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The broad question that interests this article is how does one read and compare the negotiations public and private universities are making with the neo-liberal paradigm of knowledge production with reference to their social science curricula. Michael Apple's (1993, "Teachers College Records," 95(2), 222-241; 2001, "Currículo Sem Fronteiras," 1(1), i-xxvi) argument that curriculum is not a 'neutral assemblage of knowledge' but a crafted vision of 'legitimate knowledge' produced by hegemonic powers within society forms the theoretical foundation for this article. To understand the changes within a university's academic practice, this article analyses and compares the undergraduate and postgraduate sociology curricula of two public universities (Delhi University and Ambedkar University), an international university (South Asian University) and one private university (Shiv Nadar University), as well as engages with its practitioners to assess the everyday within these universities. The undergraduate and postgraduate sociology curricula across public and private universities indicate certain convergences in their academic approaches. The universities in question encouraged foreign university collaborations, reframed the course structure to strengthen the university-industry linkages and increased the employability of the students. Interdisciplinary and contemporary papers are offered through new modes of pedagogy. The mode of assessment also focus on writing research papers/dissertations and frequent visits to the field to develop an application-based approach to learning. The neoliberal paradigm of knowledge production affected the convergence of academic practices of public and private universities despite difference in governance structure. This convergence problematises the meaning of 'public' in a liberalised, privatised and globalised society.

This paper focuses on finding the criteria adopted by users to select free information retrieved from the Web for academic use. A close-ended questionnaire was formulated to record the opinions of the respondents. A survey for various categories of users such as post graduate students, research scholars and faculty members from five universities of Chandigarh, Haryana, and Punjab was administered. The category-wise and discipline-wise analysis depicted that quite a good number of respondents applied various parameters while referring to Web resources, but a reasonable number of users did not apply certain parameters to verify the nature of free information being used for educational purposes. The convenience factor leads them to depend on free Web resources which can be accessed anywhere and saves time. The findings of the study suggest that user education programs should be conducted to create awareness regarding the credibility of the subscribed library resources and their effectiveness in enhancing the quality of teaching, learning, and research.

The main objectives of the present study is to determine the, growth of literature in the field of sociology and the related authorship pattern; value of group co-efficient for collaborative research and geographical distribution of papers during 1999-21003. The study shows that the highest number of papers (86) were published in 2001 and 2003. The number of single author papers is higher at 84% out of a total of 475. The value of group co-efficient (gp) was only 0.16. The degree of collaboration among the co-authors was minimum (0.02) in articles written by five authors and maximum (0.12) in two- author papers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blended learning is one of the leading trends in education. Blended learning combines computer-assisted learning with traditional classroom learning. The literature shows that the blended learning often helps the students to achieve better learning outcome. However, a majority of the existing learning platforms do not focus on the problems of weak students. Here our objective is to develop a computer-assisted learning platform that focuses on performance improvement of weak students and study the efficacy of the system. This paper presents the proposed system, "RemedialTutor", that assists the weak students in effective preparation for an examination. The learning platform performs several tasks on demand; for example, providing the meaning of unknown words, sentence simplification, identification of questionable sentences, extraction of summarized content on a specific topic, preparation of question paper and automatic evaluation, identification of less confident sections, etc. To study the effectiveness of the proposed system, it is tested using a blended learning framework. The system is provided to the students as a supplement to the traditional classroom activities and resources. During the comparative study, the experiment group students used this system during their exam preparation but the control group students relied only on their regular resources. It is found that the experiment group students perform better than the control group. The t-value is 2.3466 and p-value is 0.0243. These values indicate that the difference is statistically significant.

This paper examines caste bias in Odia language textbooks prescribed by the Government in middle schools in the State of Odisha, India. The analysis focuses on 10 textbooks for Social Science and Odia literature prescribed for Classes IV to VIII. The framework proposed by Sadker and Zittleman (2007) to study gender bias in educational material in the United States is contextualized for an application to Indian textbooks. Content analysis identified seven types of bias, with 'invisibility' bias being the most important form of bias. This first-ever systematic analysis of caste bias within curricular material in India brings to fore the exclusion of Scheduled Castes. The persistence of caste bias across textbooks is in direct violation of the recommendations of the National Curriculum Framework-2005 and systematically creates an illusion that Indian society is an equitable one. We suggest that there is a need for further evaluation of regional language school textbooks to assess the extent of bias in curricular material.

In India, sexual violence today is a routine form of violence directed against Dalit women--those from the most subordinated castes of India. Dalit is a socio-political identity affirmed by India's ex-untouchable communities, historically considered "service castes" and exploited based on their birth. While all Dalits are exploited for their physical labor and given brutal punishments for challenging or not abiding by the caste hierarchy, Dalit women particularly face gendered violence like sexual violence by upper-caste men. The author emphasizes that researching the phenomenon of caste-based sexual violence becomes essential. In this paper, the author argues that along with researching, even discussing and teaching about this violence through various social sciences like sociology, history, and women's studies becomes crucial. A teacher can transform the classroom as a space to discuss this violence, acknowledge this violence, and even initiate some healing.

