Education and Social Equity With a Special Focus on Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in Elementary Education

The Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) are among the most socially and educationally disadvantaged groups in India. This paper examines issues concerning school access and equity for Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe communities and also highlights their unique problems, which may require divergent policy responses. The paper is divided into seven main parts. The first two sections introduce the reader to the nature of exclusion and discrimination faced by Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, and outlines the debate on the role of education in improving the socio-economic profile of both groups. The third section explains the socio-economic conditions within which Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes live and their marginalized status in contemporary India. The fourth section provides a discussion of literacy advancement among these groups, and of national policies and programmes which aim to improve school access and equity. The fifth section highlights special efforts made by certain state governments to improve educational participation of these two communities as well as the educational experiments on a more modest scale undertaken by community based Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs). The sixth section focuses on casteism as a deeply ideological issue that undercuts even the most genuine reform measures, and suggests research and policy options that may help to address underlying structural and ideological issues. The concluding section highlights a few critical areas for further research in the area

Orchestrating ‘Institutional Network’ for the Sustainability of IS Program: Evidence from Indian Public Healthcare

Sustaining an IS program in healthcare encounters the complexities of the dynamic and loosely connected network of institutionally powerful actors. We apply ‘orchestration’ framework to examine the orchestration of public healthcare by a low power stakeholder for sustaining an IS program. We study the case of a hospital information systems running across 20+ hospitals in Himachal Pradesh, India, for more than a decade. Analysis informs that institutional network orchestration goes through multiple interconnected stages, each presenting unique dilemmas. The orchestrator takes different roles to perform various relation and material institutional work across these stages and often leverages on unanticipated events, just by being physically and temporally present. We identify four orchestration stages—promoting member engagement, building distributed ownership, managing partnership, and managing coherence. Initial stage institutional work helps orchestrator accumulate ‘symbolic power’, which proves critical in later stage orchestration. Findings contribute to orchestration framework and inform IS in healthcare literature

Role of Asia-Pacific Regions in Partnering UN SDGs

The research paper identifies broad strategies for accelerating transformative change processes in the form of mission orientation and mobilizing the public and stakeholders, aligning systems, readying institutions and people for change, policy making for managing complexity which are considered to be the building blocks in the Asia Pacific region. The focus of the research study is on the growth, development, economics of peace, role and impact of SDGs on the economies and societies in general including justice, peace building, developing strong institutions and in transforming the region into an international hub to achieve the SDGs and the broader agenda of UN 2030 including the overall development of the Asia-Pacific region in the long run. The paper studies the aspects of the inter-linkages between Governments and other stakeholders to deliver the ‘decade of action towards SDG’, particularly in the aftermath of COVID-19. It is observed that COVID-19 pandemic has created many gaps in social protection systems and wider policies for delivering public goods with devastating effects on the poorest and utmost vulnerable in the Asia-Pacific region. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal Summit held in 2019 had identified six transformative areas to accelerate progress towards the SDGs. In fact, these transformative areas present development challenges that are interlinked, complex and integrate goals and targets across the SDG framework which are strengthening human well-being and capabilities, shifting towards sustainable and just economies, securing the global environmental commons. A proposed action plan with regional interventions in the Asia-Pacific region, alignment with the goals and outcomes of the UNFPA strategic plan 2018-2021 and the Roadmap of PIFS in accelerating the SDGs have been delineated in the study

Tourism and integrated development: a geographic perspective

This article discusses the influence of tourism on integrated development from spatial and temporal points of view. The growth of tourism as an activity has been acknowledged from all parts of the world and it appears the tourism sector is making a lot of contribution to economic development of countries that have developed their tourism potentials. Many empirical studies have come up with evidence that suggests that there exists a relationship between tourism demand and other variables such as transportation and spatial behaviour of tourists. Due to the infancy of tourism as a development strategy in the developing countries only little work has been done to address theoretical underpinnings of tourism and integrated development within the geographic framework. The importance of spatial integration makes geography an integral aspect of development that may be of invaluable relevance to the understanding of tourism growth. Arguments in this paper are marshalled on three levels: the geographers’ view of integrated development; tourism and economic development; and geographic question in tourism and integrated development. It is believed that with the integrated development of tourism at all geographic scales, spatial inequity would be drastically reduced

Impact Investing in Asia: Overcoming Barriers to Scale

Impact Investing in Asia: Overcoming Barriers to ScaleWhile the Asian social investment ecosystem is maturing, growth is uneven and impact investment remains less developed here compared to the rest of the world. As a result, the impact investing industry in Asia remains less understood compared to its counterparts elsewhere.Against this backdrop, AVPN and GIIN have collaborated with Oliver Wyman and Marsh & McLennan Insights to explore the current characteristics of impact investing in the region, with special focus on China, India, Indonesia, Japan, and the Philippines. This report captures the experiences and insights of stakeholders from the AVPN network who serve different roles within the broad impact investment ecosystem in Asia.Impact Investing in Asia: Overcoming Barriers to Scale serves as a resource for impact investors and other key stakeholders in Asia to better understand the growing industry within a regional context while providing key recommendations to develop the ecosystem further.For more information about AVPN: https://avpn.asia/about-us

