Search results for: Indian languages

Authors: Sricheta Chowdhury

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To require a woman to choose between her work and her personal life is the most acute form of discrimination that can be meted out against her. No woman should be given a choice to choose between her motherhood and her career at Bar, yet that is the most detrimental discrimination that has been happening in Indian Bar, which no one has questioned so far. The falling number of women in practice is a reality that isn’t garnering much attention given the sharp rise in women studying law but is not being able to continue in the profession. Moving from a colonial misogynist whim to a post-colonial “new-age construct of Indian woman” façade, the policymakers of the Indian Judiciary have done nothing so far to decolonize itself from its rudimentary understanding of ‘equality of gender’ when it comes to the legal profession. Therefore, when Indian jurisprudence was (and is) swooning to the sweeping effect of transformative constitutionalism in the understanding of equality as enshrined under the Indian Constitution, one cannot help but question why the legal profession remained out of brushing effect of achieving substantive equality. The Airline industry’s discriminatory policies were not spared from criticism, nor were the policies where women’s involvement in any establishment serving liquor (Anuj Garg case), but the judicial practice did not question the stereotypical bias of gender and unequal structural practices until recently. That necessitates the need to examine the existing Bar policies and the steps taken by the regulatory bodies in assessing the situations that are in favor or against the purpose of furthering women’s issues in present-day India. From a comparative feminist point of concern, South Africa’s pro-women Bar policies are attractive to assess their applicability and extent in terms of promoting inclusivity at the Bar. This article intends to tap on these two countries’ potential in carving a niche in giving women an equal platform to play a substantive role in designing governance policies through the Judiciary. The article analyses the current gender composition of the legal profession while endorsing the concept of substantive equality as a requisite in designing an appropriate appointment process of the judges. It studies the theoretical framework on gender equality, examines the international and regional instruments and analyses the scope of welfare policies that Indian legal and regulatory bodies can undertake towards a transformative initiative in re-modeling the Judiciary to a more diverse and inclusive institution. The methodology employs a comparative and analytical understanding of doctrinal resources. It makes quantitative use of secondary data and qualitative use of primary data collected for determining the present status of Indian women legal practitioners and judges. With respect to quantitative data, statistics on the representation of women as judges and chief justices and senior advocates from their official websites from 2018 till present have been utilized. In respect of qualitative data, results of the structured interviews conducted through open and close-ended questions with retired lady judges of the higher judiciary and senior advocates of the Supreme Court of India, contacted through snowball sampling, are utilized.

Keywords: gender, higher judiciary, legal profession, representation, substantive equality

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Authors: Quoc Hung Le Pham

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Human beings are motivated to satisfy the physiological needs and psychological needs. In the fundamental needs, bodily excretion is the most basic one, while physiological excretion refers to the final products produced in the process of discharging the body. This physiological process is a common human phenomenon. For instance, bodily secretion is totally natural, but people of various nationalities through the times avoid saying it directly. Terms like ‘shit’ are often negatively regarded as dirty, smelly and vulgar; it will lead people to negative thinking. In fact, it is in the psychology of human beings to avoid such unsightly terms. Especially in social situations where you have to take care of your image, and you have to release. The best way to solve this is to approach the use of euphemism. People prefer to say it as ‘answering nature's call’ or ‘to pass a motion’ instead. Chinese and Vietnamese nations are referring to use euphemisms to replace bodily secretions, so this research will take this phenomenon as the object aims to explore the similarities and dissimilarities between two languages euphemism. The basic of the niche of this paper is human physiological phenomenon excretion. As the preliminary results show, in expressing bodily secretions the deeply impacting factor is language and cultural factors. On language factor terms, two languages are using assonance to replace human nature discharge, whilst the dissimilarities are metonymy, loan word and personification. On culture factor terms, the convergences are metonymy and application of the semantically-contrary-word-euphemism, whilst the difference is Chinese euphemism using allusion but Vietnamese euphemism does not.

Keywords: cultural factors, euphemism, human needs, language factors

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Authors: David Hough

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Indigenous peoples can generally be described as the original or first peoples of a land prior to colonization. While there is no single definition of indigenous peoples, the United Nations has developed a general understanding based on self-identification and historical continuity with pre-colonial societies. Indigenous peoples are often traditional holders of unique languages, knowledge systems and beliefs who possess valuable knowledge and practices which support sustainable management of natural resources. They often have social, economic, political systems, languages and cultures, which are distinct from dominant groups in the society or state where they live. They generally resist attempts by the dominant culture at assimilation and endeavour to maintain and reproduce their ancestral environments and systems as distinctive peoples and communities. In 2007, the United Nations General Assembly passed a declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples, known as UNDRIP. It (in addition to other international instruments such as ILO 169), sets out far-reaching guidelines, which – among other things – attempt to protect and promote indigenous languages and cultures. Paragraphs 13 and 14 of the declaration state the following regarding language, culture and education: Article 13, Paragraph 1: Indigenous peoples have the right to revitalize, use, develop and transmit for future generations their histories, languages, oral traditions, philosophies, writing systems, and literatures, and to designate and retain their own names for communities, places and persons. Article 14, Paragraph I: Indigenous peoples have the right to establish and control their educational systems and institutions providing education in their own languages, in a manner appropriate to their cultural methods of teaching and learning. These two paragraphs call for the right of self-determination in education. Paragraph 13 gives indigenous peoples the right to control the content of their teaching, while Paragraph 14 states that the teaching of this content should be based on methods of teaching and learning which are appropriate to indigenous peoples. This paper reviews an approach to furthering linguistic and cultural human rights for indigenous peoples in education, which supports UNDRIP. It has been employed in countries in Asia and the Pacific, including the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, Far East Russia and Nepal. It is based on bottom-up community-based initiatives where students, teachers and local knowledge holders come together to produce classroom materials in their own languages that reflect their traditional beliefs and value systems. They may include such things as knowledge about herbal medicines and traditional healing practices, local history, numerical systems, weights and measures, astronomy and navigation, canoe building, weaving and mat making, life rituals, feasts, festivals, songs, poems, etc. Many of these materials can then be mainstreamed into math, science language arts and social studies classes.