This paper is concerned with processes of international enquiry. It focuses upon the relationship between a research problem and access to conduct research in a country. It uses data from an ethnographic study of primary education in a Northern Indian District. Conceptually drawing upon the insider-outsider debate within the sociology of knowledge, the paper raises issues about the relationship between the research problem, accessing knowledge and being an outsider to a research setting. It considers problems facing a particular form of outsider - a foreigner. The paper maintains that when researchers who are outsiders embark on designing research in non-western international educational settings, then questions considering the relationship between the research problem, access strategies and the culture of the research setting are vital. Grappling with such questions allows for the development and promotion of new forms of partnership, alongside a deeper understanding of culture and context, when developing comparative and international research policy agendas. [The Tata Institute of Social Sciences also provided sponsorship and support in conducting this study.]

This study has been conducted to measure the collaborative research among the social scientist at Jawaharlal Nehru University, India during the year 1998-2017. The sample of 2128 articles has been collected from the Scopus database during the year 1998-2017 and were analyzed to study the collaborative coefficient, collaborative index, year wise degree of collaboration, modified collaboration coefficient, co-authorship index and language wise distribution of articles. From this study, it is found that the growth rate of publications in the social sciences is rapidly increasing. The collaborative coefficient is below 0.5 which implies that single-authored papers are dominating. The co-authorship index for the single-authored paper is higher, and the degree of collaboration is low as the value is 0. The research articles are the preferred format to publish in the journals. This study was limited to the data collected from the Scopus database during the period 1998-2017. The findings have significant implications for the researchers/scholars to know the growth and trend of collaborative research in the social sciences. This study extends the knowledge on the bibliometric tools employed to measure the collaborative research in the social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The present study aims to understand context and dynamics of cognitive learning of students as an outcome of the usage of popular movies as a learning tool in the management classroom and specifically in the context of a course on cross-cultural management issues. Design/methodology/approach: This is an exploratory study based on qualitative analysis of reflection notes of 14 students who participated in an elective course on "managing cross-cultural issues (MCCI)" in the second year of their MBA programme. Students were asked to submit reflection notes focused on classroom learning as an outcome of the course MCCI with specific reference to used movies "Outsourced" and "My Big Fat Greek Wedding". Students' reactions in their reflection notes were analyzed through qualitative content analysis. Findings: The findings of this study reveal that students found selected movies very relevant and effective in learning cross-cultural theories, issues and developing cross-cultural competence. They also enjoyed movies as learning experience in the classroom. Both instructor's observations and students' reactions regarding the effectiveness of movies as classroom learning tool are very positive. Practical implications: Popular movies, if appropriately selected and included in cross-cultural training programmes for expatriate managers, immigrant workers and managers who travel to different countries, could be very useful as a learning tool for developing multicultural perspective and cross-cultural competence. Originality/value: This paper could be very useful to academicians and researchers who want to use popular movies as an instructional or research tool for exploring the psychodynamics of classroom learning in management and social sciences courses or professional training programmes focused on cross-cultural management skills, global leadership skills, diversity management. (Contains 2 notes and 2 tables.)

In 2004, India's Congress Party wrested control of parliament from the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. I present below an interview conducted with Professor Krishna Kumar, Delhi University, the new Government's choice for Director of the National Council of Educational Research and Training. Professor Kumar discusses the ways that liberalisation, privatisation and modernisation complexly interact in late twentieth and early twenty-first century India, paying special attention to their relevance for schooling. Professor Kumar thus links education to some of the themes most salient in the social sciences.

