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The long-drawn battle between scientific outlook and superstitions has manifested in recent times in India as well as Assam, in particular, in the form of witch hunting. In the background of increasing witch hunting cases surfacing through media reports and number of police cases this paper intends to make an analytical study of the problem with the help of simple game theory techniques considering the different group of individuals involved in such criminal incidents (both victims and culprits) as players and also tries to suggest possible moves to eradicate the problem from a purely technical point of view. Based on secondary data sources, this paper is analytical in nature. Outcomes of Game simulations have depicted the process of victimization as well as the factors responsible for deviations of Nash Equilibrium solutions from socially desirable set of solutions. A careful note on the factors responsible for this deviation can enable the policy makers to formulate effective policies to shift Nash-equilibrium solutions to socially desirable one. It is possible to outline conscious human behaviour that leads to crimes such as witch hunting and identify the parameters controlling which these types of crimes can be controlled.

This paper is an attempt to analyseJahnaviBarua’s collection of short stories titled ‘Next Door’. A doctor by profession, she is an example of a young budding Indian writer in English, originally hailing from Assam and settled in Bengaluru. She is a recipient of many creative writing awards before she penned ‘Next Door’. The stories in this collection are all unique in their own right and are set in the beautiful state of Assam. The ever presence of the Brahmaputra river in her stories is an example of the fact that Assam cannot be detached from this great river. The stories depict the state of Assam, their culture, their lives, even away from home. The judicious use of Assamese words like Mekhela, Deuta, Sador and Baideo etc. are blended by the writer very subtly into the English language. One of the striking features of these short stories is the number of human relationship contained in them. A variety of human relationships and their shades are seen in every story. This paper attempts to look at these relationships such as husband and wife, parents and children, servant and child, brother and sister along with both the positives and the negatives of these relationships. The paper hopes to explore JahnaviBarua’s depiction of human relationship in ‘Next Door’.

According to many Hindus, travelling to Assam, in North-East India, is dangerous. The Assamese woman might trap the male outsider, using her magic to transform him into a goat and turn him back into a man at night. Unable to leave, the man would become the sex-toy of his mistress. Fear is the emotion many Hindus once felt (and still feel) about remote Assam. Still, many set off on a pilgrimage to Assam’s most famous temple – the Kāmākhyā temple in Guwahati. In many narratives, Assam, though frightening, is the source of occult knowledge for those who are prepared to cope with such awe-inspiring power. Through the analysis of several narratives about Assam, the paper advances a reflection on our notion of fear and shows how the latter is often tightly connected to attraction. The narratives are taken from several field visits by the author and her research focusing on the Kāmākhyā temple, as well as common stories from Hindu folklore. Together they explore a frightening picture of Assam. To make sense of these data, the paper evokes the notion of śakti and analyses the way Assamese women are depicted in the narratives under consideration., International Quarterly for Asian Studies, Bd. 49 Nr. 3-4 (2018): Fear and Fright in South Asian Religion and Society

Introduction It is well acknowledged that India’s community health workers known as Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA) are the bedrock of its health system. Many ASHAs are currently working in fragile and conflict-affected settings. No efforts have yet been made to understand the challenges and vulnerabilities of these female workers. This paper seeks to address this gap by bringing attention to the situation of ASHAs working in the fragile and conflict settings and how conflict impacts them and their work. Methods Qualitative fieldwork was undertaken in four conflict-affected villages in two conflict-affected districts -Kokrajhar and Karbi Anglong of Assam state situated in the North-East region of India. Detailed account of four ASHAs serving roughly 4000 people is presented. Data transliterated into English were analysed by authors by developing a codebook using grounded theory and thematic organisation of codes. Results ASHAs reported facing challenges in ensuring access to health services during and immediately after outbreaks of conflict. They experienced difficulty in arranging transport and breakdown of services at remote health facilities. Their physical safety and security were at risk during episodes of conflict. ASHAs reported hostile attitudes of the communities they served due to the breakdown of social relations, trauma due to displacement, and loss of family members, particularly their husbands. Conclusions Conflict must be recognised as an important context within which community health workers operate, with greater policy focus and research devoted to understanding and addressing the barriers they face as workers and as persons affected by conflict.

The United Nations General Assembly has delegated 25 November as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (VAW). This issue of the journal Space and Culture, India is dedicated to raise further awareness against VAW, inequalities and discrimination. Now I turn to discuss the abstract of this editorial. Greater access to public spaces, entry into the professional space and engagement in different sectors of labour forces are the diverse forms of opportunities urbanisation and modernisation is supposed to provide to each individual including women. However, one could argue that both urbanisation and modernisation have begeted gender discrimination. And the degree of discrimination is faced mostly by women putting them in a vulnerable position by generating women-centric workplace violence—mainly sexual harassment of women at workplace (SHWWP). This paper highlights the findings of two research studies: Workplace Safety and Dignity for Women in Assam and Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal of Sexual Harassment at Professional Places in Assam: Post 23rd April 2013 carried out by the author during the period 2017-2019. According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), 2017, the state of Assam contributes 6.4 percentage points of state-share to all-India share of crime against women; its overall crime rate against women when calculated as a crime per one-hundred thousand of the population stands at 143.6. Evidently, the state of Assam also has high occurrences of SHWWP, which stands at 44% but only 2.7% complaint cases were lodged. The findings also uncovered that there exist weak and inadequate complaint mechanisms in the state even after the existence of Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013.

