influence certain acts of giving. As the opportunity cost of non-cash giving increases with the rise in income, cash donations substitute non-cash giving. There also prevails complementarity in the acts of giving. On behavioral front, in addition to work–life balance and pledging, the notion of rational choice seems to be gaining ground. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine whether the earnings of sex workers in India are significantly different from those in domestic work, a trade that is also gendered in nature and can be done with similarly low levels of training and education. We analyse this using data collected during fieldwork in the cities of Kolkata and Delhi in India. Our results confirm that there is a significant difference in wages between the two groups of workers. We consider the extent to which the stigma attached to sex work contributes to the higher wages in this occupation relative to domestic work. To do this, we control for endogeneity caused by selection on unobservables. We find that stigma is a significant contributory factor to the wage differential. We also preliminarily consider an alternate explanation – that of violence in the trade. We find that the experience of violence in the trade does not affect the take home earnings of the individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Groundwater is a resource under stress. In both developed and developing countries, it has been found that increasing human influence has led to the contamination of the groundwater resource. To understand the magnitude of this problem, a study was conducted in 58 wards within Northern part of Kolkata, India, where water samples from tube wells were collected and analysed on essential drinking water quality parameters, prescribed by WHO. Using Principal component analysis, and Water quality index mapping, the aforementioned results have been interpreted. This has helped to depict that not only is the groundwater unsuitable for drinking, but that the parametric values have a tendency to increase abruptly within the shortest of ranges, indicating urban pollution as the root cause of contamination. This paper shall thus discuss the spatial change in groundwater quality in northern Kolkata and suggest measures which might be implemented to secure a sustainable future for the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to Lefebvre's analysis, urbanisation is not only an expansion of urban footprint but, in a broader sense, the radical socio-spatial transformation of society. The cultural setting and its physical manifestation creating distinctive identities within a city are transformed by rapid urbanisation and gentrification. The effects will be analysed in three terms of simultaneous sociocultural-spatial changes; cultural displacement, physical transformation of neighbourhoods, and change in cultural identities. The paper intends to hypothesise whether cultural displacement and altering cultural identities by gentrification and rapid urbanisation will signify gentrified homogenised cities in the future. The paper investigates aspects of multiculturalism and inter-culturalism to mitigate the challenges in sustaining multicultural places in cities. It tries to find the complementary approach of both to generate harmonious multicultural diversities and socio-economic sustainability, keeping the cultural identities intact. One of the examples of rapid urbanisation and gentrification challenging multicultural aspects and altering cultural identities lies in the core of the cultural capital of India, Kolkata in Tangra, Chinatown. The cultural identity of India's only existing Chinatown is changing from 2 to 3 storey live-work based multicultural communities to 30 floors high-rise homogenous gentrified enclaves displacing the diverse cultural communities from the core of the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This multi-disciplinary paper brings together two bodies of evidence that, to our knowledge, have not before been combined: literature about the efficient functioning of the East Kolkata Wetlands in the production of fish is juxtaposed against scientific research that documents the heavy metal pollution of those Wetlands caused by industries such as tanneries. Our primary question is whether it is safe to eat the fish (and other produce) of the Wetlands; a related issue is to assess the strengths and limitations of traditional knowledge. In discussing what the farmers know and what the scientists know, we have placed our work in the context of a framework developed by Richards in 1979. Our conclusions suggest that the expertise of the farmers and the expertise of the scientists can be brought together. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are several lacunas associated with the public transport quality and allied facilities in emerging countries such as India. The improvement of these facilities is a major challenge as most of the Governments are not only finding it difficult to provide an additional subsidy for the improvement but are also hesitant to increase the fare because of socio-political reasons. In this context, the present paper demonstrates an approach for investigating the rationality of fare increment with reference to a case study of transfer facilities at metro stations in Kolkata city, India. Rationality of the fare increment is judged by comparing the fare increment with (i) benefits likely to be transferred to commuters due to improvement, (ii) present fare, and (iii) average daily income of metro commuters. The work also highlights the need for quantifying the benefits likely to be transferred to commuters from the proposed improvements for relating the fare increment to derived benefits. It is shown that if the fare increment is found rational then facilities should be developed by recovering the associated cost from commuters without putting the additional financial burden on the Government. The Government subsidy should be introduced only when it is required to bring down the fare increment to a level which is considered rational. The findings will hopefully encourage policy makers to apply the approach to other contexts for improvement of transport facility or quality of service with a rational increment of fare and use of Government subsidy, as and when required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents emerging research on young women's participation in virtual heterosexual mate-seeking in two bustees (urban slum communities) in Kolkata. I begin the paper by reviewing the context of online friendship, dating and romance in India. I show how greater educational and social achievements in the bustees are prompting some young Muslim women to pursue online friendship and mate-seeking. I explore how these young women are using schooling opportunities to learn computer skills, and using the computer to broaden their social worlds. I discuss the opportunities young women have to meet friends and partners online and how they sustain virtual relationships. For many, online friendships and mate-seeking can be a safe method to meet young men, as it reduces corporeal risks. This virtual world of relationships, however, is not entirely risk free. I discuss how the online nature of meeting young men is underpinned by discourses of distrust. Though the research group is small and participants represent a privileged population, the paper shows that virtual relationships are an emerging and experimental way young women are trying to alter their life course and expand their social circles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – Practical conservation of heritage buildings in Kolkata started in the 1990s and the first restoration project was the Town Hall, a public building built by the British in 1813, in the central business district by a public-private partnership. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the restoration process and adaptive reuse of the Town Hall as a case study. Design/methodology/approach – A team of conservationists, architects and structural engineers worked during 1996-1998. The methodology included surveying and documenting the existing structure; examining old materials and methods of construction, earlier repairs and the suitability of matching new materials; analysing the structure, defects and their causes; prescribing remedial measures; preparing items of work, estimating and tendering for appointment of contractors; allocating funds for restoration; supervision and monitoring of the works. Findings – It was necessary to undertake structural strengthening and physical restoration through corrective measures, and reinstallation of all service systems, which resulted in the opening up of this edifice again for various kinds of public use, that included a museum. Social implications – This was a pilot project for the state administration and the people of Kolkata. After this project, the conservation of historic buildings became an agenda of government and civil society. The lessons learned here were applied to the restoration of other similar buildings in Kolkata. Originality/value – Conservation-researchers, academics and practitioners will gain from this paper an in-depth understanding of the restoration process in Kolkata. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whilst the city is a central focus of research on diasporic resettlement, little research has explored the city as a site of diasporic return. This paper explores return visits to Calcutta by members of the Anglo-Indian and Jewish communities who have migrated to London, Toronto and Israel since 1947. In doing so, the paper contributes to broader debates about return visits and migrations as well as the connections between cities, communities and diasporas. Unlike research that focuses on the nation and/or ‘homeland’, the paper explores the city as a destination for diasporic return. In contrast to work that concentrates on particular ethnic groups that become minorities after migration and expect to feel an ethnic ‘affiliation’ on their return, the paper studies two communities that were minorities before migration. Drawing on interviews with Anglo-Indian and Jewish Calcuttans, the paper argues that decisions to return – and not to return – are shaped by ideas about the city as home more than the nation as homeland. Moreover, returns to the city are also, in different and sometimes contested ways, returns to the community and are experienced and understood in terms of wider narratives of urban and community continuity and change. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the last decade, several influential scholars have rigorously worked on the impact of neoliberal globalization on the poor in the cities of the South. But they have yet to provide a comprehensive account of how and why some groups in the margins are seen to successfully negotiate with the new modes of governing populations and increase their visibility as a 'category,' while some groups fail to do so. This paper seeks to bridge this research gap by comparing a successful and a failed mobilization in Calcutta. In both cases, use of the footpath has been central. The paper shows how the success of the hawkers in claiming the footpath is tied to the marginalization of the claims of the pavement dwellers that has (a) homogenized the representation of the footpath as only used by pedestrians and hawkers and (b) led to the elision of the pavement dwellers as a governmental category. The paper argues that by arrogating to themselves an archival function-which is conventionally associated with the governmental state-sections of population like the hawkers can become successful in their negotiations with the government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is based on an empirical study of the growing isolation and loneliness among the aged in the middleclass families in Kolkata. The seminal observation is that the rationalisation of the family size combines perfectly with large-scale dispersal of the younger members to leave the aged amidst isolation and loneliness. The other factors that contribute to isolation and loneliness are (a) the death of one of the spouses and (b) breakdown of health to the point of being dependent on others. The aged as well as the younger members take a rational approach to combat this problem while banking heavily on family and kinship relations. Some of the elderly members even cherish the freedom that the dispersal in the family offers rather than regretting it. The paper concludes that the Weberian goal-oriented rationality which has been donning the social relations in the post-industrial West is not yet visible in any significant scale in the Indian urban situation, although there are stray cases of inhumanity and desertion in treating the aged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The housing dimension in Kolkata has been changing in recent years. Since 1991, the city has initiated housing reform that has taken many forms and manifestations characterized by the reduction in social allocation, cutbacks in public funding and promotion of a real estate culture in close partnership between the state and private actors. There has been increasing concern about the housing condition of the poor in the deserted slums and bustee settlements amidst the evident ‘poor blindness’ in housing and investment policies. Against this background the paper discusses self-help housing in Kolkata. It seeks to answer a simple question – why the concept of self-help has not been recognised as a viable policy option for a city with widespread slums and bustee settlements by visiting the complex urban context of Kolkata set within the city''s politics, poverty and policies. The paper concludes that there is a need to recognise the existing structural duality in the city and support self-help housing as a parallel housing approach. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Globally, most urban planning techniques and practices at the municipal level and below approach issues of urban environment from the perspective of certain dominant paradigms. Such paradigms are based on two primary theoretical frameworks of ecological modernization and neoliberal planning. The paper showcases how the urban environmental reality in the context of Southern (developing) countries and at a local scale necessitates revisiting the theoretical frameworks. Ecological modernization, which relies on technocentricism and instrumental rationality, calls for innovation to solve environmental problems. Neoliberalism argues for a decentralized power structure and enhanced role of the actual stakeholders in development, particularly the market. It holds that economic growth takes care of livelihood issues, and hence also the environment. Planning strategies that evolve out of these paradigms are theoretically congruent with the aims of sustainable urban development. This paper discusses evidence from Kolkata, India, and contrastingly shows that cities can continue to have pockets of declining environmental conditions and deplorable living conditions while having 'liberally-enabled economic growth', 'instrumental environmental management', and a 'decentralized planning milieu'. Evidence from Kolkata highlights reasons for the mismatch between the urban transformation pattern and planning practices. This paper identifies reasons behind this paradox and argues that such planning approaches having their origin in industrialized economies can be critical impediments to achieving sustainability in the South. This paper suggests applying a composite rationale in planning, the PRETAB planning process model, that addresses the main concerns raised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to understand why and how young Muslim women pursue sexual relationships in the urban bustees (slums) of Kolkata, West Bengal, India. I discuss how girls in heterosexual romantic relationships decide where, when and how to have sex, and the importance of class discourses and popular Bollywood culture in this decision-making process. Premarital sex is haram, or a forbidden act in Islam, and I will describe how girls in this research negotiate their Muslim identity whilst pursuing sexual relations with their boyfriends. Sex before marriage is also socially unacceptable in the bustee, and throughout this paper I show why young women negotiate various social risks to pursue sexual relationships. I demonstrate that girls are not overtly challenging the normative discourses of sex, gender arrangements and religious expectations in public spaces. Rather, they manipulate the norms of the 'good Muslim girl' in public in order to maintain sexual relationships with their boyfriends in private. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how participatory research processes aid in our understanding of a 'proper' Muslim girlhood in the bustees (urban slums) of Kolkata. Specifically, young women in this paper use PhotoVoice to analyse what it means to be a 'good Muslim girl' in the conservative Muslim slums. By focusing on clothing and the body, young women use photographs to depict societal expectations of them. This exploration points to various ways young women resist and challenge the normative understanding of the 'good girl' in their everyday lives. The paper shows that participatory inquiry can begin a process of dialogue amongst peers to address and support young women's desires. It ends by mapping the impact of young women's participation in this research project, and calls for new ways to quantify 'genuine children's participation'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the work and collaborations that contributed to the growth of the psychoanalytic community in Mumbai and Kolkata. It describes this with both the development of the Psychoanalytic Observation Studies Training and later, the Child Psychotherapy training. The second part of the paper gives a brief overview of a student's experience of observing a baby in Mumbai. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Proper diagnosis of Low Back Pain (LBP) is quite challenging in especially the developing countries like India. Though some developed countries prepared guidelines for evaluation of LBP with tests to detect psychological overlay, implementation of the recommendations becomes quite difficult in regular clinical practice, and different specialties of medicine offer different modes of management. Aiming at offering an expert-level diagnosis for the patients having LBP, this paper uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to derive a clinically justified and highly sensitive LBP resolution technique.Materials and Methods: The paper considers exhaustive knowledge for different LBP disorders (classified based on different pain generators), which have been represented using lattice structures to ensure completeness, non-redundancy, and optimality in the design of knowledge base. Further the representational enhancement of the knowledge has been done through construction of a hierarchical network, called RuleNet, using the concept of partially-ordered set (poset) with respect to the subset equality (⊆) relation. With implicit incorporation of probability within the knowledge, the RuleNet is used to derive reliable resolution logic along with effective resolution of uncertainties during clinical decision making.Results: The proposed methodology has been validated with clinical records of seventy seven LBP patients accessed from the database of ESI Hospital Sealdah, India over a period of one year from 2018 to 2019. Achieving 83% sensitivity of the proposed technique, the pain experts at the hospital find the design clinically satisfactory. The inferred outcomes have also been found to be homogeneous with the actual or original diagnosis.Discussions: The proposed approach achieves the clinical and computational efficiency by limiting the shortcomings of the existing methodologies for AI-based LBP diagnosis. While computational efficiency (with respect to both time and space complexity) is ensured by inferring clinical decisions through optimal processing of the knowledge items using poset, the clinical acceptability has been ascertained reaching to the most-likely diagnostic outcomes through probabilistic resolution of clinical uncertainties.Conclusion: The derived resolution technique, when embedded in LBP medical expert systems, would provide a fast, reliable, and affordable healthcare solution for this ailment to a wider range of general population suffering from LBP. The proposed scheme would significantly reduce the controversies and confusion in LBP treatment, and cut down the cost of unnecessary or inappropriate treatment and referral. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electromagnetic interference is becoming an increasing concern, because of the high intensity of surrounding electromagnetic waves, mainly arising from communication signals and also due to widespread use of equipment that operates at radio frequencies. As a consequence, sensitive data acquisition equipment suffers from erroneous results. Operating such instruments in a suitable shielded environment can significantly reduce this electromagnetic interference. But to achieve good shielding in practice, construction-related problems are to be faced, especially in large spaces, where a single metal plate cannot cover the whole area. Unless special care is taken, electromagnetic waves can penetrate\ through the gap in the joints and defects like drill holes reducing the shielding effectiveness. Also, a single layer of shielding is not always effective as the quality deteriorates drastically even due to minor constructional defects as mentioned above. This paper describes real-life experiences, step-by-step, in the shielding of a spacious insulation diagnostic laboratory (with a target of at least 55 dB signal attenuation), firstly using a good conducting material, using two different methods for joining the sheets, and ultimately constructing a second layer of shielding using a magnetic material. To study the attenuation behavior of the laboratory with respect to electromagnetic waves, a device for the relative measurement of surrounding electromagnetic signal strength is developed. The signal levels are measured initially outside and then at different places inside the shielded laboratory. The results presented in this paper show (1) the variation of attenuation characteristics inside the shielded laboratory due to different methods adopted for joining the shielding sheets using a good conducting material, (2) the effect of a second shielding layer in the form of a box that was constructed using a magnetic material and placed inside the laboratory and (3) the improvement in attenuation behavior after the actual construction of the second layer of shielding using a magnetic material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper makes an attempt to define 'Street politics' in the context of the contemporary developing world taking encroachment on the public land by the urban poor as a specific case. Depicting thoroughly how the pavement space in the city of Calcutta, India, became a contested site of so many claims ranging from legal to paralegal, the paper seeks to observe street politics not as a process or an institutional form of politics but as a set of relations between the government and the populations on the streets shaped through and conditioned by the operation of the modern governmental systems. The paper uses this understanding of street politics as a prism to gaze at the fuzzy domain of the politics of the informal poor. It subsequently presents a detailed ethnographic account of bow different informal groups invent strategies, sometimes fighting with each other and sometimes making horizontal consolidations, to manoeuvre governmental policies that put restrictions on their livelihood practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past decade-and-a-half, sex workers in Kolkata (India) red-light districts have involved themselves in a STD-HIV health project and, at the same time, formed an autonomous organization to protest against exploitation and to challenge social norms that ostracize them. This paper examines how this marginalized group, who previously saw themselves as socially alienated victims, came to reinvent themselves as social actors, endowed with a sense of collective rights and capacity. The analytical focus is on the transformation of the worldview and self-perception of sex workers, and on the specific aspects of the development intervention that facilitated this transition. The following elements were found to be most significant: (a) the establishment of an egalitarian organizational culture in the health project; (b) the introduction of a dialogic educational programme; and (c) the development of a culture of political activism among sex workers, animated by a notion of their right to protest against injustice and inequality. The study draws attention to the change of attitudes and identity as the key factor propelling the engagement of the socially excluded and the poor in development processes and public action. By analysing this largely neglected theme in development literature, this paper contributes to debates on the question of participation from a hitherto under-explored perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the contested nature of diasporas and their complex involvement in dynamics of international development by focusing on the recent construction of luxury condominiums on the fringes of the Indian metropolis of Kolkata. These new housing projects are built and marketed with a self-consciously global aesthetic and are actively promoted to both overseas Indian communities and local elites as spaces in which one can take up an explicitly "international" identity. This paper argues that these discourses and developments regarding life-space and lifestyle are part of a broader project intended to help Kolkata regain its glory as a "world city." Furthermore, it is suggested that the deployment of the heavily mythologized figure of the global Indian is a crucial element for mobilizing key actors and constituting material transformations in the postcolonial city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: PM10 and its chemical species mass concentrations were measured once in a week at residential (Kasba) and industrial (Cossipore) sites of an urban region of Kolkata for a period of 24 h during November 2003 to November 2004. At each monitoring site, 53 sets of daily average PM10 samples were collected during the study period. Approximately 55% of the monitoring days are weekdays, while 45% are weekends. The PM10 mass concentrations ranged from 68.2 to 280.6 μg m−3 at the residential site, and 62.4 to 401.2 μg m−3 at the industrial site. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon compounds (PAH), fluoranthene (Fl), pyrene (Py), benzo(a)anthracene (BaA), benzo(b)fluoranthene (BbF) and benzo(a)pyrene (BaP) have been analyzed using Gas Chromatoghaphy. Metals in PM10 deposited on quartz microfibre filter papers were measured using an Inductively Coupled Plasma-Atomic Emission Spectrometer. Chromium (Cr), zinc (Zn), lead (Pb), cadmium (Cd), nickel (Ni), manganese (Mn) and iron (Fe) are the seven toxic trace metals quantified from the measured PM10 concentrations. Total carbon (TC), inorganic carbon (IC) and organic carbon (OC) were analyzed using a Carbon analyzer. Exposed quartz microfibre filter papers were also analyzed for water-soluble anions of fluoride (F−), chloride (Cl−), nitrate (NO3 −), phosphate (PO4 3−) and sulfate (SO4 2−) using ion chromatography. In this study, principal component analysis (PCA)/absolute principal component scores (APCS) model was applied to the mass concentrations of PM10 and its chemical species. Principal component analysis with varimax rotation identified five possible sources; solid waste dumping, vehicular emission, coal combustion, cooking and soil dust at residential site. The extracted possible sources at the industrial site were vehicular emissions, coal combustion, electroplating industry, tyre wear and secondary aerosol. A quantitative estimation by principal component analysis–multiple linear regression (PCA–MLR) model indicated that solid waste dumping contributed 36%, vehicular emissions 26%, coal combustion 13%, cooking 8% and soil dust 4% at the residential site. The PCA–MLR apportioned 37% to vehicular emissions, 29% to coal combustion, 18% to electroplating industry, 8% to tyre wear and 1% to secondary aerosol at the industrial site. Due to the limitation in source marker species analyzed, 13% at Kasba and 7% at Cossipore could not be apportioned to any possible sources by this technique. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Context: Identification of the effect of valid factors on students' academic performance is of great importance to student counseling and policy making. Aims: This study was carried out to find the predictors of academic performance of 2nd year undergraduate medical students of a renowned Medical College of Kolkata. Materials and Methods: This cross sectional study was carried out in a tertiary care teaching hospital of Kolkata. The information on factors like attendance percentage, sex, place of residence, previous academic performance of the entire batch of 2nd year students was collected from the departments' academic records and through personal interview. The association of the above mentioned factors with students' academic performance was determined through statistical analysis using t-test and multiple linear regression modeling and the results were reported. Results: Academic performance is found to be weakly correlated with attendance. Better academic grade was observed for the group with high attendance percentage compared to the other with low attendance percentage (P < 0.01). Higher percentage of marks was observed to be scored by female students (P < 0.01), local students (P < 0.01) and high performers who were capable of successfully clearing their 1st year's coursework in their first attempt (P < 0.01). Conclusion: All the factors studied in this paper which includes attendance, sex, place of residence and previous academic performance serve as predictors in understanding students' performance. Among the above mentioned, the attendance of the students is an important factor that has to be monitored and regulated through corrective actions to improve the performance of the class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: The objective of the paper is to study the role of partogram in the outcome of spontaneous labour in primigravidae at term with singleton pregnancy and vertex as the presenting part. Methods: This prospective observational study was carried out in the labour room of the department of Gynaecology and Obstetrics of Medical College & Hospital, Kolkata, over a period of one year i.e. from June 2011 to May 2012 after obtaining approval from the institutional ethical committee. Analysis of the progress of labour was done in five hundred women with the help of modified WHO partograph. The study population was divided into three groups. Group I had a total observed duration of active stage six hours or less and their cervicograph remained on or to the left of the alert line. Group II had total observed duration of active phase between more than six hours and less than ten hours and their cervicograph remained between the alert and action line. Group III, who had the duration of observed active phase more than 10 hours, had their cervicograph crossing the action line. The different types of abnormal labor were studied. The maternal and fetal outcomes were assessed. Results: 80.8% of the women belonged to group I, 15.2% to group II and 4% to group III. Surgical interference increased as the labour curve moved to the right of the alert line. Use of partogram helped in overall reduction in the duration of labour. Timely intervention reduced the incidence of prolonged labour and its sequelae. 