Indigenization has been an important nationalist project undertaken by various colonized countries seeking to liberate the existing knowledge systems from colonial hegemony. In India too, one witnesses serious efforts at indigenization that began during the colonial rule as part of the anti-colonial nationalist struggle. This continued after independence with new vigour. It found resonance in the domain of social sciences and the Indian social scientists have been engaged in debates around decolonizing the extant knowledge texts in their respective domains. An essential part of indigenization of social science in the Indian context is their vernacularization, which implies a process of translation and adaptation of the knowledge texts in its diverse local/regional languages. Underscoring the importance of both the processes in decolonizing the social sciences, the paper also highlights the existing and the emerging challenges to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Topics discussed include: the emergence of biotechnology; modern food technology; strategies of transnational food companies; transnational agribusiness firms and Mexican agriculture; food production in Western Europe; the agro-industrial system of the USSR; food systems in India; food production systems of the Senegal River; and production modes of the Caribbean peasantry. (RM)

Background: Resource allocation decisions for disease categories can be informed by proper estimates of the magnitude and distribution of total spending. In the backdrop of a high burden of Non-Communicable Diseases and Injuries (NCDI) in India, and a paucity of estimates on government spending on NCDI, this paper attempts to analyse public sector expenditure on NCDI spending in India. Methods: Various recent budget documents of the Centre and States/Union Territories have been used to extract expenditure on NCDI. The aggregates thus arrived at have been analysed to estimate aggregate and state level per capita spending. State level spending have been compared against disease burden using DALYs. Patterns of spending on NCDI across states were also analysed together with state level poverty to observe possible patterns. Findings: The total spending on NCDI by the government is low at less than 0.5% of GDP. NCDI spending is little more than one-fourth of total health spending of the country and most spending takes place at the state level (80%). The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare’s share in Central spending on NCDI is around 65%, and currently it spends 20% of its total health spending on NCDI. The gap between spending and DALYs is the most for the economically vulnerable states. Also, the states with high poverty levels also have low per capita expenditure on NCDI Interpretation: India does not depend on donor funding for health. It will have to step up domestic funding to address the increasing disease burden of NCDIs and to reduce the high out-of-pocket expenditure on NCDI. Policies on NCDI need to focus on UHC, service integration and personnel gaps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The changing population age structure has a significant influence on the economy, society, and numerous other aspects of a country. This paper has innovatively applied the method of compositional data forecasting for the prediction of population age changes of the young (aged 0–14), the middle-aged (aged 15–64), and the elderly (aged older than 65) in China, India, and Vietnam by 2030 based on data from 1960 to 2016. To select the best-suited forecasting model, an array of data transformation approaches and forecasting models have been extensively employed, and a large number of comparisons have been made between the aforementioned methods. The best-suited model for each country is identified considering the root mean squared error and mean absolute percent error values from the compositional data. As noted in this study, first and foremost, it is predicted that by the year 2030, China will witness the disappearance of population dividend and get mired in an aging problem far more severe than that of India or Vietnam. Second, Vietnam’s trend of change in population age structure resembles that of China, but the country will sustain its good health as a whole. Finally, the working population of India demonstrates a strong rising trend, indicating that the age structure of the Indian population still remains relatively “young”. Meanwhile, the continuous rise in the proportion of elderly population and the gradual leveling off growth of the young population have nevertheless become serious problems in the world. The present paper attempts to offer crucial insights into the Asian population size, labor market and urbanization, and, moreover, provides suggestions for a sustainable global demographic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital humanities is a result of the convergence of digital technology with social sciences and humanities. It is one of the key research areas around the world by the library and information science profession, and in cognate areas such as art and archeology. Focus groups, digital humanities centres are created for intensive researches which are located mainly in libraries as their core programmes. The library techniques and methods such as knowledge organisation, knowledge management, search and retrieval design, education, and emerging areas such as metadata, semantic mapping, ontology, thesaurus construction, digital curation, discovery services, find application in digital humanities. A new area of study, historical informatics complements the digital humanities. India has vast potential application of digital humanities with its diverse culture, customs and languages and so on. India is reckoned as one of the advanced countries in the IT sector, hence recognising the socio-cultural legacy and diverse historical background, it is viewed that digital humanities has many opportunities and applications for LIS professionals in India to contribute substantially. This paper brings together the concepts, tools, and applications of digital humanities and proposes a course of study in LIS curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper welcomes the Stiglitz Report's placing of wellbeing at the centre of policy discussions of measuring economic performance and social progress. However, the paper critiques the identification of subjective perspectives on quality of life solely with subjective well-being. The paper locates subjective well-being within psychological wellbeing, happiness and quality of life studies more broadly. It argues for attention to concepts, not just techniques, and more engagement with social and political perspectives. It draws on empirical research in Zambia and India to show that context matters and qualitative research is needed to complement quantitative measures of wellbeing. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literature on international migration from India in the past has focused on the formation and development of 'Indian diasporas'; that is, Indians who have moved to various parts of the world and maintain socio-economic, cultural and political lives in India as well as other countries. However, little attention has been paid toward 'temporary migrants' who have migrated to different countries with a temporary visa and in the course of time extended their visas to become 'permanent residents'. Temporary migration from India has become a common trend over the last two decades, especially since the acceleration of globalisation and the developments in the fields of information and communication technologies. Although it is argued that this type of migration took place in the past - for instance, Indians migrated to British, French, Dutch and Portuguese colonies during the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth centuries as indentured labourers for a period of three to five years and later extended their stays - what is new about the current trend is the new state policies of different host countries and the socio-economic and cultural background of the immigrants. This paper is an exploratory study of this contemporary phenomena of movement from 'temporary migrant' to 'permanent resident', a phenomena which has not been given much attention by academicians and policy makers in India. The present paper outlines this trend with an illustration of Indian H-1B visa holders in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we explore the problem of establishing a network among the stocks of a market at high frequency level and give an application to program trading. Our work uses high frequency data from the National Stock Exchange, India, for the year 2014. To begin, we analyse the spectrum of the correlation matrix to establish the presence of linear relations amongst the stock returns. A comparison of correlations with pairwise mutual information shows the further existence of non-linear relations which are not captured by correlation. We also see that the non-linear relations are more pronounced at the high frequency level in comparison to the daily returns used in earlier work. We provide two applications of this approach. First, we construct minimal spanning trees for the stock network based on mutual information and study their topology. The year 2014 saw the conduct of general elections in India and the data allows us to explore their impact on aspects of the network, such as the scale-free property and sectorial clusters. Second, having established the presence of non-linear relations, we would like to be able to exploit them. Previous authors have suggested that peripheral stocks in the network would make good proxies for the Markowitz portfolio but with a much smaller number of stocks. We show that peripheral stocks selected using mutual information perform significantly better than ones selected using correlation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the causality between energy consumption, carbon emissions and economic growth is helpful for policymakers to formulate energy, environmental and economic policies. For the first time, based on nonlinear dynamics, this paper employs multispatial convergent cross mapping (CCM) to revisit the energy-carbon-economy causation for China, India and the G7 countries using both aggregate data and per capita data. The findings indicate that there are significant differences between developing countries and developed countries. A bidirectional nexus between energy consumption, carbon emissions and economic growth is found in China and India, but various causal relationships are identified in the G7 countries, including bidirectional, unidirectional and neutral nexus. The results confirm that the decoupling phenomenon is common in most G7 countries. By leveraging a variety of samples and a new approach, this study provides new evidence for policy authorities to formulate country-specific policies to obtain better environmental quality while achieving sustainable economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the social inclusiveness of agricultural extension services in India. We estimate the probability and frequency of farmers’ access to extension services and resulting changes in crop income across different caste groups. The literature suggests that caste-based social segregation manifests in various spheres of life, and perpetuates economic inequality and oppression. An econometric analysis of nationally-representative data from rural India verifies this with respect to the agricultural sector. Farmers belonging to the socially-marginalized castes are found to have a lower chance of accessing the public extension services, primarily due to their inferior resource-endowment status. Contacting extension agents at least once increased the average annual crop income by about 12 thousand Indian rupees per household, which is equivalent to 36% of the annual crop income of those without access to extension services. There exists significant impact heterogeneity. Farmers from the socially-marginalized castes hardly benefited from accessing the extension services. Based on these observations, we have developed a number of policy recommendations that could improve the social inclusiveness of agricultural development strategies in rural India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents an overview of prevailing pedagogic practices of social science at school level in India. It has been sketched with the help of social science teachers' interviews. The analysis of teachers' interview revealed that the teaching of social science is a reflection of teacher's own biases and beliefs; dominated by deficit model of thinking and learning. Against this backdrop the paper tries to address the question do we have any alternative of 'deficit model' of teaching learning? If yes, what is it? How it can be designed and executed? In the present descriptive study the researcher adopts the theoretical underpinnings of Socio-cultural approach to learning and tries to design and execute constructivist pedagogic setting for teaching social science. It emerges from the analysis of these constructivists pedagogic settings that it helps to develop and sustain a culture of inquiry in the classroom where the strong interface between students' everyday knowledge and school knowledge take place. The paper establishes the argument that for moving deficit model of teaching-learning, knowledge should be viewed as co-constructed, negotiated and situated entity, knower should have agency and the voice in process of knowing and the process learning should be dialogic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the ongoing demographic and epidemiological transition, cancer is emerging as a major public health concern in India. This paper uses nationally representative household survey to examine the overall prevalence and economic burden of cancer in India. The age-standardized prevalence of cancer is estimated to be 97 per 100,000 persons with greater prevalence in urban areas. The evidence suggests that cancer prevalence is highest among the elderly and also among females in the reproductive age groups. Cancer displays a significant socioeconomic gradient even after adjusting for age-sex specifics and clustering in a multilevel regression framework. We find that out of pocket expenditure on cancer treatment is among the highest for any ailment. The average out