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A growing evidence base highlights the value of high-quality early childhood education (ECE) to children’s cognitive and social development. However, far less is known about how families and children, especially in developing countries, participate in ECE or how these participation patterns reflect families’ thinking and decision-making. This paper utilises a mixed-methods approach to analyse longitudinal household survey and interview data (on 7,336 and 180 children, respectively) from the India Early Childhood Education Impact study. Our results indicate that children’s participation trajectories in the early years (age 4 to 8) do not reflect the age or grade norms specified by national educational policies. And, far from being linear, children’s educational pathways entail considerable back and forth between home, preschool and school. We argue that these trajectories reflect both poor implementation of national norms as well as an inadequate understanding among both parents and service providers of how best to support young children’s cognitive development.

Tea plays a pivotal role in India’s national economy, with the state of Assam the world’s largest regional producer of black tea. However, various socio-environmental factors are threatening tea production and the livelihoods of millions of people reliant upon the industry. Little documentation exists which provides comprehensive spatial insights into tea production practices and associated livelihoods. Additionally, vulnerability from climate change to those livelihoods dependent upon the tea landscape has received limited multi-level stakeholder qualification. Consequently, this paper goes towards addressing this knowledge deficit through adopting a sustainable livelihoods approach for investigating the tea landscape of Assam. Mixed social survey methods were used to document responses from multiple stakeholder groups representing managers of commercial plantations, smallholders and tea workers. Results provide a comprehensive insight into the livelihoods of those reliant upon tea production activities across the four major tea growing regions of Assam. Outputs indicate that varying production practices are in place to optimise yield, increase livelihood resilience and manage the landscape effectively under a changing climate, with tea workers possessing varying diversity in assets to support their livelihoods. Outcomes from this research highlight the need for adaptable and climate-smart landscape activities, with active support from expert tea advisory agencies, to promote long-term socio-environmental sustainable cultivation of tea under changing climatic conditions.

The tea plantations of Assam, which constitute the country’s 53.97 per cent tea area, 49 per cent tea worker population, and 52.04 per cent tea production, occupy an important place in the economy, culture and polity of the state. The onset of tea plantations during British colonial rule has not only changed the landscape of the upper Brahmaputra valley through green tea bushes being nourished by tea tribes from east-central India, but also evolved a distinct tea culture. Although formation of small tea growers has added a new dimension to the growth of tea industry of Assam in recent times, the culture that emerged due to the long continued interaction of British planters, tea worker tribes and indigenous Assamese is well reflected in the language, way of life, work culture, food habits and many other socio-cultural practices in most of the large tea estates in the state. In fact, the impact of tea culture is so penetrative that it has been able to bring about development in the form of tea festival, tea tourism, tea folk songs and dances, etc. in the state. An attempt is made in this paper to explore the role of tea plantation and the people associated with it to the socio-cultural transformation of Assam based on both secondary data and primary data through field study. The primary data have been collected from selected tea estates, tea garden worker colonies, tea-tribe villages and urban dwellers.

Although the M=w8.7, 1950 Assam earthquake endures as the largest continental earthquake ever recorded, its exact source and mechanism remain contentious. In this paper, we jointly analyze the spatial distributions of reappraised aftershocks and landslides, and provide new field evidence for its hitherto unknown surface rupture extent along the Mishmi and Abor Hills. Within both mountain fronts, relocated aftershocks and fresh landslide scars spread over an area of ≈330 km by 100 km. The former are more abundant in the Abor Hills while the later mostly affect the front of the Mishmi Hills. We found steep seismic scarps cutting across fluvial deposits and bounding recently uplifted terraces, some of which less than two thousand years or even a couple centuries old, at several sites along both mountain fronts. They likely attest to a minimum 200 km-long 1950 surface rupture on both the Mishmi and Main Himalayan Frontal Thrusts (MT and MFT, respectively), crossing the East Himalayan Syntaxis. At two key sites (Wakro and Pasighat), co-seismic surface throw appears to have been over twice as large on the MT as on the MFT (7.6 ± 0.2 m vs. >2.6 ± 0.1 m), in keeping with the relative, average mountain heights (3200 m vs. 1400 m), mapped landslide scar numbers (182 vs. 96), and average thrust dips (25–28° vs. 13–15°) consistent with relocated aftershocks depths. Corresponding average slip amounts at depth would have been ≈17 and ≈11 m on the MT and MFT, respectively, while surface slip at Wakro might have reached ≈34 m. Note that this amount of superficial slip would be out of reach using classic paleo-seismological trenching to reconstruct paleo-earthquake history. Most of the 1950 first arrivals fit with a composite focal mechanism co-involving the two shallow-dipping thrust planes. Their intersection lies roughly beneath the Dibang Valley, implying forced slip parallel to GPS vectors across the East Himalayan Syntaxis. Successive, near-identical, terrace uplifts at Wakro suggest near-characteristic slip during the last two surface rupturing earthquakes, while terrace boulder ages may be taken to imply bi-millennial return time for 1950-size events. As in Nepal, East-Himalayan mega-quakes are not blind and release most of the elastic, interseismic shortening that accumulates across the range. NRF (Natl Research Foundation, S’pore) MOE (Min. of Education, S’pore) Published version