Keywords: Indigenous peoples, linguistic and cultural human rights, materials development, teacher training, traditional knowledge

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Authors: Satarupa Bhattacharjee

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Inter-religious dialogue and understanding are possible without losing one’s own identity. We find a unique blend of tradition, reason and human values in contemporary Indian thought. On this point, we may take note of the similarity between views of M. K. Gandhi and the religious discourse of Swami Vivekananda, i.e., all religions as different paths to God realisation but their unity lies in their goal, which is attainment of God, who is One. This enrichment guided us towards a kind of religious pluralism of John Hicks, who gives a solution to the problems of co-existence of diverse religions without undermining any religion. The plurality percolates into different spheres of Indian society and regarded as a chord with discord in a wonderful music. Swami Vivekananda believes that to serve man is to serve God. Both M. K. Gandhi and Swami Vivekananda were non-dualist and believed in the essential unity of man. Gandhi believes in the many foldedness of reality. Swami Vivekananda’s attitude towards religion is in principles of co-existence and acceptance. These principles have been accumulated in such a way that gave us a different world-view. The concept of unity, tolerance, equality, etc. can be achieved only by a spiritual attitude. Dynamism of spirituality stands in between man’s empirical existence and his spiritual destination and manifests itself in the different aspects of life including religious understanding. It is a movement towards pluralism. It is the fusion of spirituality with plurality which characterizes the concept of religious pluralism. This re-visited religious pluralism will open a new horizon of love and tolerance in our society. M. K. Gandhi and Swami Vivekananda paved the path for new horizon for a resurgent world. So the Indian spiritualism re-vitalised the concept of pluralism and stimulated its progress towards a new world.

Keywords: M. K. Gandhi, religious pluralism, Swami Vivekananda, worldview

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Authors: Arun Das

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Indian agriculture is acclaimed from the dates of Indus civilization (2500 BC). Since this time until the day, there were tremendous expansion in terms of space and technology has taken place. Abrupt growth in technology took place past one and half century. Consequent to this development, the land which was brought under agriculture in the initial stages of introducing agriculture for the first time, that land is not possessing the same physical condition. Either it has lost the productive capacity or modified into semi agriculture land. On the grounds of its capacity and interwoven characteristics seven phases of agriculture scenario has been identified. Most of the land is on the march of desertification. Identifying the stages and the phase of the agriculture scenario is most relevant from the point of view of food security at regional, national and at global level. Secondly decisive measure can put back the degenerating environmental condition into arrest. GIS and Remote sensing applications have been used to identify the phases of agriculture.

Keywords: agriculture phases, desertification, deforestation, foods security, transmigration

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Authors: Yuqiao Zhou

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The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (SWH) emphasizes the effect produced by language on people’s minds. According to linguistic relativity, language has evolved over the course of human life on earth, and, in turn, the acquisition of language shapes learners’ thoughts. Despite much attention drawn by SWH, few scholars have attempted to analyse people’s thoughts via their literary works. And yet, the linguistic choices that create a narrative can enable us to examine its writer’s thoughts. Still, less work has been done on the impact of language on the minds of bilingual people. Internationalization has resulted in an increasing number of bilingual and multilingual individuals. In China, where more than one hundred languages are used for communication, most people are bilingual in Mandarin Chinese (the official language of China) and their own dialect. Taking as its corpus the ethnic minority myth of Ge Sa-er Wang by Alai and its English translation by Goldblatt and Lin, this paper aims to analyse the effects of culture on bilingual people’s minds. It will first analyse Alai’s thoughts on using the original version of Ge Sa-er Wang; next, it will examine the thoughts of the two translators by looking at translation choices made in the English version; finally, it will compare the cultural influences evident in the thoughts of Alai, and Goldblatt and Lin. Whereas Alai can speak two Sino-Tibetan languages – Mandarin Chinese and Tibetan – Goldblatt and Lin can speak two languages from different families – Mandarin Chinese (a Sino-Tibetan language) and English (an Indo-European language). The results reveal two systems of thought existing in the translators’ minds; Alai’s text, on the other hand, does not reveal a significant influence from North China, where Mandarin Chinese originated. The findings reveal the inconsistency of a second language’s influence on people’s minds. Notably, they suggest that the more different the two languages are, the greater the influence produced by the second language culture on people’s thoughts. It is hoped that this research will expand the scope of SWH as well as shed light on future translation studies on ethnic minority literature.

Keywords: Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, cultural translation, cultural-specific items, Ge Sa-er Wang, ethnic minority literature, Tibet

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Authors: Rishi Prajapati

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3G is the abbreviation of third generation of wireless mobile telecommunication technologies. 3G is a mode that finds application in wireless voice telephony, mobile internet access, fixed wireless internet access, video calls and mobile TV. It also provides mobile broadband access to smartphones and mobile modems in laptops and computers. The first 3G networks were introduced in 1998, followed by 4G networks in 2008. 4G is the abbreviation of fourth generation of wireless mobile telecommunication technologies. 4G is termed to be the advanced form of 3G. 4G was firstly introduced in South Korea in 2007. Many abstracts have floated researches that depicted the diversity and similarity between the third and the fourth generation of wireless mobile telecommunications technology, whereas this abstract reflects the study that focuses on analyzing the preference between 3G versus 4G given by the elite group of the Indian society who are known as adolescents or the Millennial Generation aging from 18 years to 25 years. The Millennial Generation was chosen for this study as they have the easiest access to the latest technology. A sample size of 200 adolescents was selected and a structured survey was carried out which had several closed ended as well as open ended questions, to aggregate the result of this study. It was made sure that the effect of environmental factors on the subjects was as minimal as possible. The data analysis comprised of primary data collection reflecting it as quantitative research. The rationale behind this research is to give brief idea of how 3G and 4G are accepted by the Millennial Generation in India. The findings of this research would materialize a framework which depicts whether Millennial Generation would prefer 4G over 3G or vice versa.