of pocket spending on inpatient care in private facilities is about three-times that of public facilities. Furthermore, treatment for about 40 percent of cancer hospitalization cases is financed mainly through borrowings, sale of assets and contributions from friends and relatives. Also, over 60 percent of the households who seek care from the private sector incur out of pocket expenditure in excess of 20 percent of their annual per capita household expenditure. Given the catastrophic implications, this study calls for a disease-based approach towards financing such high-cost ailment. It is suggested that universal cancer care insurance should be envisaged and combined with existing accident and life insurance policies for the poorer sections in India. In concluding, we call for policies to improve cancer survivorship through effective prevention and early detection. In particular, greater public health investments in infrastructure, human resources and quality of care deserve priority attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the1830s the colonial government in India became the agency for the promotion of ‘Western education’, that is, education that sought to disseminate modern, Western, rational knowledge through modern institutions and pedagogic processes. This paper examines a historical episode in which certain key categories of modern Western thought were pressed into service to explain a consequence of the dissemination of Western knowledge in colonial India. The episode in question was that of the alleged ‘moral crisis’ of the educated Indian, who, many argued, had been plunged into confusion and moral disarray following his exposure to Western knowledge in the schools and universities established by his British ruler. In the discourse of moral crisis, the knowledge being disseminated through Western education was simultaneously put to use in explaining an unanticipated effect of this education. How adequate was Western knowledge to explaining its own effects? More generally – for this paper is drawn from a larger study of how modern Western knowledge ‘travelled’ when transplanted to colonial India – what is the status of the knowledge we produce when we ‘apply’ the categories of modern Western thought in order to understand or explain India? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Purpose — Among the several sub-themes for this Special Issue this paper aims to deal, broadly, with the Hindu view of economics and allied matters. Design/methodology/approach — The approach is a conceptual one that highlights a few crucial aspects of the ‘positive’ flank of Hinduism vis-à-vis its ‘normative’ dimension. Researchers, thinkers, scholars and, above all, some important but ignored realizers of Hindu psycho-philosophy, have been dug into for materials comprising the paper. Findings — The findings clearly show that the amazing sustainability of Bharat's (i.e. India's) socio-economic processes, structures and systems, despite the tortures of history visiting her, can be explained by her abiding fidelity to the eternal as the basis of the temporal. This is the very foundation of the sacro-secular character of Hindu culture. Practical implications — The expected impact is long-term through deep-structure germination on a wide tract. Hurried practical application in tiny fractions is not intended as this will be premature and superficial. Originality/value — The contents of this paper are meant to generate a holistic and respectful orientation to the forging of constructive links between culture and economics in the context of Hinduism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the issues on substate phenomena and power transition theory in India. The author focuses on how a government's political power specifically its political capacity and its effects on domestic demographic changes. This concept specifically posit that subnational governments with high levels of political capacity are more likely to experience lower infant mortality rates. The authors also gain an additional interesting implication of their work that at least two of the three traditional measures of power in power transitions theory.

A basic premise of representative democracy is that all those subject to policy should have a voice in its making. However, policies enacted by electorally accountable governments often fail to reflect the interests of disadvantaged minorities. This paper exploits the institutional features of political reservation, as practiced in Indian states, to examine the role of mandated political representation in providing disadvantaged groups influence over policy-making, I find that political reservation has increased transfers to groups which benefit from the mandate. This finding also suggests that complete policy commitment may be absent in democracies, as is found in this case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we model the bus networks of six major Indian cities as graphs in L-space, and evaluate their various statistical properties. While airline and railway networks have been extensively studied, a comprehensive study on the structure and growth of bus networks is lacking. In India, where bus transport plays an important role in day-to-day commutation, it is of significant interest to analyze its topological structure and answer basic questions on its evolution, growth, robustness and resiliency. Although the common feature of small-world property is observed, our analysis reveals a wide spectrum of network topologies arising due to significant variation in the degree-distribution patterns in the networks. We also observe that these networks although, robust and resilient to random attacks are particularly degree-sensitive. Unlike real-world networks, such as Internet, WWW and airline, that are virtual, bus networks are physically constrained. Our findings therefore, throw light on the evolution of such geographically and constrained networks that will help us in designing more efficient bus networks in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a sociological study of the Indian industrial worker. The study is based on a review and discussion of the available empirical evidence and the relevant theoretical literature on the subject. There are two main objectives of this study one, to bring together whatever little empirical data exist on the sociology of the Indian industrial worker, and, two, to examine certain theories on the subject in the light of the empirical evidence. In view of these objectives, the study will, of course, be biased towards empirical data and the sociological method of analysis. It is well to recognize this fact, because the selection of material for review as well as the review itself will be influenced by this bias. For example, much of the literature dealing mainly with the history of the Indian industrial worker has been deliberately excluded from the scope of this paper. Also excluded are works, which are based mostly on what might be called hindsight or mere speculation. It is the impression of this writer that much of the literature on the subject is either not based on first-hand empirical data or, if empirical, not sufficiently well grounded in relevant theory.