19.2% of the women showed abnormal labour. Severe complications were successfully averted. There were no cases of maternal death, puerperal sepsis, ruptured uterus or fresh still births. Overall neonatal mortality rate was also reduced. Conclusions: The use of modified WHO partograph significantly improves the outcome of labour in both maternal & neonatal perspective. The WHO partograph should be used in all maternity units with incorporated management guidelines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Slums pose a significant challenge for urban planning and policy as they provide shelter to a third of urban residents. UN-Habitat reports that, in 2001, approximately 924 million people lived in slums or informal settlements across the world (UN-Habitat, 2003). However, varying definitions of what constitutes a slum result in different slum population estimates. Most definitions treat a slum as a community of several households, rarely recognizing that housing conditions differ for each individual household within the area. Moreover, definitions of slums usually take a dichotomous approach whereby a place is either a slum or not. Little attempt is made to go beyond this slum/non-slum dichotomy. This paper moves beyond the traditional ways of defining a slum by proposing a new household level enumeration of slums and developing Slum Severity Index (SSI), which measures the level of deprivation on a continuous scale based on the UN-Habitat's slum definition. We apply this new approach of analyzing slums to a household survey dataset to estimate the total number of slum households in Mumbai and Kolkata, two megacities in India. To contrast our approach, we compare these estimates with the Census of India's. The comparison highlights stark differences in the two estimates and the slum/non-slum household classifications. The estimates by the Census are considerably smaller than those based on the UN-Habitat definition in both cities. By applying the SSI, we also demonstrate intra-urban variability in housing conditions within our study cities. The analysis highlights differences in slum profiles measured in terms of both housing deprivation levels and housing deprivation types in both cities. The main objective of this study is to demonstrate the usefulness of the household level analysis of slums in drawing implications for designing and implementing slum policies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article provides information on the October 2005 issue of the journal "Proceedings of the IEE--Circuits, Devices and Systems," based on the papers selected from the CODEC 04. To discuss the current problems in computers, devices and communication, and to exchange ideas about how to overcome these problems among researchers in these disciplines, an international conference entitled "Computers and Devices for Communication" (CODEC 04), was organised by the Institute of Radio Physics and Electronics at the University of Calcutta, Kolkata, India, on January 1-3, 2004. The papers presented at the conference belong broadly to three categories, first, devices and VLSI circuits, encompassing both compound semiconductor nanostructures and CMOS based ICs; second, communication and electromagnetics; and, third, computer and information processing systems.

Aims: The objective of the paper was to study the spectrum of gynecological disorders in HIV positive woman, which are often not given much importance as the issue of antiretroviral therapy and management of opportunistic infections occupy the major share of their treatment strategy. Methods: It was an observational study which included 135 women. The study was conducted in the Medical College and Hospital, Kolkata from January 2010 to December 2012 after obtaining permission from the institutional ethics committee. All the HIV positive women who came to the gynecological outpatient department with gynecological complaints were included in the study. Results: The seropositive women suffered from the same range of gynecological problems as in non-infected women. The most common complaints at presentation were vaginal white discharge and pruritus vulvae. The most common postoperative complication was fever. Conclusions: The HIV/AIDS is taking the shape of a generalized epidemic and with the advances in the antiretroviral therapy, the life expectancy of the patients is increasing. With the improvement of survival more and more of HIV positive women would present with problems pertaining to any system of the body and the gynecological complaint is not an exception. Addressing these problems would lead to boosting up of the care and support of this subset of women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to see how a particular labour market (domestic service), a traditionally male domain, became segregated both by gender and age in the post-partition Indian state of West Bengal, and mainly in its capital city Calcutta. It argues that the downward trend in industrial job opportunities in post independent West Bengal, accompanied by the large scale immigration of men, women and children from bordering East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), led