Space and Culture, India
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Comparative Literary History in Assamese: Some Possibilities
Get PDFThe essay attempts to explore some possibilities of Comparative Literary History with respect to Assamese literature. Writing a literary history is a complex business, and the tenets underlying its conceptualisation and execution have often been determined by factors other than purely ‘literary’ ones. In the essay, the conceptual dimensions of literary historiography are examined in relation to its recently developed nexus with comparative literature and cultural studies. Within this theoretical framework, the essay briefly touches upon the development of literary historiography within the Indian context in the precolonial, colonial and postcolonial periods, and subsequently moves on to discuss its position vis-a-vis Assamese literature, particularly in the latter’s institutionalisation as a subject for graduate and postgraduate study under Gauhati University, Assam, in the post-Independence period. The essay deals specifically with the efforts of Professor Satyendranath Sarma, prominent academician and literary historian of Assam, towards the academic study of Assamese literary history. It explores the possibilities of comparative literary history in Assamese—one that is not based on a linear narrative of succeeding generations of poets and writers recorded and documented under a progressive model of impact and response, but rather a history of literary reception with many complex and multidimensional narratives often at loggerheads with each other.Key words: Literary Historiography, Comparative Literature, Comparative Cultural Studies, Indian Literature, Assamese Literature, Satyendranath Sarm
India\u27s Look/Act East Policy and the Northeast Region: A Critical Perspective
No full textIndia\u27s Look East Policy (LEP) signifies a strategic shift in its international political, economic, and military relationships. Regional integration of its Northeast Region (NER) with the countries in East, Southeast, and South Asia may potentially generate economic dividends to the region. However, there are formidable challenges in realising the potentials. The proposed infrastructure projects, if completed with no further delay, will go a long way in improving connectivity with the neighbouring countries. However, improving connectivity within the region and with the rest of the country is also very important. Further, it would require a comprehensive long-term plan with well-defined projects for developing industries and services including education, health and tourism. Building infrastructure, ensuring socio-political stability and ecological balance, and improving the quality of institutions would be a major part of this plan
A Study of Air Quality and its Effect on Health: A Geographical Perspective of Lucknow city
No full textErudite groups of people, scientists, planners, and policy-makers of different countries have come to realise that quality of environment is not necessarily a simple function of nature as in primitive earth. Today nature’s self-regulatory functions are inoperative. All the developed and developing countries are deeply concerned to make balance between their environmental anxiety and their economic development. Dreadful environmental conditions are affecting the biological segment of the ecosystem of these areas. Human being, ‘one of the most precious component in biosphere’, have regular predicament situation with accretion of sullied air, water, and soil degradation. Though water and land pollution is extremely dangerous, air pollution has its own peculiarities, due to its trans-boundary dispersion of pollutants over the entire world. The effect of air pollution on health is very complex as there are many different sources and their individual effect varying from one to other. It is not only the ambient air quality in the cities but also the indoor air quality in the rural and urban areas that are causing concern.The study is confined with the health impact of deteriorating air quality in Lucknow city. The aim of the present study is also to determine the consequences of ambient air quality on health of the people in the study area
Access to Water Supply among the Tea Pickers in Sylhet, Bangladesh
Get PDFThe study explores access to water supply system of tea pickers in six tea estates of Sylhet division of Bangladesh—Malnichhera, Lackaturah, Keramotnagor, Balishera, Kalagul and Rashidpur. Drawing upon a systematic set of semi-structured interviews and cross-sectional data collected randomly from 300 tea pickers, the study considers men and women’s access to (un)safe water by addressing their sources of both drinking and using water for daily usages and the distances from home to sources by including their concern about safe water and its related diseases
GST in India: Expectations and challenges
Get PDFIndia is ready to implement its “Goods and Services Tax (GST)†act from 1st April 2017. It is expected that GST will minimise all the loopholes of existing tax system in India. However, critics argue that the euphoria over GST camouflages the deadly assault to tax policy as a means of promoting equity and efficiency. This review on GST highlights the challenges over GST claims. It has been observed that to implement GST effectively, both centre and state have to go hand in hand
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An Inter-Block Level Analysis of Regional Disparity in the Youngest Alipurduar District of West Bengal
Get PDFAlipurduar (also known as ‘Dooars’) was a subdivision of Jalpaiguri district before its emergence as the new 20th district of West Bengal on 25 June 2014. The districts of North Bengal (including Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri, Coochbehar, Uttar Dinajpur, Dakshin Dinajpur and Malda) have been poorly placed in comparison to the state of West Bengal, in terms of Human Development Indicators: low literacy level, poor condition in sanitation, and partly availability of electricity and safe drinking water (Report on Comparative Backwardness of North Bengal Region, Government of India, 2002). Research on regional disparity is essential for addressing the lacuna in the planning process of development (Sen, 2001). In the present study, an analysis has been made in terms of the inter-block inequality in socio-economic and infrastructural development of Alipurduar district as a newly emerged region
Tea Plantations and Socio-Cultural Transformation: The Case of Assam (India)
Get PDFThe 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