Keywords: fourth generation, wireless telecommunication technology, Indian society, millennial generation, market research, third generation

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Authors: Anwesha Das

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There are numerous cases of racism and discriminatory practices in India against the northeast citizens and the African migrants. The right-wing extremism of the presently ruling political party in India has resulted in increased cases of xenophobia and Afrophobia. The rigid Indian caste system contributes to such practices of racism. The establishment of the ‘Hindu race’ by the present right-wing government, leading to instilling pride among Hindus being of a superior race, has resulted in more atrocious racist practices. This paper argues that policy action is required against racist, discriminatory practices. Policy actors in India do not ask the right questions and fail to give the needed redirection. It critically analyses Acts 14 and 15 of the Indian constitution in order to examine the cause of a policy action. In proposing the need for policy action, this paper places its arguments as a vital extension of the existing scholarship on public policy studies in India. It uses mixed-method analysis to examine the factors responsible for the policy problem and aims to suggest specific points of intervention in a policy progression. The study finds that despite anti-discriminatory policies in the mentioned Acts of the Indian constitution, there are rampant cases of racism owing to religious and cultural factors. The major findings of the study show how the present right-wing government violated the constitution in aggravating xenophobia. This paper proposes a policy action required to stop such further practices.

Keywords: India, migrants, policy action, racism, xenophobia

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Authors: Irdawati Bay Nalls

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This study looked at Bilingual First Language Acquisition (BFLA) Spanish-English Mexican Americans across an elementary public school in the United States and the possibility of maintaining harmonious bilingualism. Adopting a phenomenological approach, with a focus on the status of bilingualism in education within a marginalized community, classroom observations, and small group and one-on-one interviews were conducted. This study explored the struggles of these bilinguals as they acculturated in America through their attempt to blend heritage and societal languages and cultural practices. Results revealed that bilinguals as young as 5 years old expressed their need to retain Spanish as a heritage language while learning English. 12 years old foresee that Spanish will not be taught to them in schools and highlighted the need to learn Spanish outside the school environments. Their voices revealed counter-narratives on identity and the need to maintain harmonious bilingualism as these students strived to give equal importance to the learning of English and Spanish as first languages despite the setbacks faced.

Keywords: BFLA, Mexican-American, bilingual, harmonious bilingualism

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Authors: Totok Suhardijanto, Ninie Susanti Tedjowasono

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This paper discusses the relationship between the distribution of Ancient Malay inscriptions and Spice Trade Route, especially in the relation with material cultures that accompany them, to understand how Malay could spread out around the archipelago beyond its original native-speakers’ region. The archipelago was known as the Spice Islands from the very beginning of the first century due to mace, cloves, and nutmeg that were originally exclusively found there. According to the Indian record, since the 2nd century, there has been a contact established between Indian and Indonesian people. A Chinese document from 3rd Century has mentioned Wangka (now widely known as Bangka) an island near Sumatra where some Chinese expeditions had visited. All of these records supported the existence of a maritime trade system and route between the archipelago and other countries during the first millennium. This paper will discuss first the Ancient Malay inscription spread around the archipelago from the perspectives of language variation and writing system style. Analyzing language variations of inscriptions certainly is not as easy as studying current spoken language variations in modern sociolinguistics. A huge amount of data is available for such kind of studies. On the contrary, in language variation research with inscription texts as an object, data is insufficient. Other resources will be needed to support the linguistic analysis. For this reason, this research made use of epigraphical evidence in the surrounding areas of the inscriptions to explain the variation of language and writing style. The research next expands the analysis to figure out the relationship between language variation and inscriptions distribution to the Spice Trade Route that spreads from the Molucca Sea to Mediterranian Sea. Data in this research consists of six different inscriptions: Kedukan Bukit, Koto Kapur, Dapunta Salendra, Sang Hyang Wintang, Ligor, and Laguna from the 7th-9th Century and found in Sumatra, Jawa, and the Philippines. In addition, as a comparative resource, this research also used Hikayat Tanjung Tanah, the first-founded Ancient Malay manuscript. In language analysis, we conduct a sociolinguistic method to explore the language variation and writing style of the inscriptions. For dealing with archaeological data, we conducted a hermeneutic method to analyze the possible meaning and social uses of the data. Language variations and writing system style in this research can be classified into two main groups. The language, epigraphical, and archaeological evidence explain that Ancient Malay had been widely used in the Eastern area of Spice Trade Route because it played an important role in the region as a lingua franca between people from different ethnic groups with different languages.

Keywords: Ancient Malay, Spice trade route, language variation, writing system variation

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Authors: Karlygash Adamova

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This article is focused on the KazTest as one of the most important high-stakes tests and the key tool in Kazakh language assessment. The research will also include the brief introduction to the language policy in Kazakhstan. Particularly, it is going to be changed significantly and turn from bilingualism (Kazakh, Russian) to multilingual policy (three languages - Kazakh, Russian, English). Therefore, the current status of the abovementioned languages will be described. Due to the various educational reforms in the country, the language evaluation system should also be improved and moderated. The research will present the most significant test of Kazakhstan – the KazTest, which is aimed to evaluate the Kazakh language proficiency. Assessment is an ongoing process that encompasses a wide area of knowledge upon the productive performance of the learners. Test is widely defined as a standardized or standard method of research, testing, diagnostics, verification, etc. The two most important characteristics of any test, as the main element of the assessment - validity and reliability - will also be described in this paper. Therefore, the preparation and design of the test, which is assumed to be an indicator of knowledge, and it is highly important to take into account all these properties.

Keywords: multilingualism, language assessment, testing, language policy

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Authors: Huynh Tan Hoi

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Considered as one of the hardest languages in the world, Japanese is still the language that many young people choose to learn. Today, with the development of technology, learning foreign languages in general and Japanese language, in particular, is not an impossible barrier. Learning materials are not only from paper books, songs but also through software programs of smartphones or computers. Especially, students who begin to explore effective skills to study this language need to access modern technologies to improve their learning much better. When using the software, some students may feel embarrassed and challenged, but everything would go smoothly after a few days. After completing the course, students will get more knowledge, achieve a higher knowledge such as N2 or N1 Japanese Language Proficiency Test Certificate. In this research paper, 35 students who are studying at Ho Chi Minh City FPT University were asked to complete the questionnaire at the beginning of July up to August of 2018. Through this research, we realize that with the guidance of lecturers, the necessity of using modern software and some effective methods are indispensable in term of improving quality of teaching and learning process.

