Exploring the Margins of Kotha Culture : Reconstructing a Courtesan’s life in Neelum Saran Gour’s \u3cem\u3eRequiem in Raga Janki\u3c/em\u3e

In their article, “Exploring the Margins of Kotha Culture: Reconstructing a Courtesan’s life in Neelum Saran Gour’s Requiem in Raga Janki,” Chhandita Das and Priyanka Tripathi discuss the invisible challenges in life of a famous courtesan Janki Bai Ilahabadi through close analysis of Neelum Saran Gour’s 2018 novel, Requiem in Raga Janki. In this novel, Janki belongs to the infamous kotha but she never fails to seek her subjectivity. This marginal place of Janaki’s belonging will be discussed by appropriating and the theoretical framework of Indian feminist Lata Singh’s (2007) for whom courtesans have been represented as “‘other’ in history” (1677). Other than Singh, bell hooks’ ‘margin as a space of radical openness’ (Yearning 228), Veena Oldenburg’s spectacular scholarship on courtesans’ in ‘Lifestyle as Resistance’ (1990) will be synthesized to deconstruct the social hierarchy. Although baijis or tawaifs in India possess rich artistic heritage but surprisingly enough they have been often in a questionable space wherein their individual and social integrity has been compromised. Gour attempts to rewrite life of a courtesan from Allahabad and in the process creates an alternative discourse or understanding of a courtesan’s life through Janki, matron, yes! not patron of Indian classical music and tradition

Conceptualizing In-Text “Kshetra”: Postcolonial Allahabad’s Cultural Geography in Neelum Saran Gour’s Allahabad Aria and Invisible Ink

Literary renditions of cities have always gravitated towards the spatial imagination and its ethical counterpart outside the textual space. This paper explores the multicultural geography of the North Indian city Allahabad (recently renamed Prayagraj) observed through Neelum Saran Gour’s postcolonial narratives Allahabad Aria and Invisible Ink, projecting the narrative alignment of spatial aesthetics and cultural ethics. Interrogating the spatial dimensions of a “narrative world” within narrative theory (Ryan) and its interdisciplinary crossover with cultural geography (Sauer; Mitchell; Anderson et al.), the article seeks to examine Gour’s literary city not simply as an objective homogeneous representation, but as a “kshetra” of spatio-cultural cosmos of lived traditions, memories, experiences and collective attitudes of its people, in the context of E. V. Ramakrishnan’s theoretical reflections. The article proposes new possibilities of adapting the Indian concept “kshetra” to spatial literary studies; its aim is also to suggest a new source of knowledge about the city of Allahabad through a community introspection of “doing culture” in the texts, bringing into view people’s shared experiences, beliefs, religious practices and traditions as offshoots of the postcolonial ethos. The article aims to re-contextualize the city’s longstanding multicultural ethics in the contemporary times of crisis, which may affect a shift in the city’s relevance: from regional concern to large-scale significance within ethnically diverse South Asian countries and beyond

Experiencing the Riverscape: An Eco-Spiritual Decoding of Gangetic ‘Triveni-Sangam’ in select writings of Neelum Saran Gour

Contemporary times have triggered for an interdisciplinary cusp between disciplines that were conventionally read in a hinged academic encore. The Gangetic ‘Triveni-Sangam’ near Allahabad city where three holy rivers Ganga, Yamuna and Saraswati converge, is believed to be the holiest riverscape as one drop of amrit (nectar) during ocean churning by Gods and demons fell into its water and therefore, bathing and dipping in this sangam or confluence is considered auspicious. It is not that people only experience such spiritual values, rather internalize the same, even sometimes beyond religious restraints formulating a holistic human and ecological bonding. Therefore, river or for that matter riverscape like sangam transcends the environmental physical boundary to the living one as it shapes people’s experiences and accordingly adds meaning in their lives. Indian English author Neelum Saran Gour’s fictional representation of the riverscape of Gangetic ‘Triveni-Sangam’ in her select writings like Allahabad Aria (2015), Invisible Ink (2015), and Requiem in Raga Janki (2018) are woven within the interdisciplinary framework of ‘eco-spirituality’. The present research will examine how riverscape as an eco-spiritual entity shapes individuals’ experiences and helps them to locate the ‘self’ both in vyashti (the individual) and samashti (the collective) scale

