Bonded Labor in India: Its Incidence and Pattern

This Working Paper on the incidence and patterns of bonded labour in India was commissioned as an input to the ILO Director-General’s second global report on forced labor, entitled A global alliance against forced labor, prepared for the 93rd session of the International Labour Conference in June 2005.it aims to enrich the debate on bonded labor and its eradication in India by capturing some of the main trends over recent years. It aims essentially to compile and assess the contemporary evidence on bonded labor that has appeared in secondary sources

An Institutional Theory perspective on sustainable practices across the dairy supply chain

AbstractThe need for sustainable practices in the food supply chain, particularly in the area of energy reduction, is becoming acute. The food industry currently has to contend with multiple competing pressures alongside the new challenges of sustainable production. We applied Institutional Theory to explore the role of supermarkets in the development of legitimate sustainable practices across the dairy supply chains. The paper focuses on dairy supply chain organizations and their consumption of energy. We conducted 70 semi-structured telephone interviews with various stakeholders across the supply chain. Findings revealed that the majority of actors in the supply chain identified supermarkets as the dominant player, and that the supermarkets exert pressure on other smaller organizations across the supply chain. Although some organizations wished to pursue a sustainable agenda through integrating new rules and legitimate practices within their own organization, the dominant logic appeared to be one of cost reduction and profit maximization. There was also evidence that supermarkets and other large organizations attempt to replicate publicly available information on green successes for image purposes. We conclude that the dominant logic of cost reduction is so well established that challenging the dominant logic may prove difficult. The challenge is therefore to complement the dominant logic with sustainable practices across the whole supply chain, a role Government needs to play. This will require a broader more systemic approach to encouraging sustainable practices including investment and financing practices, so that all members of the dairy supply chain can co-operate and contribute to energy reduction

Who do ICDS and PDS Exclude and What Can be Done to Change This?

This article looks at the specifics of who the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) and the Public Distribution System (PDS) exclude and what can be done to change this. It discusses three different types of exclusion: official exclusion, typically from committing too few resources; implementation flaws; and flawed policy. The article argues that persistence with a poverty cutoff simply perpetuates exclusion. However, the progressive impact of improved judiciability of exclusion due to implementation flaws while making a case for tightening the system cannot be overstated. The article suggests three ways forward: (1) make rights desirable to encourage people to make claims and make ICDS and PDS more universal; (2) ensure that potential innovations such as biometrics, coupons and cash transfers empower the poor, not just the bureaucrats; and (3) empower citizens to fix the ICDS and PDS which will in turn help fix the overall food system

Food allergy: recent advances in pathophysiology and treatment

Food allergies are adverse immune reactions to food proteins that affect up to 6% of children and 3-4% of adults. A wide range of symptoms can occur depending on whether IgE or non-IgE mediated mechanism are involved. Many factors influence the development of oral tolerance, including route of exposure, genetics, age of the host, and allergen factors. Advances have been made in the understanding of how these factors interact in the pathophysiology of food allergy. Currently, the mainstay of treatment for food allergies is avoidance and ready access to emergency medications. However, with the improved understanding of tolerance and advances in characterization of food allergens, several therapeutic strategies have been developed and are currently being investigated as potential treatments and/or cures for food allergy

How Can Home Care Patients and Their Caregivers Better Manage Fall Risks by Leveraging Information Technology?

Objectives: From the perspectives of home care patients and caregivers, this study aimed to (a) identify the challenges for better fall-risk management during home care episodes and (b) explore the opportunities for them to leverage health information technology (IT) solutions to improve fall-risk management during home care episodes. Methods: Twelve in-depth semistructured interviews with the patients and caregivers were conducted within a descriptive single case study design in 1 home health agency (HHA) in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. Results: Patients and caregivers faced challenges to manage fall risks such as unmanaged expectations, deteriorating cognitive abilities, and poor care coordination between the HHA and physician practices. Opportunities to leverage health IT solutions included patient portals, telehealth, and medication reminder apps on smartphones. Conclusion: Effectively leveraging health IT could further empower patients and caregivers to reduce fall risks by acquiring the necessary information and following clinical advice and recommendations. The HHAs could improve the quality of care by adopting IT solutions that show more promise of improving the experiences of patients and caregivers in fall-risk management

An empirical explanation of the natural-resource-based view of the firm

To date, the natural-resource-based view has been an abstract phenomenon, primarily used by academics to explain competitive sustainable operations. This paper attempts to go beyond this, responding to the need for an explanation of the practical existence of the four natural-resource-based view resources in industry. Assuming a critical realist qualitative approach, in-depth interviews with sustainability experts in UK agri-food are undertaken. Findings demonstrate the existence of pollution prevention, product stewardship, and clean technologies and align with Hart’s conceptualization of sustainability as competitive resources. Whilst the fourth resource, the base of the pyramid, cannot be empirically verified, the fifth resource of local philanthropy is uncovered and contributes to the growing body of knowledge surrounding competitive social sustainability. Findings also challenge the hierarchal presentation of the natural-resource-based view to implicate a more cyclical uptake. Thus, in offering the first empirical explanation of the natural-resource-based view, this paper overcomes a theory-practice gap to elucidate the feasibility, orchestration, and value of resources in competitive and sustainable operations

