চতুর্থ বর্ষ I দ্বিতীয় সংখ্যা
গবেষণাপত্র | SLC Research
Digital Necromancy in the Era of Metaverse: Apprehending IPR Contours
Aniket Bardhan & Prof. (Dr.) Sudeepa Banerjee
Mayanagar and its Maker: Experiencing the City in Cinema
Ananya Dutta Gupta
The enclosed article is a close, critical study of Aditya Vikram Sengupta’s recently released feature film Once Upon a Time in Calcutta (2021). It engages with the principal recurrent motifs in Sengupta’s restrained, imagist representation of the city of Calcutta/Kolkata. It tries to argue that Sengupta interweaves the quotidian lived-in experiences of individuals in the city with the historical dynamics to which it is subject in such a way that the city ceases to be merely a passive setting for the lives of others. Instead, Sengupta’s deeply sensuous craft, which relies on the gaze and the discerning ear of a flâneur, brings the city alive as a living entity constituting and in turn constituted by its people. It is claimed that sound is a powerful narrative device in Sengupta’s cinematic language, even more than evocative visuals. Further, the article locates Sengupta’s immersive narratives around Calcutta, both in Once Upon a Time and Labour of Love, his acclaimed debut film, within a larger corpus of Bengali-language cinema set in and focally concerned with life in Calcutta/Kolkata. In doing so, it contends that Sengupta’s cinema neither invites nor resists the recognition of subtle parallelisms, perhaps even serendipitously, without turning itself into derivative, or consciously imitative pastiche of older cinema. It proposes that Once Upon a Time embodies and testifies to the uniqueness of artistic memory, in the way in which it responds to both historical events and public oblivion about them. The essay concludes with a comparative discussion of Sengupta’s three films till date, acknowledging the distinctiveness of each in form, theme and style, while ultimately positing Once Upon a Time in Calcutta to be the most complete cinematic experience among them all.
Outcasted in Homeland: Media Spectacle of Internal Migrant Workers’ Crisis During COVID-19 Pandemic in India
Dr. Priyam Basu Thakur & Dr. Sangita De
After the declaration of a nationwide lockdown in 2020 the government of India as a precautionary measure stopped all sorts of transportation to cope with the health crisis caused by COVID-19. An unprecedented situation of gross human rights violations emerged in different states of India as a huge number of migrant workers tried to return to their distant native places due to the sudden loss of livelihood, shelter and absence of an adequate support system. Since the colonial era migrant workers remain the most invisible section in the Indian societal milieu. Meanwhile, the sudden visibility of vulnerable migrant workers shaped the issue as a significant spectacle in Indian mainstream media. The article explains the historical pattern of internal migration since the ancient civilisation in India to identify the root of the social exclusion of migrant workers. Based on the notion of spectacle by Debord and Kellner, the article critiques the construction of the spectacles of the marginalised migrants’ crisis in Indian mainstream media and how it reinforces capitalist values.
The Man – Animal Conflict : The issue of elephant infiltration in Nayagram Block of West Bengal, India
Mr. Jagatpati Dey ; Mr. Tarak Hansda & Dr. Kathakali Bandopadhyay
The age-old conflict can be defined as a nexus where human beings and animals have issues on the uses of the same resources hence leading to loss of property and at times loss of lives from both parties. This conflict has been fuelled by issues such as urbanization, cutting down trees and the existing climate change. They analyse such interactions to explain other social relations and human actions resulting in such conflicts. The socio economic and cultural implication of man- animal conflict will be also discussed in addition to the idea of governance and way forward. Increased encroachment of people on the wildlife habitats or the formerly unsuitable areas has resulted to human-wildlife conflicts
People’s mentality direction toward cultures that exist between man and wildlife determines the response on conflict. This case is because the value that some cultures give to animals as Gods is sacred and as such cannot be killed while other cultures view animals as a threat or liability in as much as they are sources of income for the same.
Inclusive Growth – The Role of Banks in Developing Economies
Arunava Praharaj
Inclusive growth is essential for the overall economic development of a country and is critical for achieving equity. It not only supports the advancement of the development process but also helps sustain the growth momentum. Inclusive growth means ensuring that everyone benefits from economic progress, regardless of their economic status, gender, disability, or religion. It is a concept that seeks to guarantee fair development for all participants in the economy by providing opportunities to every section of society. According to the World Bank, growth is considered inclusive when it is sustainable in the long term.
Inclusive growth relies on financial inclusion, which provides essential financial services to all individuals, especially those from disadvantaged or low-income backgrounds. This access allows people to participate fully in the economy and benefit from its growth, reducing inequality and promoting economic progress. In countries like India, financial exclusion has hindered inclusive growth, but promoting financial inclusion can lead to broader economic development and social equity.
