MICHAEL ONDAATJE’S RUNNING IN THE FAMILY: A CASE OF SELF IDENTITY

Running in the family is more than an autobiography of Ondaatje.  Quite contrary to the purpose of narrating his history, Ondaatje uses it as a means to locate and discover himself through his writing. The basic quest of Ondaatje’s novel is to search for his identity in the mirrors of his past. The quest for his history, is in fact a quest for himself and he mounts on this quest through the novel ‘Running in the Family’. “Ondaatje’s relationship to his past is in process-and the text itself is an exploration of that process (Joanne 45-6).” He tries to locate himself in the shadows of his father, his native land Ceylon, his family relationships and tries to piece together the random, frivolous life that he remembers of Ceylon. And it is heartening to realize in the first chapter that Ondaatje has absented himself from his own autobiography in lieu of his perception that his own identity can only be located if he anchors the identity of the peripheral characters

Impacts of Child Labour Working at Hotels & Workshop Sectors in Pakistan

Child labour is a cheap and easily accessible phenomena and it can be easily available in developing countries like Pakistan and many others. Children are innocent and unaware about various laws and rights as compared to that of adults’ laborers. Owing to their childhood, they are exploited to use in the market. Moreover their passive nature makes them more vulnerable and dedicated to their work. That is why they are employed at cheap rate without any terms and conditions and due to their innocence, they have are exploited in different ways. Majority of the parents are aware how education of their children is important for their children. They also know about the various types of harms their children got due to labor however, many parent are not aware about all this.  Furthermore, child labor laws are important in this regard to play role if the parents are agree to be sincere and ready for the education, welfare and betterment of their children. This research was conducted in district Mandi Bahauddin of Punjab province, Pakistan. Hotels and workshop areas were selected for the selection of sample by using convenient sampling technique. The sample of 90 respondents was taken through convenient sampling. The study explained that the main determinants of child labor were unemployment, poverty, large family size and death of parents. Child labor should be stopped because it is harmful for society. It creates many other social evils for people and society. Both NGOs and Government should play their vital role for its eradication

Returns to Facilitating Farmers’ Organisations for Distributary Maintenance: Empirical Results from a Pilot Project in Southern Punjab

Institutional reforms currently underway in Pakistan’s irrigation and drainage sector require that farmers take over the operation and maintenance responsibilities of their secondary canals. However, the farmers need to be organised first, for which investments are a prerequisite. A great deal of skepticism about the farmers’ collective ability and willingness to undertake the needed tasks exists, even now when they are actually organised. This skepticism originates from past experiences when direct subsidies were offered to induce collective action. Theoretically, collective action can be more sustainable if investments are made in capacity building for the tasks that the farmers have to perform to improve the service delivery. Farmers are being organised for distributary operation and maintenance. So far, the delay in formulation of an appropriate legal framework has prevented the irrigation departments from formally transferring the operation and maintenance responsibilities to farmers. Self-help-based maintenance has been the only avenue for farmers to participate in the management of the irrigation system. The paper uses data pertaining to the cost of facilitation and estimates the amount of resources mobilised for two successive years from a pilot project. The analysis shows that investments made for facilitation do pay off. Investment in facilitation returns 69 percent higher than the actual investment per year during the initial years. In the short-run, the returns to facilitation indicate an increasing trend. The paper argues that when compared to previous approaches adopted in Pakistan, investments for facilitation and capacity building have a greater chance of prompting sustainable collective action for irrigation and drainage management.

Economic competencies needed and possessed by farmers in Hyuderabad District, Sind, Pakistan

The primary purpose of this study was to identify the economic competencies needed and possessed by farmers in Hyderabad District, Sind, Pakistan;The target population for this study consisted of 97 randomly selected farmers and 26 agriculture officers in Hyderabad District, Sind, Pakistan. Thirty-seven competency statements constituted the economic competence portion of the questionnaire. Sections on demographic variables and sources of information used by farmers were also included. A 1-5 point response scale was used to assess the degree of competence needed and the degree of competence possessed by the farmers included in the study. The data were collected through personal interviews with the respondents. In analyzing the data, descriptive statistical procedures were used;The findings show that farmers possess low economic competence, whereas they need high competence as identified by themselves and agriculture officers. As perceived by respondents, a significant difference at the 0.01 level existed between the level of competence needed and possessed by farmers for all economic competencies included in the study. There was no significant difference in the overall mean for the economic competencies needed and possessed as perceived by farmers when grouped by years of farming experience. When farmers were grouped by educational level, significant differences were observed for several competencies. Farmers with a high school education or more tended to rate competencies significantly higher than farmers with lower levels of education;The level needed and the level possessed for most of the economic competencies were significantly different at the 0.01 level when farmers were grouped by tenancy status. The owner-landlord group rated most competencies significantly higher than the owner-operator, tenant and owner-tenant groups;It was recommended that all economic competencies should be incorporated in the Baccalaureate and M.S. programs of Sind Agriculture University. The university should organize short courses for the farmers and emphasize the identified economic competences. In-service training should be provided for extension personnel to enable them to help farmers develop economic competencies needed