Keywords: higher knowledge, Japanese, methods, software, students

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Authors: Ali Akbar Jabbari

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This study investigates the role of the prior acquired languages, Persian and English, concerning the acquisition of the third language (L3) French and German at the initial stages. The data were collected from two groups of L3 learners: 28 learners of L3 French and 21 learners of L3 German, in order to test the placement of the attributive adjectives and the noun adjuncts through a grammaticality judgment task and an element rearrangement task. The aim of the study was to investigate whether any of the models proposed in the L3 acquisition could account for the case of the present study. The results of the analysis revealed that the learners of L3 German and French were both affected by the typological similarity of the previous languages. The outperformance of the German learners is an indication of the facilitative effect of L2 English (which is typologically more similar to the German than that of French). English had also a non-facilitative role in the acquisition of French and this is proved in the lower performance of the French learners. This study provided evidence for the TPM as the most accepted model of L3 acquisition.

Keywords: cross-linguistic influence, multilingualism, third language acquisition, transfer

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Authors: Alina Hamid Bari

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Intellectual Property (IP) policies of a country have a huge impact on the pharmaceutical industry as this industry is all about patents. Developed countries have used IP protection to boost their economy; developing countries are concerned about access to medicine for poor people. U.S. company, Pfizer had a monopoly for 14 years for Lipitor and it all came to end when Pfizer decided to operate in India. This research will focus at the effects of Indian IP policies on USA by comparing Pfizer & Ranbaxy with regards to Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights. For this research inductive approach has been used. Main source of material is Annual reports, theory based on academic books and articles along with rulings of court, policy statements and decisions, websites and newspaper articles. SWOT analysis is done for both Pfizer & Ranbaxy. The main comparison was done by doing ratio analysis and analyses of annual reports for the year 2011-2012 for Pfizer and Ranbaxy to see the impact on their profitability. This research concludes that Indian intellectual laws do affect the profitability of the U.S. pharmaceutical industry which can in turn have an impact on the US economy. These days India is only granting patents on products which it feels are deserving of it. So the U.S. companies operating in India have to defend their invention to get a patent. Thus, to operate in India and maintain monopoly in market, US firms have to come up with different strategies.

Keywords: atorvastatin, India, intellectual property, lipitor, Pfizer, pharmaceutical industry, Ranbaxy, TRIPs, U.S.

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Authors: Suresh B. Shinde

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The present paper examined the selective fictional works of the Indian writers in the Marathi language which reflects the gradual erosion of sexual repression of modern women characters. Furthermore, the study employed the attitudinal survey method to counter check the fictional reality of the Indian women in real life in the modern era. The Indian writers in an early stage from the pre and post-independence period pictured the women characters such as sexually suppressed and adherence to male sexual dominance. Gangadhar Gadgil a ‘Sahitya Akademi’ award winner writer in his story ‘Ek Manus’ shown that a husband, abnormally exploited her wife. G. A. Kulkarni a ‘Sahitya Akademi’ award winner writer shown that a young lady character suppressed her proposal of marriage with she loved due to the social pressure and conventions. Arvind Gokhale and Kamal Desai have also pictured lady characters who suppressed their sexual urges even they were highly educated. In the late 20th century and early 21st century, the trends of Marathi literature is dramatically changed accordingly the women fictions. Gouri Deshpande, the popular story writer, penetrates modern woman very clearly. Two lady characters are living happily together accepting revolts of society for a sexual relationship. Meghna Pethe, another well-known writer in her story, depicts a women character who was lived with her friend as live-in-relationship and enjoying the erotic sex. How so far, it was seen that the pre and post-independence women fictions are gradually changed regarding her sexually urges. This reality leads to design the survey research design in which 100 college girls and 100 middle-aged women were surveyed with sexual attitude scale and feminist identity test. It was hypothesized that the today's college girls would higher on sexual attitude and feminist identity than middle-aged women. Moreover, it was also assumed that sexual attitude and feminist identity would have a strong positive correlation. The obtained data analyzed through Students’ test and Pearson Product Moment Correlation (PPMC). The results reveal that the today's college girls are having a high level of sexual attitude and feminist identity than middle-aged women. Results also reveal that sexual attitude and feminist identity have a strongest positive correlation. How so far the survey research has provided the reality ground to the modern women in Indian fictions in Marathi literature. The findings of the research have been discussed accordingly the gender equality as well as psychological perspectives.

Keywords: sexual repression, women in Indian fictions, sexual attitude, feminist perspectives

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Authors: Zylfi Shehu, Shpetim Madani, Bashkim Delia

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Context: The study focuses on the interest and engagement of high school students in Tirana, Albania, in physical activity, sports, and foreign languages. It acknowledges the numerous physiological benefits of physical activity, such as cardiovascular health and improved mood. It also recognizes the importance of physical activity in childhood and adolescence for proper skeletal development and long-term health. Research Aim: The main purpose of the study is to investigate and analyze the preferences and interests of male and female high school students in Tirana regarding their functional development, physical activity, sports participation, and choice of foreign languages. The aim is to provide insights for the students and teachers to guide future objectives and improve the quality of physical education. Methodology: The study employed a survey-based approach, targeting both male and female students in public high schools in Tirana. A total of 410 students aged 15 to 19 years old, participated in the study. The data collected from the survey were processed using Excel and presented through tables and graphs. Findings: The results revealed that team sports were more favored by the students, with football being the preferred choice among males, while basketball and volleyball were more popular among females. Additionally, English was found to be the most preferred foreign language, selected by a higher percentage of females (38.57%) compared to males (16.90%). German followed as the second preferred language. Theoretical Importance: This study contributes to the understanding of students' interests in physical activity, sports, and foreign languages in Tirana's high schools. The findings highlight the need to focus on specific sports and languages to cater to students' preferences and guide future educational objectives. It also emphasizes the importance of physical education in promoting students' overall well-being and highlights potential areas for policy and program improvement. Data Collection and Analysis Procedures: The study collected data through surveys administered to high school students in Tirana. The survey responses were processed and analyzed using Excel, and the findings were presented through tables and graphs. The data analysis allowed for the identification of preferences and trends among male and female students, providing valuable insights for future decision-making. Question Addressed: The study aimed to address the question of high school students' interest in physical activity, sports, and foreign languages. It sought to understand the preferences and choices made by students in Tirana and investigate factors such as gender, family income, and accessibility to extracurricular sports activities. Conclusion: The study revealed that high school students in Tirana show a preference for team sports, with football being the most favored among males and basketball and volleyball among females. English was found to be the most preferred foreign language. The findings provide important insights for educators and policymakers to enhance physical education programs and consider students' preferences and interests to foster a more effective learning environment. The study also emphasizes the importance of physical activity and sports in promoting students' physical and mental well-being.

