Book Review: South Asian Christian Diaspora

A review of South Asian Christian Diaspora edited by Knut Jacobsen and Selva Raj

Book Review: \u3ci\u3eVernacular Catholicism, Vernacular Saints: Selva J. Raj on “Being Catholic the Tamil Way”\u3c/i\u3e

Book review of Vernacular Catholicism, Vernacular Saints: Selva J. Raj on “Being Catholic the Tamil Way.” Edited by Reid B. Locklin. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 2017, xvii + 290 pages

Unfinished Agenda of Gandhi’s Gram Swaraj- Present Status of Panchayati Raj in Assam

The successful working of Democracy demands association of the people at different levels of administration. Panchayati Raj aims at associating the people with administration at grassroots level. Though the Father of Nation, Mahatma Gandhi, advocated for a village based political formation for the creation of Gram Swaraj, the idea of Panchayati Raj did not find a place in the Draft Constitution of India. The working of the Panchayati Raj in different States in Post colonial India is not satisfactory. Gandhian ideal of Gram Swaraj remains an unfinished agenda even after fifty years of implementation of the Panchayati Raj on the recommendation of the Balwantray Mehta Study Team and two decades after the enactment of the 73rd Amendment and its implementation by various States. In this paper I would like to analyse Gandhi’s concept of Gram Swaraj , unsatisfactory working of Panchayati Raj system  and factors responsible for it with a special reference to present status of Panchayati Raj  in Assam. Key words: Gram Swaraj, Panchayat, Decentralisation, Democracy

Sarpanch raj: is the President all powerful?

The policy of mandated representation (reservation) for disadvantaged social groups in Indian village councils or Gram Panchayats has been the subject of numerous studies. The implicit, and often unstated, assumption that underlies most of these studies is that the president of the council is the only one who wields effective power. However, the Gram Panchayat is comprised of several elected representatives, each of whom represents a village; and, in principle, a voting mechanism governs decision making within the Gram Panchayat. In this context, the focus on the president as the de-facto decision maker is equivalent to assuming a model of �Sarpanch Raj,� or a model of local government where the president (Sarpanch) dominates the council. This model is typically based on the premise that the president of the council possesses �either on account of her informal powers or on account of her formal agenda setting powers- the de-facto power to dominate. However, whether these informal or formal powers of the president translate into such de facto power may well depend on other factors, such as local power structures. Indeed, extensive anecdotal evidence suggest that presidents elected on reserved seats�i.e. members of the disadvantaged Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs), and women �face considerable difficulties when they are situated amid representatives who come from powerful castes or belong to the local elite. Whether a Sarpanch Raj is indeed the de facto model of local governance in India is therefore an unanswered empirical question. This paper examines the question of Sarpanch Raj, using a unique data set from 80 Gram Panchayats and 225 villages in the Indian state of Karnataka. We exploit the design of the policy of mandated representation in order examine whether the Sarpanch Raj model is robust to the inclusion of elected representatives of the village council. The model of Sarpanch Raj is critically examined in the context of two key mandates of the Gram Panchayat: public good provision, and the targeting of household-level benefits under various anti poverty programs. The results suggest that the president is not the sole decision maker of the council, and that the council is in fact a more broad-based body where the voices of other elected village representatives matter. Decision making in the council is, however, not one among equals. In particular, the results suggest that the effectiveness of Scheduled Caste representatives depends on the caste of the president.Affirmative action, Decentralization, gram panchayat, local government, Political economy, political reservation, Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs),

KITAB MI’RAJ NABI (Tintingan Intertekstual)

