(SoHSS) School of Humanities and Social Sciences

<p>Shiv Nadar University is a comprehensive, multidisciplinary, research-focused, and student-centric University offering a full range of academic programs at the undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral level. With state-of-the-art infrastructure, the University comprises of academic wings, sophisticated labs, international standard sports facilities, amphitheaters, auditorium, conference rooms and smart classrooms. The University&rsquo;s goal is to become internationally recognized for the quality of its research and creative endeavors and their applicability to improving quality of life, generating new insights and expanding the boundaries of human knowledge creativity. Committed to excellence in teaching, research and service, the University aims to serve the higher education needs of India and the world beyond.</p>

Shiv Nadar University

Endogamy or intra-caste marriage is one of the most resilient of all the caste based practices in India. Even in 2011, the rate of inter caste marriages in India was as low as 5.82\%. In this paper we explore whether education has any relationship with this age-old practice of marrying within one's own caste. Using a nationally representative data set, the Indian Human Development Survey, we find that, in sharp contrast with the findings in the existing literature on out-marriages in the Western countries, education levels of the spouses themselves do not have any association with the likelihood of their own marriage being an inter caste one. However, couples with a more educated mother of the husband have a significantly higher probability of being in an inter caste marriage. One standard deviation increase in the years of education of the husband's mother is associated with a 10.16\% increase in the probability of inter caste marriage over the sample mean. Our analysis highlights the importance of recognizing the institution of arranged marriages in any analysis of Indian marriage markets. © 2020 Elsevier B.V.

World University root node

Economics

Fulltext

Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization

Whose education matters? An analysis of inter caste marriages in India

The Domain of the Novel: Reflections on Some Historical Definitions discusses the genre of the novel and its dialogic and dialectical characteristics through an in-depth analysis of some classic English, Russian, American and Indian novels. A collection of lectures by the distinguished scholar of literature, A. N. Kaul, it analyses the exploration of personal voices and histories within a larger socio-political landscape in these works. Drawing examples from the works of Fielding, George Eliot, Dickens, Thackeray, Melville, Hawthorne, Twain, R.K. Narayan and others, who defined and redefined the territories of the novel, this book examines the articulation of the lived social, political and material realities of ordinary individuals in this genre. The lectures situate the novels within their cultural, socio-political, and historical contexts while focusing on their historical continuity and relevance. They further demonstrate how the domain of the novel brings together a multitude of voices while discussing conflicts of class, identity, nationalism, and historiography. The volume includes an insightful critical introduction by Sambudha Sen. It will be of great interest to researchers and scholars of literature, cultural studies, post-colonial studies, literary theory, creative writing, history, and sociology. It will be especially useful for readers interested in studying forms of fiction and the 18th, 19th, and 20th century novel. © 2021 Mythili Kaul.

English

The Domain of the Novel: Reflections on Some Historical Definitions

The domain of the novel: Reflections on some historical definitions

This paper characterizes status quo rules in the binary social choice environment. We consider the full preference domain which allows for indifference. We show that status quo rules are the only rules that satisfy ontoness, strategy-proofness and a solidarity property. The solidarity property that we consider, positively correlates the welfare of a voter to rest of the voters in case of her improvement. It is independent from the usual solidarity axiom of welfare dominance under preference replacement used in the literature. © 2020 Elsevier B.V.

Economics Letters

A characterization of status quo rules in the binary social choice model

In this introductory chapter, the editors lay out the context of China’s current political, economic and foreign policy developments with reference to the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC). It argues that promoting an idea of ŉational rejuvenation’ is part of a continuing effort by the CPC to bolster its legitimacy at home. To this end, the Party uses China’s strengths and capacities abroad in the belief that an increased international profile and respect for the country also raises its stock at home. However, the goal of ŉational rejuvenation’ has also been used to recentralize power at home and comes amidst strong economic headwinds both at home and abroad. The rest of the chapter summarizes the key findings in the book and notes that as China’s influence rises globally and its presence becomes more entrenched across domains of politics, economic activity, traditional and non-traditional security and science and technology, how it proceeds to use this influence vis-à-vis other countries will be a function of the confidence of the CPC in its own strengths and capacities to rule China. © The Author(s) 2020.