Out-of-pocket spending at out-patient departments (OPD) by households is relatively less analyzed compared to hospitalization expenses in India. This paper provides new evidence on the levels and drivers of expenditure on out-patient care, as well as choice of providers, using household survey data from 8 districts in 3 states of India. Results indicate that the economically vulnerable spend more on OPD as a proportion of per capita consumption expenditure, out-patient care remains overwhelmingly private and switches of providers—while not very prevalent—is mostly towards private providers. A key result is that choice of public providers tend to lower OPD spending significantly. It indicates that an improvement in the overall quality and accessibility of government facilities still remain an important tool that should be considered in the context of financial protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Common mental disorders (CMD) such as depression, suicidal risk and emotional/medically unexplained complaints affect a large number of people in India, but few receive appropriate care. Key reasons for this include few trained mental health professionals and stigma associated with mental health. A potential approach to address poor access to care is by training village healthcare workers in providing basic mental health care, and harnessing India’s vast mobile network to support such workers using mobile-based applications. We propose an intervention to implement such an approach that incorporates the use of mobile-based electronic decision support systems (EDSS) to provide mental health services for CMD, combined with a community-based anti-stigma campaign. This will be implemented and evaluated across 42 villages in Andhra Pradesh, a south Indian state. This paper discusses the development and testing of the EDSS, and the formative research that informed the anti-stigma campaign. Materials and Methods: The development of the EDSS used an iterative process that was validated against clinical diagnosis. A mixed methods approach tested the user acceptability of the EDSS. Focus group discussions and in-depth interviews provided community-level perceptions about mental health. This study involved 3 villages and one primary health centre. Results: The EDSS application was found to be acceptable, but some modifications were needed. The community lacked adequate knowledge about CMD and its treatment and there was stigma associated with mental illness. Faith and traditional healers were considered to be important mental health service providers. Discussion: A number of barriers and facilitators were identified in implementing the intervention analysed in a framework using Andersen’s behavioural model of health services use. Conclusion: The findings assisted with refining the intervention prior to large-scale implementation and evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dharmottara, one of the most outstanding commentators of Dharmakīrti, re-uses arguments in the Pramāṇaviniścayaṭīkā, his broad commentary on Dharmakīrti's Pramāṇaviniścaya, from his independent essay, the Kṣaṇabhaṅgasiddhi. By analyzing contents of re-used arguments in the Pramāṇaviniścayaṭīkā, this paper clarifies Dharmottara's intention of paraphrasing his arguments in his commentarial work on Dharmakīrti. I argue that, in terms of content, such arguments are original and never fit into Dharmakīrti's own system. It can be said that Dharmottara has a clear intention to display his new innovations not only in his independent monograph, but also in his commentarial work. For Dharmottara, a commentary on Dharmakīrti is a better place than an independent monograph for showing off his advanced notions, since it is only in a commentary that his ideas can stand out directly against those of Dharmakīrti. In this sense, Dharmottara writes his commentary strategically. At the end of the article I discuss the significance of composing independent monographs or essays in the intellectual history of medieval India in the case of Dharmottara. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents a critique of Gopal Guru's "Egalitarianism and the Social Sciences"that focuses on the necessity of the edifice of Dalit theory being built by the Dalits, for the Dalits. It narrates how the hierarchy of the Twice of the Top Born(TTB) has been extended to academics where it operates deviously in the guise of condescending conceptions of the subaltern. The constant theorizing of the TTB deprives the Dalit's opportunities to critique themselves and strengthens the notion of interpretative communities as a policing academy. It comes across that though the theorizing of Dalit experience is supposed to invert the dialectical pair Brahmin/Shudra, it rather enforces it thereby strengthening power structures. The validity of a subjective theory and the denial of an objective unbiased one is brought into question. Guru foregrounds the justification of the egalitarian principle for critiquing the practice of social sciences, and poses the principle as subversive. The history of the Brahmin/Shudra hierarchy in the intellectual domain as put forward by Gopal Guru functions parallel to Marxist class nature of Art -Klassovost. After analysing the main points and counterarguments pertaining to the theorizing of experiences, the paper arrives at a conclusion as to the validity of Guru's argument in favouring subjective criticism over objective criticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Media education should not be merely about making media professionals. It should rather be about enlightening the citizens. The problem lies in the basic approach to media education which is essentially considered to be a vocational course. This approach in itself results in segmentation of the students from the very beginning. While all students of political Science do not end up becoming politicians and all students of Sociology do not end up becoming sociologists, Media Education, unfortunately, is essentially projected as a subject whose primary focus is upon producing media professionals. However, just as the primary focus of teaching political Science and Sociology is creating political and social sensibility, the primary focus of teaching media education should be creating media sensibility/ awareness among the youth of the nation as the media has emerged as a force to reckon with in today's scenario. Thus, they need to be aware of the powers and functions of the media so that they may judge the stance taken by the media in regional, national and even the international affairs. This paper shall strive to throw some light upon such issues through both theoretical and practical approaches such as content analysis and surveys. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engineering, particularly in India, is a very technical form of education, with very little emphasis on social science and liberal arts related subjects. It produces a large number of quality engineers from different institutions every year, who are highly capable of solving engineering problems in their chosen fields, but quite often find its difficult to effectively participate in the developmental activities in the country as they are unable to comprehend correctly the societal needs. The present society and the education system do not provide enough opportunities to explore nature and the society at large and thus quite often, the experts in various engineering fields become isolated and are unable to understand the real needs of the people. One option to bridge the gap is to introduce a few humanities, social sciences and ethics related courses in the engineering curricula. The paper discusses various possible methods to implement such a plan, evaluates them and concludes that at this point of time, the most appropriate solution would be to make these topics in-built into the engineering subjects. However, in order to implement this, the engineering professionals must get convinced about the need and the initiative should come from them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although there is such a thing as Indian thought, it seems to play no role in the way social sciences and philosophy are practiced in India or elsewhere. The problem is not only that we no longer employ terms such as atman, avidya, dharma to reflect on our experience; the terms that we do indeed use—sovereignty, secularism, rights, civil society and political society, corruption—seem to insulate our experience from our reflection. This paper will outline Gandhi's framing of our predicament in Hind Swaraj. It will then discuss three very different examples taken from our peculiar life with concepts that will also serve to clarify and illustrate the framework I am outlining. It will then very briefly discuss how Gandhi saw the Gita as showing him a way out of the predicament. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract The increasing dependence on street vending as a source of livelihood for people across urban spaces in countries like Cambodia and India continues to promote exciting areas of research in social sciences. Our study captures the narratives of street vendors (seen as the 'invisible' entrepreneurs), working in markets across Delhi (India) and Phnom Penh (Cambodia) and analyzes the inventory logistics of products sold by them, thereby, reflecting the complex nature of an inter-twined, existential relationship between what's classified as 'informal' and 'formal' in urban economies. The mutual interdependence seen in the governing dynamics of economic exchange (for example, in selling commodities and services across identified markets in Phnom Penh and Delhi), argues for a need to inclusively study urban ecosystems while addressing the needs of street vendors. This paper does so by incorporating ethnographic methods with a specific reference to street vending (as a commercial urban activity). Further, we emphasize on an epistemic need to cross-fertilize thought(s) and method(s) across social science disciplines to produce more of such urban narratives, exploring the inter-twined relationship between the 'informal' and 'formal' aspects of urban ecosystems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to bring the study of Asian medical systems from cultural studies into the ambit of social studies of science. It examines issues pertaining to innovation in indigenous systems of medicine (ISM) in contemporary India, with specific reference to siddha medicine. Drawing upon Kuhn’s theory of growth of scientific knowledge, the paper argues that only innovations within an epistemic tradition contribute to its incremental growth. On the other hand, innovations that happen in the interstices of distinct epistemic models of the body, such as the case with the laboratory trials of indigenous medical formulae, are not likely to lead to cumulative growth of ISM, even if they contribute to the biotechnology sector. The argument is set out by foregrounding the career of different kinds of practitioners of siddha medicine, showing how innovation between scientific traditions becomes invisible because of the absence of institutional closure on the norms of discovery and verification in ISM. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper attempts to study the information seeking behavior of Social science researchers in Madurai Kamaraj University and its affiliated colleges in Virudhunagar District, Tamil Nadu. Information has the power only when it is transferred and communicated. This study analyse the time spent by the users on accessing the resources, identify the types of information used by the users and to identify the users' opinion on collection of library resources in the institutions under study. The study showed that opinion about the library services are good and the introduction of ICT and maintenance of changes in the application of ICT in library management is quite required to get the information with high bandwidth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding violence is a major pre-occupation in social sciences and approaches to violence range from neoclassical perspectives, to regression models, to pure cultural analysis of difference. This paper attempts to understand violence by examining how class and identity positions are variously juxtaposed in different socio-spatial settings to produce contestations over the human condition. Through a comparative understanding of recent violence in two places-the riots of 2005 in Paris, France, and of 2002 in Ahmedabad, India-I indicate how class and identity overlap to produce fused realms of othering and violation. Through comparative analysis, I argue that in a globalizing world, class and identity will overlap in multifarious ways depending on the socio-spatial particularities of systemic exclusion. Therefore, studies of violence must move away from purely economistic and mathematical model building and instead move towards combining economic and cultural analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper calls attention to matsyanyaya, or state of nature theories, in classical Indian thought, and their significance. The focus is on those discussions of matsyanyaya found in the law books, political treatises and the Mahabharata epic. The significance and relevance of matsyanyaya theories are shown through a comparison with early modern state of nature theories and an elaboration on the possible place of rights and dharma in matsyanyaya and the consequences of this for classical Indian political theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the information-seeking behavior of science and social science research scholars, including service effectiveness, satisfaction level on different type of sources and various methods adopted by the scholars for keeping up to date. Design/methodology/approach – Data were gathered using a questionnaire survey of 200, randomly selected, PhD students of science