Supporting community engagement through teaching, student projects and research

The Education Acts statutory obligations for ITPs are not supported by the Crown funding model. Part of the statutory role of an ITP is “... promotes community learning and by research, particularly applied and technological research ...” [The education act 1989]. In relation to this a 2017 TEC report highlighted impaired business models and an excessive administrative burden as restrictive and impeding success. Further restrictions are seen when considering ITPs attract < 3 % of the available TEC funding for research, and ~ 20 % available TEC funding for teaching, despite having overall student efts of ~ 26 % nationally. An attempt to improve performance and engage through collaboration (community, industry, tertiary) at our institution is proving successful. The cross-disciplinary approach provides students high level experience and the technical stretch needed to be successful engineers, technologists and technicians. This study presents one of the methods we use to collaborate externally through teaching, student projects and research

A Socio-Technical Metaverse Development Framework in Higher Education

The concept of the metaverse has recently generated a great deal of attention in academia and industry, with an increasing number of educational institutions expressing interest in its implementation. However, existing studies on metaverse development in higher education are still in their early stages, leaving institutions with little guidance on how to develop and implement a metaverse. Employing socio-technical theory, we propose a comprehensive nine-stage metaverse development framework (MDF) that incorporates both social and technical aspects of a metaverse initiative, thus providing a holistic approach to metaverse development. Leveraging case studies of three large universities and blending them with MDF, our study provides evidence of the applicability of our MDF and offers a better contextual understanding of metaverse development in educational settings. This paper is useful for educational institutions that are developing or considering metaverse initiatives. It contributes to the emerging literature on metaverse development in higher education

Attracting, motivating and engaging gen 'Y' in an infrastructure organization

Attracting, Motivating and Engaging employees have been remained key issues for any organization. Today the proportion of Generation Y (GenY) at workplace is increasing day by day.GenY will be the largest percentage of employed workforce for next 30 years in India.Attracting, motivating and engaging this workforce through robust talent identification, development and engagement plans will be the only way that organizations will reap the benefits of the dividend promised by Young India.This paper reviews recent literature for managing GenY effectively.It explored career aspirations and motivators for GenY employees in a large infrastructure organization.The primary data have been collected from GenY employees using questionnaire survey and focused group discussions about their career aspirations and motivators. The primary results shown that GenY in the organization prefers career which builds their technical & functional competence, provides managerial tasks and variety.Advancement and considerate & sympathetic supervisor are found as key motivators.The paper further discussed HR interventions to attract, motivate and engage the selected group of people

Mediating boundaries between knowledge and knowing: ICT and R4D praxis

Research for development (R4D) praxis (theory-informed practical action) can be underpinned by the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) which, it is claimed, provide opportunities for knowledge working and sharing. Such a framing implicitly or explicitly constructs a boundary around knowledge as reified, or commodified – or at least able to be stabilized for a period of time (first order knowledge). In contrast ‘third-generation knowledge’ emphasizes the social nature of learning and knowledge-making; this reframes knowledge as a negotiated social practice, thus constructing a different system boundary. This paper offers critical reflections on the use of a wiki as a data repository and mediating technical platform as part of innovating in R4D praxis. A sustainable social learning process was sought that fostered an emergent community of practice among biophysical and social researchers acting for the first time as R4D co-researchers. Over time the technologically mediated element of the learning system was judged to have failed. This inquiry asks: How can learning system design cultivate learning opportunities and respond to learning challenges in an online environment to support R4D practice? Confining critical reflection to the online learning experience alone ignores the wider context in which knowledge work took place; therefore the institutional setting is also considered

Organizational Coordination of Digital Structures: The Effects of ICT and Values on Grand Challenges

This doctoral thesis sheds light on organizing contributions toward grand challenges by highlighting various effects on organizing values, coordination mechanisms, and digital technologies. Grand challenges are defined as vast and complex problems affecting organizations, governments, and entire societies. The objective of this thesis is to address such global societal problems. Towards this end, at first a systematic literature review depicts the overall process of addressing grand challenges. Second, building upon the holistic process from this literature review, an empirical inquiry is conducted, scrutinizing the development of organizing mechanisms and structures along organizing values. Third, digital technologies and their role in the solution process are explored. Taken as a whole, the systematic literature review offers a holistic overview over the solution process of grand challenges addressed by organizations, while the empirically substantiated theoretical frameworks analyze and highlight coordination mechanisms, organizing structures and values, as well as digital infrastructures in great detail