International Relations and Governance Studies

China’s Search for ‘National Rejuvenation’: Domestic and Foreign Policies under Xi Jinping

‘National rejuvenation’ as panacea for China’s domestic and external challenges

Cerebral malaria caused by Plasmodium falciparum is the severest form of the disease resulting in the morbidity of a huge number of people worldwide. Development of effective curatives is essential in order to overcome the fatality of cerebral malaria. Earlier studies have shown the presence of salicylic acid (SA) in malaria parasite P. falciparum, which plays a critical role in the manifestation of cerebral malaria. Further, the application of SA for the treatment of acute symptoms in cerebral malaria increases the activity of iNOS leading to severe inflammation-mediated death, also called as Reye’s syndrome. Therefore, modulation of the level of SA might be a novel approach to neutralize the symptoms of cerebral malaria. The probable source of parasite SA is the shikimate pathway, which produces chorismate, a precursor to aromatic amino acids and other secondary metabolites like SA in the parasite. In this work, we performed the immunological, pathological and biochemical studies in mice infected with chorismate synthase knocked-out Plasmodium berghei ANKA, which does not produce SA. Fewer cerebral outcomes were observed as compared to the mice infected with wild-type parasite. The possible mechanism behind this protective effect might be the hindrance of SA-mediated induction of autophagy in the parasite, which helps in its survival in the stressed condition of brain microvasculature during cerebral malaria. The absence of SA leading to reduced parasite load along with the reduced pathological symptoms contributes to less fatality outcome by cerebral malaria. © 2020. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd.

History

Biology Open

Chorismate synthase mediates cerebral malaria pathogenesis by eliciting salicylic acid-dependent autophagy response in parasite

Climate change can adversely impact the quality of environmental services provided under Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) programs, thereby reducing their effectiveness. In this paper, a modelling framework is developed to explore how PES negotiations between forestry and fishery-based communities may be affected when warming reduces the stock of fish as well as forest biomass growth rates. Under a PES arrangement, forestry-based communities afforest the lake's catchment region, which helps improve fish stock abundance through reduced sediment loading. When climate warming adversely impacts fish yields, the value of restoring degraded lands in the catchment region increases, making the negotiating powers of the fishing and forestry dependent communities dynamic. Results suggest that the prospect of a climate-driven negotiating power in the future calls for higher PES payments by the fishing community in order to incentivize early restoration. Warming could also affect forest biomass growth rates in the long run. However, findings from this study suggest that warming driven forest biomass growth rate decline may have a relatively lower impact on PES negotiations compared to the direct impact of warming on lake's fish productivity. © 2020 Elsevier B.V.

Ecological Economics

Protecting warming lakes through climate-adaptive PES mechanisms

China Report

The World as Viewed from China: Theorising Governance, Leadership and Relationality in the 21st Century

In this paper, we show that firms might get an additional strategic benefit from using marginal-cost-reducing investments in conjunction with strategic delegation. While both these instruments allow firms to "aggressively"participate in product market competition, we show that they act as substitutes or complements depending on whether they are chosen simultaneously or sequentially. Given that the use of such instruments is inseparably linked with a Prisoner's Dilemma kind of situation, our analysis shows a way to mitigate at least to some extent such effects, through their simultaneous use. We find that the unique Nash equilibrium of the game with commitment comprises both players choosing the instruments simultaneously. In case the instruments are chosen without commitment, an asymmetric equilibrium is shown to exist in addition to the simultaneous protocol, yielding unequal payoffs. © 2020 World Scientific Publishing Company.

International Game Theory Review

Investment Choice with Managerial Incentive Schemes

Elora Halim Chowdhury & Esha Niyogi De, eds, South Asian Filmscapes: Transregional Encounters. University of Washington Press, 2020, 304 pp., $35, ISBN: 9780295747859.

BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies

Book review: Elora Halim Chowdhury &amp; Esha Niyogi De, eds, South Asian Filmscapes: Transregional Encounters

We study strategy-proof rules for choosing between two alternatives. We consider the full preference domain which allows for indifference. In this framework, for strategy-proof rules, ontoness does not imply efficiency. We weaken the requirement of efficiency to ontoness and characterize the class of strategy-proof rules. We argue that the notion of efficiency is not desirable always. Further, we provide a simple description of the class of onto, anonymous and strategy-proof rules in this framework. The key feature of our characterization results brings out the role played by indifferent agents. © 2019, Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.