to a general decline in wage rate for those in domestic service. Poor refugee women, in their frantic search for a means of survival, gradually drove out the males of the host population who were engaged in domestic service in urban West Bengal by offering to work for a very low wage and often for no wage at all. As poor males from the neighbouring states of Bihar, Orissa and the United Provinces constituted historically a substantial section of Calcutta domestic workers, it was mainly this group who were replaced by refugee women. The second stage in the changing profile of domestic service since the 1970s in urban West Bengal was arguably set by migrating girl children from different parts of the state to Calcutta city in search of employment. This is probably why West Bengal had the highest girl children's work-participation rate in urban India in 2001. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Metropolitan centers usually do not reveal iso-diametric spatial configurations, as they have evolved with gradual non-homogeneous transformation of land. The spatio-temporal distribution of urban functions reveals centrality towards a particular area. The preferred centre usually identifies itself with accessibility and diversity in urban activities, which is usually synonymous with the urban core. Generally, the urban core develops due to greater densities in terms of the built up environment including commercial, industrial, residential, institutional, communication and other infrastructural features. Location of urban core is a product of both horizontal and vertical zonation of urban functions. Due to its complex and dynamic character, delineation of the urban core is a challenging subject of research. While the core itself is a complex unit, most large metropolitan cities have experienced the development of "multiple cores" as it expands, and has both spatial and temporal components. Effective and uniform techniques for delineating the core area of an urban center have been developed over time as, undeniably, it is of utmost importance to the urban planners, ecologists, architects, environmentalists, economists for the study of urban dynamics. This paper attempts to use geo-spatial data and use a composite of three important criteria for identification of the urban core, i.e., Normalized Difference Vegetative Index (NDVI), Mid-wave Infra-Red (MIR) & Thermal Infra-Red (TIR) band, DN variation analysis. The analysis finds that a composite of the three variables enable a clear delineation of the nodes. Further, data for two different time periods have been used to show decadal changes in the direction and extent of the dynamic nature of the core(s) vis a vis the changes in the peripheral domains as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For members of the marginalized section of a society the process of marginalization is often a collective experience. It might not be so for the children born to members of that section; in fact it is difficult to describe the children as marginalized till the time they perceive their marginal position in comparison to the children of other sections of the same society. For them marginalization is often a personal feeling, a revelation that becomes part of their childhood experience. The sex-workers are one marginalized section of the society; their world is often surrounded by people from the underworld, police and correctional institutions. The present paper attempts to understand how and when the children born and brought up in brothels of Kolkata learn that they are different from other children and how they adjust to that realization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects of 2009 Leonid Meteor Shower upon the two VLF subionospheric transmitted signals and vertical electric potential gradient from the ground surface have been studied from Kolkata (Lat: 22.56°N, Long: 88.5°E) on November 17, 2009. The received signals showed their peak values when ZHR (Zenithal Hourly Rate) was highest. Some typical variations in the outcome of these measurements during the meteor showers will be presented in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The association between the monthly total ozone concentration and monthly maximum temperature over Kolkata (22.56°N, 88.30° E), India, has been explored in this paper. For this, the predictability of monthly maximum temperature based on the total ozone as predictor is investigated using Artificial Neural Network. The presence of persistence and similar cyclic patterns are revealed through autocorrelation and cross-correlation coefficients. Common cycles of length 12 and 6 have been identified through periodogram. Hence, a predictive model has been generated by Artificial Neural Network in the form of Multi Layer Perceptron (MLP) using scaled conjugate gradient learning with sigmoid non-linearity. After training and testing the network, an MLP with total ozone of month n as predictor and maximum temperature of month (n +1) as the target output is found as the best model. Performance of the model has been judged statistically. Finally, the MLP model has been compared with linear and non-linear regressions and the efficiency of MLP has been established over the regression models. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]