Space and Culture, India
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Dynamics of Urban Sprawl and Landuse Change in Imphal of Manipur, India
Urban areas are expanding and cities are becoming more compact due to population growth and migration. Cities in India have experienced rapid growth of population. Physical land use change has been observed today especially in the developing countries that led to shrinking of precious land, where the impact is mostly felt on agriculture land. The growing population was the main driving force of land use change. The study focused on monitoring urban land use change over a period of 45 years (1970-2015), and to assess its impact on agriculture in Imphal city and its surroundings. The study is based on secondary data and intends to identify the process of land use/land cover change over the different time period with the help of GIS imageries. The study found that the build-up area of the city had increased from 22.07 sq.km to 74.16 sq.km while agriculture areas shrank from 54.18 sq.km to 14.26 sq.km during the study period. Without proper planning and management, the excessive population growth will result to unplanned physical expansion towards the fringe areas in all direction
Gramscian \u27Counter hegemony\u27 in Narendra Modi\u27s New India Perspective
The \u27counter hegemony\u27 that Gramsci, (1987:344) talks about is about leaders and their understanding and how well they conceptualise the psychology of the masses. Counter hegemonies have transformative power and Modi continues to prove that.
In this special editorial, the author reviews the leadership of Mr Modi in India
Cyclone, Salinity Intrusion and Adaptation and Coping Measures in Coastal Bangladesh
Although households in the coastal areas of Bangladesh undertake various adaptation and coping measures to minimise their vulnerability to cyclone hazards and salinity intrusion, these autonomous measures have received little attention in the past. However, the Government of Bangladesh has recently emphasised the importance of understanding these measures so that necessary interventions to make households more resilient to natural hazards and the adverse impacts of climate change can be introduced. This paper, based on secondary sources, explores adaptation and coping measures that households in the coastal areas of Bangladesh undertake to minimise their vulnerability to cyclone hazards and salinity intrusion. This paper shows that many of the adaptation and coping measures contribute to making households less vulnerable and more resilient to cyclone hazards and salinity intrusion, although some coping measures do the opposite as they reduce households’ adaptive capacities instead of improving them. This paper argues that the adaptation and coping measures that contribute to reducing households’ vulnerability to natural hazards need to be supported and guided by the government and NGOs to make them more effective. Additionally, measures that make households more vulnerable also need to be addressed by the government and NGOs, as most of these measures are related to and constrained by both poverty, and because the households have little or no access to economic opportunities
The Information Society
This article briefly discusses various definitions and concepts of the so-called information society. The term information society has been proposed to refer to the post-industrial society in which information plays a pivotal role. The definitions that have been proposed over the years highlight five underlying characterisations of an information society: technological, economic, sociological, spatial, and cultural. This article discusses those characteristics. While the emergence of an information society may be just a figment of one’s imagination, the concept could be a good organising principle to describe and analyse the changes of the past 50 years and of the future in the 21st century.Â
Internationalising Indian Higher Education: Opportunities, Challenges and the Way Forward
This paper examines the higher education system in India together with its status regarding internationalisation, and presents the case for the higher education sector in India to embrace internationalisation.Starting with an overview of the academic literature around the concepts of globalisation and internationalisation, and their interrelationship particularly in the context of higher education, the paper focuses on the specific issues of Indian higher education especially within the context of internationalisation. Reviewing the current landscape of the Indian higher education sector, the paper concludes that, in the context of a globally connected world, higher education in India is characterised by asymmetry in flows and unclear policies. Recommending that the internationalisation strategy focuses on the four strands of student and programme mobility; infrastructure and policy support; development of research capability; and the employment of technology as an enabler, the paper concludes that a clear approach to internationalisation would offer the potential to secure India a formidable global standing in higher education
Transformation of Agricultural Land for Urbanisation, Infrastructural Development and Question of Future Food Security: Cases from Parts of Hugli District, West Bengal: Future Food Security, Hugli District
Developing countries of the world encounter urbanisation and infrastructural development in or around the fertile tracts and the absence of any landuse plan for desired land use change has led to conversion of farmlands, which is detrimental to future food security and environmental quality. Hugli district is traditionally well known as one of the most prosperous agricultural regions of West Bengal but the district is experiencing rapid urban extension and infrastructural development towards productive agricultural land since 1991. This has caused decline in the amount of agricultural production which may be treated as an indicator of increasing threat to the long run sustainable livelihood security of the people of the whole of West Bengal. This article critically explores the transformation of agricultural (farm) land because of growing rate of urbanisation and infrastructural development, which in turn poses the question of threat to food (in) security. Although, this is a growing problem across the universe, this article probes the future food security questions of Hugli district, West Bengal by examining the impact of the highly intertwined indicators of urbanisation and infrastructural development on agricultural (farm) land use and its effect on food security. Regression analysis, Spearman’s Ranking Correlation Coefficient, Remote Sensing technologies, Markov Chain Model, Projection of future population growth and yield rate are employed to understand the depth of the problem. The result not only shows a direct negative correlation between urban extension and agricultural areal contraction but also the supervised classification of satellite imageries shows that there is rapid change of rural land use from 1996-2016. There is no match between future population growth and future yield rate of crops and the Markov Chain Model further predicts that the cropland will decrease from 62.77% to 42.90% and the built up area will increase from 31.86% to 54.63% of the total area from 2016 to 2056.
 
Obstacles in the Utilisation of Maternal Health Care Services in Murarai-II C.D. Block, Birbhum District, West Bengal, India
Improving maternal health was one of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and now it is one of the targets of 17 point Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The utilisation of Maternal Health Care Services (MHCSs) is a complex phenomenon and it is influenced by several factors, like-health care seeking behaviour of the cohorts belonging to different socio-economic and cultural background, distance of the facility centres, type and conditions of the roads including undulating surface, transportation cost, type and availability of transportation mode along with the factors related to the accountability and surveillances of the health care services. Therefore, clear understanding and discussion is needed to draw an association between MHCSs and its influential factors. The objectives of the study are to estimate the impact of accessibility on the underserved status of MHCSs and on the utilisation of MHCSs through paucity index. In addition, the study aims to evaluate the causal relationships between underserved situation and obstacle score with the paucity index of MHCS utilisation.The empirical observation unfolds that the provision and utilisation of MHCSs are strongly dependent on accessibility and distance. The situation is aggravating for proper delivery of services, which is responsible for the increasing obstacle score and paucity index, especially in remote sub- centres of Murarai-II C.D. Block of Birbhum District.Â