Keywords: female, male, foreign languages, sports, physical education, high school students

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Authors: Soundarya Lahari Vedula

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Dalit women make up a significant portion of the Indian population. However, they are victims of age old discrimination. This paper presents a brief background of the Indian caste system which is a hierarchical division placing Dalits at the lowest rank. Dalits are forced to perform menial and harsh tasks. They often face social ostracism. The situation of Dalit women is of unique significance as they face triple discrimination due to their caste, gender, and class. Dalit women are strictly withheld by the rigid boundaries of the caste system. They are discriminated at every stage of their life and are denied access to public places, education and healthcare facilities among others. They face the worst forms of sexual violence. In spite of legislations and international conventions in place, their plight is not adequately addressed. This paper discusses, in brief, the legal mechanism in place to prohibit untouchability. Furthermore, this paper details on the specific human rights violations faced by Dalit women in the social, economic and political spheres. The violations range from discrimination in public places, denial of education and health services, sexual exploitation and barriers to political representation. Finally, this paper identifies certain lacunae in the existing Indian statutes and broadens on the measures to be taken to improve the situation of Dalit women. This paper offers some recommendations to address the plight of Dalit women such as amendments to the existing statutes, effective implementation of legal mechanisms and a more meaningful interpretation of the international conventions.

Keywords: Dalit, caste, class, discrimination, equality

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Authors: Tanya Anand, Arun Kandasamy, L. N. Suman

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Family based therapy for adolescent substance abuse has been studied to be effective in the West. Whereas, based on literature review, family therapy and interventions for adolescent substance abuse is still in its nascent stages in India. A multidimensional perspective to treatment has been indicated consistently in the Indian literature, but standardized therapy which addresses early substance abuse, from a social-ecological perspective has not been developed and studied for Indian population. While numerous researches have been conducted in India on the need of engaging the family in therapy for the purpose of symptom reduction, long-term maintenance of gains, and reducing family burnout, distress and dysfunction; a family based model in the Indian context has not been developed and tried, to the best of our knowledge. Hence, from the aim of building a model to treat adolescent substance abuse within the family context, experts in the area of mental health and deaddiction were interviewed to inform upon the clinical difficulties, challenges, uniqueness that Indian families present with. The integration of indigenous techniques that would be helpful in engaging families of young individuals with difficulties were also explored. Eight experts' who were interviewed, have 10-30 years of experience in working with families and substance users. An open-ended interview was conducted with the experts individually and audio-recorded. The interviews were then transcribed and subjected to qualitative analysis for building a framework and treatment guideline. Additionally, interviews with patients and their parents were conducted to elicit ‘felt needs’. The results of the analysis revealed culture-specific issues widely experienced within Indian families by adolescents and young adults, centering around the theme of Individuation versus collective identity and living. Substance abuse, in this framework, was found to be perceived as one of the maladaptive ways of the youth to disengage from the family and attempt at individuation and the responsibilities that are considered entitlements in the culture. On the other hand, interviews with family members revealed them to be engaging in inconsistent patterns of care and parenting. This was experienced and observed in terms of fostering interdependence within the family, sometimes within adverse socio-economic and societal conditions, where enacted and perceived stigma kept the individual and family members in a vicious loop of maladaptive coping patterns, dysfunctional family arrangements, and often leading to burnout with poor help seeking. The paper inform upon a framework that lays down the foundation for assessments, planning, case management and therapist competencies, required to address alcohol and drug issues in an Indian family context with such etiological factors at its heart. This paper will cover qualitative results of the interviews and present a model that may guide mental health professionals for treatment of adolescent substance use and family therapy.

Keywords: Indian families, family therapy, de-addiction, adolescent, youth, substance abuse, behavioral issues, felt needs, culture, etiology, model building, framework development, interviews

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Authors: Shivani Gupta, Shrishti Chaturvedi

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By using a miniscule of nuclear matter, the problem of immeasurable human needs for energy can be resolved. However since nuclear energy also has the inherent potential for catastrophic destruction, one should be extremely mindful of the consequences should a mischance occur. Civil Nuclear Liability has recently gained a lot of momentum after India entered into agreements with nations like United States of America, France and others. Also now India is a part of the Convention on Supplementary Compensation (CSC). With a history of Bhopal Gas Tragedy, India is now much more vigilant about the latest developments in this sector. Therefore, it has become imperative to analyses the liability regime in the background of international conventions such as Vienna Convention 1963, Paris Convention 1960, Convention on Supplementary Compensation, 1997 and others. Also the present Indian legal scenarios in this regard which are derived from Civil Liability for Nuclear Damages Act, 2010 and Civil Liability for Nuclear Damages Rules, 2011 have also been extensively discussed in the paper.