Student teachers' positionalities as knowers in school subject departments

Student teachers in England, mainly on one-year courses, spend the majority of their time in schools. Secondary schools are primarily organised around subject departments, and these subgroups within schools have been shown to be significant for student outcomes and teachers’ experiences. However, research on school subject departments themselves is relatively limited, and developing better understandings of school subject departments is important for Initial Teacher Education and educational research more broadly. This paper draws on an ethnographic study of three secondary school geography departments to analyse student teachers’ positionalities as knowers within departments. Opportunities for professional discussions within departments are limited, and are often dominated by immediate practical concerns. A social realist concept of knower-knowledge structures is used to explore the kinds of knowers accepted as legitimate in these departments. A dichotomous view of teachers as knowers was found, being positioned as knowing or not-knowing particular areas of subject knowledge. This binary view is argued to be related to the language of the Teachers’ Standards in England. Suggestions are made for improving student teachers’ positions as knowers within departments by planning opportunities to contribute their expertise, and for developing more expansive discourses around subject knowledge to enable all to maximise opportunities to learn from the rich mines of expertise held across ITE partnerships

Sustainable Supply Chain Management and the transition towards a Circular Economy: Evidence and some Applications

In the last decades, green and sustainable supply chain management practices have been developed, trying to integrate environmental concerns into organisations by reducing unintended negative consequences on the environment of production and consumption processes. In parallel to this, the circular economy discourse has been propagated in the industrial ecology literature and practice. Circular economy pushes the frontiers of environmental sustainability by emphasising the idea of transforming products in such a way that there are workable relationships between ecological systems and economic growth. Therefore, circular economy is not just concerned with the reduction of the use of the environment as a sink for residuals but rather with the creation of self-sustaining production systems in which materials are used over and over again. Through two case studies from different process industries (chemical and food), this paper compares the performances of traditional and circular production systems across a range of indicators. Direct, indirect and total lifecycle emissions, waste recovered, virgin resources use, as well as carbon maps (which provide a holistic visibility of the entire supply chain) are presented. The paper asserts that an integration of circular economy principles within sustainable supply chain management can provide clear advantages from an environmental point view. Emerging supply chain management challenges and market dynamics are also highlighted and discussed

Classification of Ventricular Septal Defects for the Eleventh Iteration of the International Classification of Diseases—Striving for Consensus: A Report From the International Society for Nomenclature of Paediatric and Congenital Heart Disease

The definition and classification of ventricular septal defects have been fraught with controversy. The International Society for Nomenclature of Paediatric and Congenital Heart Disease is a group of international specialists in pediatric cardiology, cardiac surgery, cardiac morphology, and cardiac pathology that has met annually for the past 9 years in an effort to unify by consensus the divergent approaches to describe ventricular septal defects. These efforts have culminated in acceptance of the classification system by the World Health Organization into the 11th Iteration of the International Classification of Diseases. The scheme to categorize a ventricular septal defect uses both its location and the structures along its borders, thereby bridging the two most popular and disparate classification approaches and providing a common language for describing each phenotype. Although the first-order terms are based on the geographic categories of central perimembranous, inlet, trabecular muscular, and outlet defects, inlet and outlet defects are further characterized by descriptors that incorporate the borders of the defect, namely the perimembranous, muscular, and juxta-arterial types. The Society recognizes that it is equally valid to classify these defects by geography or borders, so the emphasis in this system is on the second-order terms that incorporate both geography and borders to describe each phenotype. The unified terminology should help the medical community describe with better precision all types of ventricular septal defects

Stakeholders understanding of the concept of benefit sharing in health research in Kenya: a qualitative study

BACKGROUND: The concept of benefit sharing to enhance the social value of global health research in resource poor settings is now a key strategy for addressing moral issues of relevance to individuals, communities and host countries in resource poor settings when they participate in international collaborative health research.The influence of benefit sharing framework on the conduct of collaborative health research is for instance evidenced by the number of publications and research ethics guidelines that require prior engagement between stakeholders to determine the social value of research to the host communities. While such efforts as the production of international guidance on how to promote the social value of research through such strategies as benefit sharing have been made, the extent to which these ideas and guidelines have been absorbed by those engaged in global health research especially in resource poor settings remains unclear. We examine this awareness among stakeholders involved in health related research in Kenya. METHODS: We conducted in-depth interviews with key informants drawn from within the broader health research system in Kenya including researchers from the mainstream health research institutions, networks and universities, teaching hospitals, policy makers, institutional review boards, civil society organisations and community representative groups. RESULTS: Our study suggests that although people have a sense of justice and the moral aspects of research, this was not articulated in terms used in the literature and the guidelines on the ethics of global health research. CONCLUSION: This study demonstrates that while in theory several efforts can be made to address the moral issues of concern to research participants and their communities in resource poor settings, quick fixes such as benefit sharing are not going to be straightforward. We suggest a need to pay closer attention to the processes through which ethical principles are enacted in practice and distil lessons on how best to involve individuals and communities in promoting ethical conduct of global health research in resource poor settings