Pathways to Liberation: A Study of Demographic Influences on Emancipation of Scheduled Caste Women in West Bengal
Monika Rajak & Dr. Minara Yeasmin
The emancipation of women is a multifaceted process encompassing social, economic, political, and cultural transformations aimed at achieving gender equality and empowering women, particularly those belonging to Scheduled Castes (SC), across all spheres of life. This study examines the influence of locality, educational qualifications, and occupation as demographic variables on the emancipation of SC women and its various dimensions. Specifically, it focuses on five selected dimensions of emancipation: physical, social, political, economic, and educational. A total of 649 samples were collected using stratified random sampling from the districts of Murshidabad, Medinipur, and South 24 Parganas in West Bengal. A self-developed tool was utilized for data collection, and statistical analyses, including mean, standard deviation, t-tests, and F-tests, were performed. The findings revealed significant differences in attitudes toward the emancipation of SC women across various dimensions, influenced by locality, educational qualifications, and occupation. Specifically, no significant difference was observed between rural and urban respondents in the physical dimension. However, significant differences were found in the social, political, economic, and educational dimensions. Additionally, notable dimension-wise variations in attitudes were identified based on the educational qualifications and occupations of SC women in West Bengal. In conclusion, the locality, educational qualification, and occupation as a demographic variables significantly influence on the emancipation of SC women and its five dimensions.
A Repercussion of Social Stock Exchange On Community Development – A Highlight
Dr. Rupak Karmakar
Social enterprises like non-governmental organizations (NGOs) aim to bring about a positive change in society. Social stock exchanges are trading platforms that allow social businesses and non-profits to raise capital by attracting the interested investors willing to invest in social activities. Now central government wants to ensure that investments in human capital stay a priority in the post COVID era rather we say in sustainable development goal mission.
Factors in the Path of Academic Progress: A Systematic Review on Muslim Women’s Education
Sajda Khatun & Minara Yeasmin
This paper is a systematic review of the literature, based on peer-reviewed findings on Muslim women’s educational status, with particular attention to the factors impeding the academic growth. Methodologically, a balanced approach (both qualitative and quantitative) was adopted to review the academic progress of Muslim women. After a thorough review of 28 peer-reviewed journals, only 10 articles were remained. PRISMA guidelines were followed for appraisal of the articles. Synthesis of the articles exploring the factors, published from 2008 to 2023, suggest that socio-cultural, socio-economic, socio-religious factors have great impact on Muslim women’s education. However, impact of the factors has been reduced at school level in recent years but prevalent at higher education. Our review concludes that most of the studies focus on factors and problems but hardly any explication is developed how to minimize the impact. Comparative analysis of educational status of Muslims with respect to other Muslim majority countries can be done in future to understand how education impact on Muslims towards reducing gender gap.
A Return to the Primitive: Ritwik Ghatak, Romanticism, and Indian Non-Dualism
Soumya Ganguly
The purpose of the paper is to locate the films of Ritwik Ghatak within the framework of Sankara’s Advaita metaphysics, along with Romanticism and an ecological critique. The paper aims to mitigate the representation of human (especially woman) and nature relationship in Ghatak’s films, keeping Romanticism and Indian Non-Dualism at the core of discussion. The task would be to justify and analyse the question of woman and her intimacy with nature. Why there is an urge to return to nature or return to a phase which I would like to call; ‘Primitive’, (with reference to “primitive communism”) in most of the Ghatak’s films. Indian Non-Dualism or Advaita Vedanta shows the path to become ‘one’ with the ‘absolute’. Though, it is not convincing enough whether Ghatak or other modernists tried to reach a state of ‘absolute’ through formal innovations in artistic practices. But here, the purpose is to trace a possibility or an urge; a ‘Romantic sensibility’ which Ghatak perhaps tried to articulate. Unlike Classical Hollywood filmmaking, Ghatak presented (not “re-presented”) characters that are more organically related to the space. In most of the cases the emphasis was more on woman.
Childhood Obesity: An Alternative and Economical Solution
Ms. Shashi Subba
Obesity today is no more restricted among the adults and has made it ways in the life of small children. Children who are often seen as the future of any nation, region, clan or community, but today this future is surrounded with an alarming problem of malnutrition, known as “Obesity”. According to a global analysis published in The Lancet journal, which made headlines in Indian Newspaper, reports, “the number of obese children in India has increased dramatically, with approximately 12.5 million of those between the ages of five and 19 being obese in 2022 compared to 0.4 million in 1990. Although, primarily it is believed that childhood obesity in India is more prevalent among children from higher-income and urban backgrounds, there has been a disproportionate increase in obesity rates in rural and urban low-income populations in recent times15. Through this paper an attempt is been made to find an alternative and most economical solution to this growing problem.
Decadence and Destruction: A Comparative Analysis of ‘Suicide’ in Hardy’s Jude the Obscure and Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray
Teesta Chatterjee
This comparative study examines how unbridled ambition and personal despair propel the protagonists of The Picture of Dorian Gray and Jude the Obscure to ultimately choose suicide as escape and redemption. Both Wilde and Hardy explore deep psychological struggles, paving the course of actions through ambition, personal crises, immorality, and societal pressures, and thereby shaping them. Dorian Gray's ambition to retain his eternal beauty leads him to metaphorically commit suicide by corrupting his soul and then stabbing the portrait, with his eventual physical death following. Similarly, Jude Fawley‟s failure to achieve his scholarly ambitions and his suffocating personal life lead to a figurative suicide, as his dreams and morality crumble, before the tragic deaths of his children and his own demise. Both authors depict how existential crises and nihilist inclinations lead the protagonists to view death as the only alternative to life. In these texts, suicide emerges not only as an individual act but as a response to broader social and existential dilemmas.
गंवई संवेदना की मोहक प्रस्तुति: ‘अराजक उल्लास’