Keywords: nuclear liability, civil liability for nuclear damages act, 2010, civil liability for nuclear damages rules, India

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Authors: Kadidiatou Toure

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Mali has started experimentation of teaching the national languages at school through the convergent pedagogy in 1987. Then, it is in 1994 that it will become widespread with eleven of the thirteen former national languages used at primary school. The aim was to improve the Malian educational system because the use of French as the only medium of instruction was considered a contributing factor to the significant number of student dropouts and the high rate of repetition. The Convergent pedagogy highlights the knowledge acquired by children at home, their vision of the world and especially the knowledge they have of their mother tongue. That pedagogy requires the use of a specific medium only during classroom practices and teachers have been trained in this sense. The specific medium depends on the learning content, which sometimes is French, other times, it is the national language. Research has shown that bilingual learners do not only use the required medium in their learning activities, but they code switch. It is part of their learning processes. Currently, many scholars agree on the importance of CS in bilingual classes, and teachers have been told about the necessity of integrating it into their classroom practices. One of the challenges of the Malian bilingual education curriculum is the question of ‘effective languages management’. Theoretically, depending on the classrooms, an average have been established for each of the involved language. Following that, teachers make use of CS differently, sometimes, it favors the learners, other times, it contributes to the development of some linguistic weaknesses. The present research tries to fill that gap through a tentative model of didactization of CS, which simply means the practical management of the languages involved in the bilingual classrooms. It is to know how to use CS for effective learning. Moreover, the didactization of CS tends to sensitize the teachers about the functional role of CS so that they may overcome their own weaknesses. The overall goal of this research is to make code switching a real tool for bilingual education. The specific objectives are: to identify the types of CS used during classroom activities to present the functional role of CS for the teachers as well as the pupils. to develop a tentative model of code-switching, which will help the teachers in transitional classes of bilingual schools to recognize the appropriate moment for making use of code switching in their classrooms. The methodology adopted is a qualitative one. The study is based on recorded videos of teachers of 3rd year of primary school during their classroom activities and interviews with the teachers in order to confirm the functional role of CS in bilingual classes. The theoretical framework adopted is the typology of CS proposed by Poplack (1980) to identify the types of CS used. The study reveals that teachers need to be trained on the types of CS and the different functions they assume and on the consequences of inappropriate use of language alternation.

Keywords: bilingual curriculum, code switching, didactization, national languages

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Authors: Olga Bernikova, Oleg Redkin

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Globalization is a process of worldwide economic, political and cultural integration. Obviously, this phenomenon has both positive and negative issues. This article analyzes the impact of the modern process of globalization on the national traditions of language teaching and research. In this context, the problem of the ratio of local to global can be viewed from several sides. Firstly, since English is the language of over 80 percent of scientific and technical research worldwide, what should be the language of science in certain region? Secondly, language 'globality' is not always associated with English, because intercultural communications may have their regional peculiarities. For example, in the Arab world, Modern Standard Arabic can also be regarded as 'global' phenomenon, since the mother-tongue languages of the population are local Arabic dialects. In addition, the correlation 'local' versus 'global' is manifested not only in the linguistic sphere but also in the methodology used in language acquisition and research. Thus, the major principles of the Arabic philological tradition, which goes back to the 7th century, are still spread in the modern Arab world. At the same time, the terminology and methods of language research that are peculiar to this tradition are quite far from the issues of general linguistics that underlies the description of all the languages of the world. The present research relies on a comparative analysis of sources in Arabic linguistics, including original works in Arabic dating back to the 12th-13th centuries. As a case study, interaction of local and global is also considered on the example of the Arabic teaching and research in Russia. Speaking about the correlation between local and global it is possible to forecast development of two parallel tendencies: the spread of the phenomena of globalization on one hand, and local implementation of a language policy aimed at preserving native languages, including Arabic, on the other.

Keywords: Arabic, global, language, local, tradition

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Authors: Pooja Bakshi

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In the following paper, an attempt would be made to engage with the relationship between the state and the imperatives of security from a gendered lens. This will be juxtaposed with the feminist engagement with International Law. Theorizations from the literature on South Asian politics and Global politics would be applied to the manner in which the Indian state has defined and proposed to deal with concerns of internal security pertaining to the ‘Left Wing Extremism’ in 2010-2011. It would be argued that the state needs to be disaggregated into the legislature, executive and the judiciary; since there are times when some institutional parts of the state provide space for progressive democratic engagement whilst other institutions don’t. The specific contours of violence faced by women and children at the hands of the state, in the above-mentioned discourse would also be examined. In the end, implications of the security state discourse on debates in International Law would be elaborated.

Keywords: feminist engagement, human rights, state response to left extremism, security studies in South Asia

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Authors: Soham Chakraborty

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This article examines the development of start-up culture in India, its development as well as related impact on the Indian society. Another vibrant synonym of start-up in the present century can be starting afresh. Startups have become the new flavor of this decade. A startup ecosystem is formed by mainly the new generation in the making. A startup ecosystem involves a variety of elements without which a startup can never prosper, they are—ideas, inventions, innovations as well as authentic research in the field into which one is interested, mentors, advisors, funding bodies, service provider organizations, angel, venture and so on. The culture of startup is quiet nascent but rampant in India. This is largely due to the widespread of media as a medium through which the newfangled entrepreneurs can spread their word of mouth far and wide. Different kinds of media such as Television, Radio, Internet, Print media and so on, act as the weapon to any startup company in India. The article explores how there is a sudden shift in the growing Indian economy due to the rise of startup ecosystem. There are various reasons, which are the result of the growing success of startup in India, firstly, entrepreneurs are building up startup ideas on the basis of various international startup but giving them a pinch of Indian flavor; secondly, business models are framed based on the current problems that people face in the modern century; thirdly, balance between social and technological entrepreneurs and lastly, quality of mentorship. The Government of India boasts startup as a flagship initiative. Bunch full of benefits and assistance was declared in an event named as 'Start Up India, Stand Up India' on 16th January 2016 by the current Prime Minister of India Mr. Narendra Modi. One of the biggest boon that increasing startups are creating in the society is the proliferation of self-employment. Noted Startups which are thriving in India are like OYO, Where’s The Food (WTF), TVF Pitchers, Flipkart and so on are examples of India is getting covered up by various innovative startups. The deep impact can be felt by each Indian after a few years as various governmental and non-governmental policies and agendas are helping in the sprawling up of startups and have mushroom growth in India. The impact of startup uprising in India is also possible due to increasing globalization which is leading to the eradication of national borders, thereby creating the environment to enlarge one’s business model. To conclude, this article points out on the correlation between rising startup in Indian market and its increasing developmental benefits for the people at large. Internationally, various business portals are tagging India to be the world’s fastest growing startup ecosystem.