Archives, Ethics and the Law in India: A Guidebook for Archivists in India

The project, Archives, Ethics and the Law in India, anchored by the Archives at NCBS, aims to learn from and train archivists and users of archives in India to respond to questions of archives, copyright, ownership and access, and the public’s rights to information and privacy

CAPACITY IMPROVEMENT AND CYCLE TIME REDUCTION USING VALUE STREAM MAPPING AND SIMULATION FOR A PRODUCTION PLANT IN QATAR, A CASE STUDY

This Project deals with a real life problem of a construction company, and is about capacity mismatches between different manufacturing modules. This mismatch badly influences the production and results in increased cycle time. Thus the objective of this project is to attempt capacity equalization (reducing mismatch) which if taken care off will improve the capacity and will lead to cycle time reduction. The company owns a stabilizing plant. This company operates in Qatar and specialized in infrastructure projects mainly in road construction and road development. This company is anticipating an increase in demand due to booming road construction activities mainly due to 2022 FIFA World Cup and development of infrastructure in line with Qatar National Vision 2030. The company executives were interested for a detailed investigation to analyze the problem of capacity mismatch between the different workstations of their plant and wanted to address the higher cycle time as well. This project was undertaken to investigate the above mentioned problem using scientific and proven process improvement management tools which are in use for such types of problems. For this investigation the student attempted lean based value stream mapping as a major investigation approach. Value stream mapping (VSM) has been in use for the last 20 years to get more from the existing processes without any significant investment. Besides this, it has been in use for capacity improvement and capacity mismatch analysis based situations also. The data were collected from the plant during operation, indicating the cycle time and capacity of each workstation and based on these details current state was prepared. This was an eye opening exercise, and this process management based tool proved as a trigger for improvement and the mismatch related problem was pin pointed. Based on this current state, after exposing various pockets of inefficiency several improvement measures were suggested. Based on these suggested improvements the future state is attempted. As the implementation could not be achieved, so to validate the changes simulation was used as tool to demonstrate the impact of these changes on the cycle time. Simulated future state results after incorporating improvements demonstrated the capacity balance problem and resulted in improvement in cycle time and finally a comparison was made between the two states and future scope of work was reported

Determinants of Islamic Banking Profitability in Malaysia

Islamic banks were experiencing tremendous growth by showing high profitability level and less affected by the financial turmoil. Thus, the objective of this paper is to investigate the impact of bank-specific as well as industry-specific and macroeconomic indicators upon Islamic banks profitability, particularly in Malaysia, for the period of 2006 to 2010. Using pooled regression analysis, and by taking 10 Islamic banks/windows, the result shows that the bank size is a vital importance in affecting its profitability. In addition, financial market development and market concentration has a significant positive impact in determining profitability. Finally, from the macro-economic variables, inflation has a significant positive impact on Islamic banks’profitability which shows the different nature between Islamic and conventional banks

IMPACT OF RELIGIOUS ORIENTATION AND LIFE SATISFACTION ON DEATH ANXIETY AMONG ADOLESCENTS

The present study was co- relational and aimed to analyze the impact of religious orientation and life satisfaction on death anxiety among university students. It further explored the relationship between life orientation skills and religious orientation together with their differences in relation to gender. Scales used in the study to collect data were Life Satisfaction Scale, Death Anxiety Scale and Religious Orientation Scale. Data was gathered by convenient sampling of 150 university students (75 males, 75 females). Their age and educational qualifications were restricted to 20-23 years and masters respectively. The results revealed that both interaction of religious orientation and life satisfaction were significant predictor of death anxiety (F=1.43, p>0.01) among university students. The correlation between religious orientation and life satisfaction was found to be positive and male adolescents were found to have higher religious orientation, life satisfaction and lower levels of death anxiety as compared to females