Abstrak Naskah KMN minangka objek panliten nuduhake sesambungan intertekstual, yen dideleng saka irah-irahane karo buku Isra’ Mi’raj. Buku kasebut gabungan kitab klasik Arab kang ditarqiq, anggitane Ibnu Hajar al-Asqalani lan Imam as-Suyuthi. Prakara kang dadi undheran panliten, yaiku (1) Kepriye deskripsi naskah KMN lan suntingan teks; (2) Kepriye isi sajrone naskah KMN lan buku Isra’ Mi’raj; lan (3) Kepriye sesambungan intertekstual naskah KMN lan buku Isra’ Mi’raj. Adhedhasar undheran ing ndhuwur, panliten iki nduweni tujuwan kanggo: (1) Ngandharake deskripsi naskah KMN lan suntingan teks; (2) Ngandharake isi sajrone naskah KMN lan buku Isra’ Mi’raj; lan (3) Ngandharake sesambungan intertekstual naskah KMN lan buku Isra’ Mi’raj. Panliten iki nggunakake methode dheskriptif kualitatif komparatif. Sumber dhata arupa naskah KMN lan buku Isra’ Mi’raj. Panliten iki nggunakake pamawas filologi kanggo nganalisis kahanan fisik naskah sarta kritik teks. Sabanjure isi naskah banjur ditafsirake nggunakake metode hermeneutika. Banjur analisis intertekstual dening Julia Kristeva, digunakake kanggo ngoleki sesambungan antarane kekarone objek panliten. Pungkasane ngandharake asile panliten sacara deskriptif komparatif nuduhake aspek prabeda lan pamadha. Asile panliten saka naskah KMN kanthi nomer inventarisasi 20.128/M iki ngenani lelampahan dimensi wektu yaiku isra’ lan mi’raj. Sesambungan intertekstual kekarone objek panliten nduweni prabeda lan pamadha, nanging akeh nuwuhake prabeda. Prabeda kayata nuduhake: gegambaran burraq, Baitul Maqdis, panggonan  malekat lan nabi, mukjizat uga gegambaran siksa tumrap wong kang zina, fitnah, nyolong lan ora gelem zakat. Uga katon yen naskah ngluwih-luwihake kandungan isi saengga mujudake tuwuhe negasi. Negasi kayata: riwayat kaluwarga digambarake istana sentris, gegambaran siksa, lan mukjizat. Naskah KMN ora pikantuk daya pangaribawa kang gedhe saka buku. Mula Buku kritik bisa wae minangka hipogram nanging ora bisa sinebut hipogram.   Tembung Wigati: Kitab Mi’raj Nabi, Negasi, Intertekstual

Role of Local Government in Promoting Women’s Health in Tamil Nadu

As a way of public health is concerned, the health issue of people in the nation is a crucial tool for all-round development of people. It is only a tool that develops the society and the state at large. Rural health is a vital weapon that develops the feeling of obligation as citizens towards rural advancement and management through the Panchayat Raj system for retaining sustainable rural health care services. The Panchayat Raj System plays an extensive role in the development of health, girls and child development and women participation in local administration, and so on. The Panchayat Raj institutions are an important device that plays a crucial position in rural health care services. The Panchayat Raj system is the backbone of rural health. The sustainable development of rural areas may be done easily in healthy surroundings and through first-class health care machines. Without a high-quality health care system and healthy surroundings, sustainable development is impossible. Indeed, Panchayat Raj Institutions play an essential role in improving primary health care and rural health

New Frontiers: Women Writers and the British Raj

Inspired by the 2018 British Women Writers Conference’s invitation to reconsider the work of individuals living at the margins of traditional understandings of nationality and profession, this exhibit highlights the relationship between English-speaking women writers and British rule in India in the late nineteenth and twentieth century. Where India offered an escape from the orthodoxy of Britain to some white women like Amy Carmichael and Marianne North, colonial anxieties regarding racial superiority led many women to act as guardians of traditional British values. At the same time, British rule eroded many Indian cultural practices including its strict patriarchal order. This led to new educational and professional opportunities for Indian women even as it imported new patriarchal and racial ideologies and left them struggling to articulate the new identities imposed on them by colonization. This exhibit attempts to interrogate the colonial implications of the idea of the frontier, acknowledging the importance of the concept as a justification for “civilizing” India. At the same time, the exhibit emphasizes the frontier’s potential as a space at the edge of and even beyond systems of control. Through a mixture of poetry, fiction, scientific, and personal writing, “New Frontiers” speculates on the complex mixture of freedom and disenfranchisement imposed on both British and Indian women writers by the contradictions of Empire.UT LibrariesEnglis