Keywords: business, ecosystem, entrepreneurs, media, globalization, startup

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Authors: Upasna Bhandari, Indranil Saha, Deepak John Mathew

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The green fashion market is growing rapidly as eco-friendly consumers are willing to expand their organic lifestyle to include clothing. With an increasing share of fashion consumers globally, Indian consumers are observed to consider the social and environmental ethics while making purchasing decisions. While some research clearly identifies the efforts of responsible consumers towards green fashion, some argue that fashion-orientated consumers who are sensitive towards environment do not actively participate towards supporting green fashion. This study aims to analyze the current perception of green fashion among Indian consumers. A small-scale exploratory study is conducted where consumers’ perception of green fashion is examined followed by an analysis of translation of this perception into purchase decision making. This research paper gives insight into consumer awareness on green fashion and provides scope towards the expansion of ethical fashion consumption within the demography of India.

Keywords: consumer perception, environmental attitudes, fashion retailing, green fashion, sustainability

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Authors: Prasanna Belur, P. R. Ashwini, Sampath Charanyaa, I. Regupathi

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Indian oil sardine (Sardinella longiceps) are one of the richest and cheapest sources of n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (n-3 PUFA) such as Eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). The health benefits conferred by n-3 PUFA upon consumption, in the prevention and treatment of coronary, neuromuscular, immunological disorders and allergic conditions are well documented. Natural refined Indian Sardine oil generally contain about 25% (w/w) n-3 PUFA along with various unsaturated and saturated fatty acids in the form of mono, di, and triglycerides. Having high concentration of n-3 PUFA content in the glyceride form is most desirable for human consumption to avail maximum health benefits. Thus, enhancing the n-3 PUFA content while retaining it in the glyceride form with green technology is the need of the hour. In this study, refined Indian Sardine oil was subjected to selective hydrolysis by Candida antartica lipase to enhance n-3 PUFA content. The degree of hydrolysis and enhancement of n-3 PUFA content was estimated by determining acid value, Iodine value, EPA and DHA content (by Gas Chromatographic methods after derivitization) before and after hydrolysis. Various reaction parameters such as pH, temperature, enzyme load, lipid to aqueous phase volume ratio and incubation time were optimized by conducting trials with one parameter at a time approach. Incubating enzyme solution with refined sardine oil with a volume ratio of 1:1, at pH 7.0, for 60 minutes at 50 °C, with an enzyme load of 60 mg/ml was found to be optimum. After enzymatic treatment, the oil was subjected to refining to remove free fatty acids and moisture content using previously optimized refining technology. Enzymatic treatment at the optimal conditions resulted in 12.11 % enhancement in Degree of hydrolysis. Iodine number had increased by 9.7 % and n-3 PUFA content was enhanced by 112 % (w/w). Selective enhancement of n-3 PUFA glycerides, eliminating saturated and unsaturated fatty acids from the oil using enzyme is an interesting preposition as this technique is environment-friendly, cost effective and provide natural source of n-3 PUFA rich oil.

Keywords: Candida antartica, lipase, n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids, sardine oil

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Authors: Mohammad Jahangeer Warsi

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This is, perhaps, the first linguistic study of Maithili Urdu, a dialect of Urdu language of Indo-Aryan family, spoken by around four million speakers in Darbhanga, Samastipur, Begusarai, Madhubani, and Muzafarpur districts of Bihar. It has the subject–verb–object (SOV) word order and it lacks script and literature. Needless to say, this work is an attempt to document this dialect so that it should contribute to the field of descriptive linguistics. Besides, it is also spoken by majority of Maithili diaspora community. Maithili Urdu does not have its own script or literature, yet it has maintained an oral history of over many centuries. It has contributed to enriching the Maithili, Hindi and Urdu languages and literature very profoundly. Dialects are the contact languages of particular regions, and they have a deep impact on their cultural heritage. Slowly with time, these dialects begin to take shape of languages. The convergence of a dialect into a language is a symbol and pride of the people who speak it. Although, confined to the five districts of northern Bihar, yet highly popular among the natives, it is the primary mode of communication of the local Muslims. The paper will focus on the structure of expressions about Maithili Urdu that include the structure of words, phrases, clauses, and sentences. There are clear differences in linguistic features of Maithili Urdu vis-à-vis Urdu, Maithili and Hindi. Though being a dialect of Urdu, interestingly, there is only one second person pronoun tu and lack of agentive marker –ne. Although being spoken in the vicinity of Hindi, Urdu and Maithili, it undoubtedly has its own linguistic features, of them, verb conjugation is remarkably unique. Because of the oral tradition of this link language, intonation has become significantly prominent. This paper will discuss the morpho-syntactic pattern of Maithili Urdu and will go through a sample text to authenticate the findings.

Keywords: cultural heritage, morpho-syntactic pattern, Maithili Urdu, verb conjugation

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Authors: Mohamed A. Hammad, Dzul Azri Mohamed Noor, Syed Azhar Syed Sulaiman, Majed Ahmed Al-Mansoub, Muhammad Qamar

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There is a progressive increase in the prevalence of early onset Type 2 diabetes mellitus. Early detection of Type 2 diabetes enhances the length and/or quality of life which might result from a reduction in the severity, frequency or prevent or delay of its long-term complications. The study aims to determine the onset age for the first diagnosis of Type 2 diabetes mellitus. A retrospective study conducted in the endocrine clinic at Hospital Pulau Pinang in Penang, Malaysia, January- December 2016. Records of 519 patients with Type 2 diabetes mellitus were screened to collect demographic data and determine the age of first-time diabetes mellitus diagnosis. Patients classified according to the age of diagnosis, gender, and ethnicity. The study included 519 patients with age (55.6±13.7) years, female 265 (51.1%) and male 254 (48.9%). The ethnicity distribution was Malay 191 (36.8%), Chinese 189 (36.4%) and Indian 139 (26.8%). The age of Type 2 diabetes diagnosis was (42±14.8) years. The female onset of diabetes mellitus was at age (41.5±13.7) years, while male (42.6±13.7) years. Distribution of diabetic onset by ethnicity was Malay at age (40.7±13.7) years, Chinese (43.2±13.7) years and Indian (42.3±13.7) years. Diabetic onset was classified by age as follow; ≤20 years’ cohort was 33 (6.4%) cases. Group >20- ≤40 years was 190 (36.6%) patients, and category >40- ≤60 years was 270 (52%) subjects. On the other hand, the group >60 years was 22 (4.2%) patients. The range of diagnosis was between 10 and 73 years old. Conclusion: Malay and female have an earlier onset of diabetes than Indian, Chinese and male. More than half of the patients had diabetes between 40 and 60 years old. Diabetes mellitus is becoming more common in younger age <40 years. The age at diagnosis of Type 2 diabetes mellitus has decreased with time.