and social science departments of four universities in Kerala, India. Findings – Although similarities exist between social science and science PhD students with regard to information-seeking behavior, there are significant differences as well. There is a significant difference between science and social science scholars on the perception of the adequacy of print journals and database collection which are very relevant to the research purposes. There is no significant difference between science and social science scholars on the perception of the adequacy of e-journals, the most used source for keeping up to date. The study proved that scholars of both the fields are dissatisfied with the effectiveness of the library in keeping them up to date with latest developments. Originality/value – The study is based on actual situation and the result can be used for library service redesign for different types of users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The introduction of digital information resources on Internet has revolutionised the academic world. The Internet is paving way for a great leap in the field of higher education and research. This paper is an attempt to investigate the use of Internet resources by the academic community of the Sri Venkateswara University (SVU), Tirupati. For this purpose a survey was carried out using questionnaire tool. The results show that users from all branches of science are making use of Internet resources better than social sciences and humanities. Providing training to its users at the beginning of each semester will improve its use and reduce the problems faced by the library users. The paper highlighted the various problems and issues involved in handling digital library and has given suggestions to improve the library services to meet the demands of the users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is enough literature on the human development process, particularly on induced development, in different disciplines of social sciences. A thorough study of these and an amalgamation of the ideas contained in the subject matter would make a development practitioner as sure-footed as it is possible to get. There must be a fairly large number of development practitioners who make this effort, and yet the development landscape is littered with examples where the process has gone awry or the benefits accruing from the process has remained suboptimal. The present paper looks into one such small development initiative carried out in the Sundarbans, very close to the venue of the 39th Annual Conference of the Indian Anthropological Society. In fact, it is this proximity that has prompted the selection of this development example, apart from the fact that the initiative has thrown up the opportunity to closely, scrutinise the reasons for accrual of sub-optimal benefits despite having taken into account the wisdom available in the various disciplines of social sciences. Although the example is very local, it is quite typical of development practice, and the lessons learnt should hold true for almost all non-urban situations. This paper analyses the development initiative in question and attempts to share the lessons learnt. It is hoped that our collective understanding of human development is enhanced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debates about translation have now advanced to a stage in which translation is acknowledged as a key dimension of social life. At the same time, a translation approach to social praxis demands that we rethink basic premises of the social sciences. Taking translation as a key dimension of sociality means regarding difference as primary, and forces us to focus on the exchanges and interconnections between and across different contexts. What stands out are the multiple contextual involvements of social actors. This paper views translation as interactive and non-representational. Based on the distinction between implicit and explicit levels of social translation, it explores the potentialities of translation as a way of reaching out to others and overcoming the restrictions of context by instituting a “third idiom”. Taking the example of Buddhism and other universalistic idioms employed by Dalits in India, the article discusses attempts to translate one's concerns, and oneself, in a way that implicates one's opponents as well as society at large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Muslim community at around 145 million is the largest minority community in India and the third largest grouping of Muslims in the world. Earlier, the Muslim immigrants, notably the Mughals scattered throughout India and became indistinguishable from the original inhabitants. Islam with its egalitarian tones was embraced by many lower class Indians. However, the contemporary ethnically Indian Muslim is mired in economic backwardness and finds his identity threatened in a social environment prone to systematic and more worryingly, increasing marginalization of the Indian Muslim. This paper attempts to explain the very complex issue of the sociology of the Indian Muslim deprivation in the light of the rise of the divisive religious ideology of 'Hindutva', which threatens the secular and democratic fabric of India by spawning a one culture and one people concept of nationhood. Also discussed as a fundamental issue is the role of the contemporary Indian Muslim amongst his peers and how the overlapping of and interplay between these various factors affects the fortunes of the Indian Muslim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the complexity of the realities of the nation, state, and nation-state in the Indian context, which resulted from the application of the western conceptualisations of the nation and the nation-state. In doing so the paper examines in a historical context the western concept of the unitary nation-state. Under this form of conceptualisation, the nation is regarded as independent of and prior or subsequent to the state. It would mean that there can be one or more nations within a single state. In such a conceptualisations no clear distinction is made between ethnic group and nation, and India is not regarded as a nations-state, However, the Indian nation was born out of the Indian nationalism for a sovereign democratic India, which was pluri-ethnic, multi-class, and gender partnered. Hence, the indigenous atypical Indian nation is creature of civic nationalism not ethno-nationalism. The origin of the Indian state is rooted in an ethnic plurality joining in a common political cause for national liberation and a national state, without state, without the compulsions of ethnic homogenisation. The western concept of the mono-cultural nation does not fully explain this reality of the Indian nation-state. The Indian expirement gives social science the scope for liberating the concept of the nation from western parachialism and makes it universal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]