Incentive Compatible Mechanism Design for Stated Choice Surveys: A Multiple Alternative Choice Case

stated choice survey, mechanism design, public goods experiment, Demand and Price Analysis, C42, C72, C92, D02, H41, Q51,

Incentive Compatible Mechanism Design for Stated Choice Surveys: A Multiple Alternative Choice Case

Stated choice surveys, hypothetical or real, have been a valuable tool in eliciting individual preferences for public goods and services for decades. However, the incentive structure of these questions remains to be a potential source of bias in welfare measurements. We have designed a dominant strategy incentive compatible mechanism that removes the incentives to free-ride in real money questions. In a previous research (Das and Anderson, 2007), we discussed a similar incentive compatible mechanism design for a binary choice case and in this paper we extend our theory to a multiple alternative choice case. We prove that in this mechanism truthfully answering the stated choice questions is an individual's dominant strategy. We use experimental tools to verify the model, and also evaluate its performance with respect to alternative demand revelation mechanisms. For our experimental demonstration, we limit the choice set to four choice alternatives. Although, overall our incentive compatible mechanism for multiple alternative choice case perform quite satisfactorily, it fails to perform as well as the binary choice case

Parking Preferences Among Tourists in Newport, Rhode Island

Like many tourist destinations, Newport, Rhode Island relies upon high season tourist volumes for its economic health. Most visitors arrive by car, concentrated during certain hours on summer weekends, severely congesting the town’s major arteries and forcing many visitors to spend considerable time in their car. A transportation planning strategy which reduced congestion would enhance the quality of the visiting experience, increase the time visitors are able to spend in shops and at attractions, and draw additional visitors. However, identifying effective solutions requires understanding factors that affect tourists’ transit choices. We develop a conceptual model of Newport visitors’ parking and transit choices, expanding traditional transit choice models to include features such as scenery we expect to influence tourists. Using a stated preference survey of visitors, we find scenery, transit mode options and congestion are the major drivers of tourists’ parking choices. We also develop welfare estimates to enable analysis of proposed transportation plans

Incentive Compatible Mechanism Design for Discrete Choice Surveys

Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

Parking preferences among tourists in Newport, Rhode Island

Like many tourist destinations, Newport, Rhode Island relies upon high season tourist volumes for its economic health. Most visitors arrive by car, concentrated during certain hours on summer weekends, severely congesting the town's major arteries and forcing many visitors to spend considerable time in their car. A transportation planning strategy which reduced congestion would enhance the quality of the visiting experience, increase the time visitors are able to spend in shops and at attractions, and draw additional visitors. However, identifying effective solutions requires understanding factors that affect tourists' transit choices. We develop a conceptual model of Newport visitors' parking and transit choices, expanding traditional transit choice models to include features such as scenery we expect to influence tourists. Using a stated preference survey of visitors, we find scenery, transit mode options and congestion are the major drivers of tourists' parking choices. We also develop welfare estimates to enable analysis of proposed transportation plans.

Incentive Compatible Mechanism Design for Discrete Choice Surveys

This paper develops an incentive compatible mechanism for discrete choice questions when the payment is through voluntary contribution. To achieve this we adapt Clark's pivotal condition mechanism to discrete choice questions. We develop a formal proof of the incentive compatibility of the mechanism. We design an induced value experiment to test the incentive compatibility of the mechanism, and compare it's performance with the performances of both open ended voluntary contribution questions and close ended questions, with provision point and money back guarantee assigned to each of them. We find that the discrete choice methods do better than the open ended question in terms of both truth revelation and higher willingness to pay. Although, our incentive compatible discrete choice mechanism performs only marginally better than the close ended PPMBG questions, the theoretical incentive compatibility property provides a motivation for it's use in public good valuation