Keywords: age of onset, diabetes diagnosis, diabetes mellitus, Malaysia, outpatients, type 2 diabetes, retrospective study

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Authors: C. V. Aravinda, H. N. Prakash

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In this paper, we tried to convey fusion and state of art pertaining to SIL character recognition systems. In the first step, the text is preprocessed and normalized to perform the text identification correctly. The second step involves extracting relevant and informative features. The third step implements the classification decision. The three stages which involved are Data acquisition and preprocessing, Feature extraction, and Classification. Here we concentrated on two techniques to obtain features, Feature Extraction & Feature Selection. Edge-hinge distribution is a feature that characterizes the changes in direction of a script stroke in handwritten text. The edge-hinge distribution is extracted by means of a windowpane that is slid over an edge-detected binary handwriting image. Whenever the mid pixel of the window is on, the two edge fragments (i.e. connected sequences of pixels) emerging from this mid pixel are measured. Their directions are measured and stored as pairs. A joint probability distribution is obtained from a large sample of such pairs. Despite continuous effort, handwriting identification remains a challenging issue, due to different approaches use different varieties of features, having different. Therefore, our study will focus on handwriting recognition based on feature selection to simplify features extracting task, optimize classification system complexity, reduce running time and improve the classification accuracy.

Keywords: word segmentation and recognition, character recognition, optical character recognition, hand written character recognition, South Indian languages

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Authors: M. Bagavandas

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Introduction: South Indian stone sculptures are known for their elegance and history. They are available in large numbers in different monuments situated different parts of South India. These art pieces have been studied using iconography details, but this pioneering study introduces a novel method known as iconometry which is a quantitative study that deals with measurements of different parts of icons to find answers for important unanswered questions. The main aim of this paper is to compare iconometric measurements of the sculptures with canonical proportion to determine whether the sculptors of the past had followed any of the canonical proportions prescribed in the ancient text. If not, this study recovers the proportions used for carving sculptures which is not available to us now. Also, it will be interesting to see how these sculptural proportions of different monuments belonging to different dynasties differ from one another in terms these proportions. Methods and Materials: As Indian sculptures are depicted in different postures, one way of making measurements independent of size, is to decode on a suitable measurement and convert the other measurements as proportions with respect to the chosen measurement. Since in all canonical texts of Indian art, all different measurements are given in terms of face length, it is chosen as the required measurement for standardizing the measurements. In order to compare these facial measurements with measurements prescribed in Indian canons of Iconography, the ten facial measurements like face length, morphological face length, nose length, nose-to-chin length, eye length, lip length, face breadth, nose breadth, eye breadth and lip breadth were standardized using the face length and the number of measurements reduced to nine. Each measurement was divided by the corresponding face length and multiplied by twelve and given in angula unit used in the canonical texts. The reason for multiplying by twelve is that the face length is given as twelve angulas in the canonical texts for all figures. Clustering techniques were used to determine whether the sculptors of the past had followed any of the proportions prescribed in the canonical texts of the past to carve sculptures and also to compare the proportions of sculptures of different monuments. About one hundred twenty-seven stone sculptures from four monuments belonging to the Pallava, the Chola, the Pandya and the Vijayanagar dynasties were taken up for this study. These art pieces belong to a period ranging from the eighth to the sixteenth century A.D. and all of them adorning different monuments situated in different parts of Tamil Nadu State, South India. Anthropometric instruments were used for taking measurements and the author himself had measured all the sample pieces of this study. Result: Statistical analysis of sculptures of different centers of art from different dynasties shows a considerable difference in facial proportions and many of these proportions differ widely from the canonical proportions. The retrieved different facial proportions indicate that the definition of beauty has been changing from period to period and region to region.

Keywords: iconometry, proportions, sculptures, statistics

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Authors: Marina Petrova

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Language policy issues related to the preservation and development of the native languages of the Russian peoples and the state languages of the national republics are increasingly becoming the focus of recent attention of educators and parents, public and national figures. Is it legal to teach the national language or the mother tongue as the state language? Due to that dispute language phobia moods easily evolve into xenophobia among the population. However, a civilized, intelligent multicultural personality can only be formed if the country develops bilingualism and multilingualism, and languages as a political tool help to find ‘keys’ to sufficiently closed national communities both within a poly-ethnic state and in internal relations of multilingual countries. The purpose of this study is to design and theoretically substantiate an efficient model of language education in the innovatively developing Republic of Sakha. 800 participants from different educational institutions of Yakutia worked at developing a multilingual model of education. This investigation is of considerable practical importance because researchers could build a methodical system designed to create conditions for the formation of a cultural language personality and the development of the multilingual communicative competence of Yakut youth, necessary for communication in native, Russian and foreign languages. The selected methodology of humane-personal and competence approaches is reliable and valid. Researchers used a variety of sources of information, including access to related scientific fields (philosophy of education, sociology, humane and social pedagogy, psychology, effective psychotherapy, methods of teaching Russian, psycholinguistics, socio-cultural education, ethnoculturology, ethnopsychology). Of special note is the application of theoretical and empirical research methods, a combination of academic analysis of the problem and experienced training, positive results of experimental work, representative series, correct processing and statistical reliability of the obtained data. It ensures the validity of the investigation’s findings as well as their broad introduction into practice of life-long language education.

Keywords: intercultural communication, language policy, multilingual and multicultural education, the Sakha Republic of Yakutia

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