This text is based on an analysis of conflicts concerning Kaziranga National Park in Assam. Famous for the one-horned rhinoceros, this Park has become a political arena where tension has been mounting since its 2007 inclusion in a project aimed at protecting tigers. The physical injury and damage caused by wildlife to people and their property (land, animals, houses), the eviction of populations from within the Park’s perimeter, and poaching have led to conflicts that combine ecological, social, political, cultural and symbolic features, and which are being brought more and more often before the law courts. The aim of this paper is to show how these features are utilized by the different protagonists and how, since 2006, new decision-making bodies with extensive powers, environmental legislation, and nature-protection or population-defense organizations have contributed to defining the forms these conflicts have taken. Through the lens of environmental law in the making, it highlights some of the workings of India’s nature protection policy. The Kaziranga example provides an overview of the problems key measures or laws have created in the field of environmental protection, whether it is a question of them being applied too rigidly—as is the case of the Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972—, of them being bent—this is the case of Public Interest Litigations the original purpose of which has completely changed—, or of them not being applied at all—which is the case of the Forest Rights Act 2006 in Assam.

Background Microorganisms specifically bacteria play a crucial role in arsenic mobilization and its distribution in aquatic systems. Although bacteria are well known for their active participation in the different biogeochemical cycles, the role of these bacteria in regulating the concentration of arsenic in Brahmaputra valley has not been investigated in detail. Results In this paper, we report the isolation of an arsenic resistant bacterium TA6 which can efficiently reduce arsenate. The isolate identified as Staphylococcus sp. TA6 based on the molecular and chemotaxonomic identification (FAME) showed resistance to the high concentration of both arsenate and arsenite (As(III) = 30 mM; As(V) = 250 mM), along with cross-tolerance to other heavy metals viz., Hg2+, Cd2+, Co2+, Ni2+, Cr2+. The bacterium also had a high siderophore activity (78.7 ± 0.004 μmol) that positively correlated with its ability to resist arsenic. The isolate, Staphylococcus sp. TA6 displayed high bio-transformation ability and reduced 2 mM As(V) initially added into As(III) in a period of 72 h with 88.2% efficiency. The characterization of arsenate reductase enzyme with NADPH coupled assay showed the highest activity at pH 5.5 and temperature of 50 °C. Conclusions This study demonstrates the role of an isolate, Staphylococcus sp. TA6, in the biotransformation of arsenate to arsenite. The presence of ars operon along with the high activity of the arsenate reductase and siderophore production in this isolate may have played an important role in mobilizing arsenate to arsenite and thus increasing the toxicity of arsenic in the aquatic systems of the Brahmaputra valley. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s12866-018-1240-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Domestic violence is an evil that never dies. It is an indicator of inequality, injustice and discrimination of the social system. Though there is no justification for its existence in a civilized society, then why it is so difficult to root it out? Why does it persist to exist even after the prevalence of legal provisions to combat domestic violence? The causes maybe embedded on the facts that it involves intimate relationship on the one hand and exercise of power relations on the other. These power relations put women at disadvantaged positions, which are prominently gendered in nature. Assam, a state in the north-eastern corner of India, is unique in its own distinction. It is a region with myriad communities with varied culture, ethnic and social background. Distinctive statistical differences of domestic violence exist among these communities. These variations may categorically be due to the nature of power relations in intimate relations among these communities, which is probed with the application of oral history method. An effort is made through this study to explore the societal attitudes concerning power within intimate human relations. The focus of this paper is to search for the social beliefs attached with the power relations that have been governing them or promoting them in the form of social values, customs, rituals and traditions, which are the nucleus of domestic violence in Assamese society. This study intends to investigate the power relations amongst the different communities. Oral history method is applied to probe the socialisation process of the victims of domestic violence and to analyse how it creates power relations that caters to domestic violence. It gives a deeper understanding to the gendered nature of power in intimate relations. It illustrates that power relations is created through socialisation process and is a contributing attribute to domestic violence among spouses.