Reterritorialising literary studies: deconstructing the scripts of empire

In this article, I demonstrate the ways in which archival material can be gainfully employed within literary studies. Focusing on the figure of the Indian coolie of colonial Malaya, I argue that adopting such an interdisciplinary paradigm is a necessary bridge to aid the quest for the story of the pioneer Indian immigrant experience for its trail stretches across two terrains of narrativisation, one historical, the other literary. As I seek out the texts that have constructed the base of the sign-system that has in many ways locked the subject in question within its confining structures, I also propose to read them against the grain, to dislodge their deeply embedded discursive pillars. In other words, I will proceed with what is primarily a deconstructive reading of the colonialist sign-systems of the coolie. The article thus demonstrates the reterritorialising of literary studies as it excavates the scripts of empire buried within the terrain of history through the mechanisms of literary deconstruction, thus re-reading history as literatur

Secularism and Its Discontents: The Moor’s Last Sigh and Riot

The recurrent theme of dropping frontiers in a world which has become increasingly heterogeneous but intolerant is the leitmotif of Sashi Tharoor’s Riot and Salman Rushdie’s The Moor’s Last Sigh. The figure of the Moor and his hybrid genealogy is central to Rushdie’s vision, as he reconstructs a syncretic, tolerant Moorish Spain and juxtaposes it with Bombay, his haven of pluralism. He celebrates Nehru’s vision of a new Indian nation which, in keeping with the traditions of western modernity, promised to be above religion, clan, and narrow parochial considerations. With the vanishing of such ideals and hopes, as boundaries and religious communalism are getting intensified these diasporic cosmopolitan writers make a case for a boundless world. Their response is a human subjectivity which transcends color, class, narrow parochialism, tribalism and fundamentalism. Secularism is the very base of their humane approach. This essay, therefore, analyzes the theme of secularism and its discontents, particularly in the context of the coexistence of Hindus and Muslims in India, as it runs through Rushdie’s The Moor’s Last Sigh and Tharoor’s Riot by exploring the various layers of allegories related to pluralism and the critique of fundamentalism in them. Toward this end, it will focus on the recent debates on Indian secularism by scholars to interrogate the relevance of the European model of secularism which argues for the separation of state and religion

Labour Market Structure: A Brief Literature Survey

Labour market is a multi-dimensional entity, with inexorable institutional affiliation. Therefore, the studies on labour market fail to evolve a logical framework to its structure with satisfactory consensus to the theoreticians in totality. It is very interesting to examine the various dimensions of labour market. This paper reviews certain research contributions on labour market structure, segmentation and vulnerability issues.labour market, labour market structure, labour market segmentation, gender concerns and vulnerability in labour market

Labour legislations in India: tourism industry dimension

Labour laws shape industrial relations addressing the socio-economic security of the working class. The legislative framework of labour conditions the working conditions, employer-employee relations, mode of wage payments, provide social security, class and protect the interests of special categories of working class. The paper discusses various labour statutes of India that are applicable to tourism. Almost all labour laws prevailing in the country were enacted even before tourism attained industrial status. This will enable us to examine how far this prospective sector complies with labour legislations in the country. A statutory coverage for the socio-economic security of workers is a need of the hour in the wake of growing casualisation, feminisation and marginalisation of labour and growing unemployment.labour legislation, labour laws, labour welfare, labour statutes, socio-economic security of labour

Monocular SLAM Supported Object Recognition

In this work, we develop a monocular SLAM-aware object recognition system that is able to achieve considerably stronger recognition performance, as compared to classical object recognition systems that function on a frame-by-frame basis. By incorporating several key ideas including multi-view object proposals and efficient feature encoding methods, our proposed system is able to detect and robustly recognize objects in its environment using a single RGB camera in near-constant time. Through experiments, we illustrate the utility of using such a system to effectively detect and recognize objects, incorporating multiple object viewpoint detections into a unified prediction hypothesis. The performance of the proposed recognition system is evaluated on the UW RGB-D Dataset, showing strong recognition performance and scalable run-time performance compared to current state-of-the-art recognition systems.Comment: Accepted to appear at Robotics: Science and Systems 2015, Rome, Ital