Journey, Hurdle and Challenges before the Panchayati Raj Institutions in J&K

The term Panchayati raj in India signifies the system of rural local self-government. It has been established in all the states of India by the Acts of the state legislatures to build democracy at the grassroots level. It is entrusted with rural development. It was constitutionalised through the 73rd constitutional Amendment Act of 1992.  Panchayati raj institutions provide opportunities to the local people to participate in the political and development process at grassroots level. But still Panchayati raj institutions are not working properly particularly in J&K state of India. The present paper studies the journey and hindrances of Panchayati raj institutions in J&K and emphasises the effect of militancy in the working of panchayats in J&K state. Keywords: Panchayat, decentralization, panch, sarpanch, election, militanc

Statistical eigen-inference from large Wishart matrices

We consider settings where the observations are drawn from a zero-mean multivariate (real or complex) normal distribution with the population covariance matrix having eigenvalues of arbitrary multiplicity. We assume that the eigenvectors of the population covariance matrix are unknown and focus on inferential procedures that are based on the sample eigenvalues alone (i.e., "eigen-inference"). Results found in the literature establish the asymptotic normality of the fluctuation in the trace of powers of the sample covariance matrix. We develop concrete algorithms for analytically computing the limiting quantities and the covariance of the fluctuations. We exploit the asymptotic normality of the trace of powers of the sample covariance matrix to develop eigenvalue-based procedures for testing and estimation. Specifically, we formulate a simple test of hypotheses for the population eigenvalues and a technique for estimating the population eigenvalues in settings where the cumulative distribution function of the (nonrandom) population eigenvalues has a staircase structure. Monte Carlo simulations are used to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed methodologies over classical techniques and the robustness of the proposed techniques in high-dimensional, (relatively) small sample size settings. The improved performance results from the fact that the proposed inference procedures are "global" (in a sense that we describe) and exploit "global" information thereby overcoming the inherent biases that cripple classical inference procedures which are "local" and rely on "local" information.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/07-AOS583 the Annals of Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aos/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

A hidden gem. Le Corbusier’s proposition for a museum and cultural centre at Raj Ghat, New Delhi

[FR] L’article se veut une analyse de l’implication de Le Corbusier dans la création du mémorial dédié à Gandhi à Raj Ghat (New Delhi). Tout en révélant les liens qui unissent les projets esquissés pour New Delhi et ceux des différents centres culturels de Le Corbusier, l’auteur se focalise principalement sur le Musée de la Connaissance prévu pour le site. L’essai se conclut en démontrant la proximité programmatique du projet de Raj Ghat avec celui pensé pour le musée d’Ahmedabad.[EN] The essay analyses Le Corbusier‘s involvement in the creation of a Gandhi memorial at Raj Ghat, New Delhi. While demonstrating the relationship between the propositions for New Delhi and Le Corbusier’s various plans for cultural centres, the author pays particular attention to the Museum of Knowledge which was supposed to be realized at the site. The essay concludes that the Raj Ghat was intended to feature a museum with a programmatic approach similar to the museum of Ahmedabad.[ES] Este ensayo analiza la implicación de Le Corbusier en la creación de un memorial dedicado a Gandhi en Raj Ghat, Nueva Delhi. Demostrando la relación existente entre las propuestas para Nueva Delhi y diversos proyectos de Le Corbusier para centros culturales, el autor presta especial atención al Museo del Conocimiento que se suponía iba a construirse en ese emplazamiento. La conclusión es que el Raj Ghat estaba destinado a convertirse en un museo con un planteamiento programático similar al del museo de Ahmedabad.The research for this article was made possible by the Fondation Le Corbusier and the Indian National Library, Kolkata.Woitschützke, RM. (2020). A hidden gem. Le Corbusier’s proposition for a museum and cultural centre at Raj Ghat, New Delhi. LC. Revue de recherches sur Le Corbusier. 1(1):58-68. https://doi.org/10.4995/lc.2020.13373OJS58681