Factor Analysis

A common rule of thumb for dropping the least important factors from the analysis is the K1 rule. Factors with more than 1.0 as Eigen value were selected. A Cattell Scree test plot tool was also drawn to justify the extent of component to be selected.

On the benchmark measuring point of 0.600, the reliability of the data and consistency in the responses received for factors were explained as at what extent the data is reliable or consistent.

The test could not be conducted for those factors that consist of independent variables and responses in different scale or binominal.

Descriptions of Factors/Dimensions

Organoleptic: This is the most important dimension identified by the respondent. This deals with the physical attributes and organoleptic characteristics of the product. Physical attributes include product appearance in raw form as well as during the preparation (cooking) form and finished form. Organoleptic attributes also include sensory aspects (cooked), appearance, test, aroma, texture, etc.

Prior awareness on health and other benefit of jowar: This dimension includes awareness about the consumption of jowar and benefits/perceptions attached with it. Awareness on nutritional benefits, ease of digestion, good source of energy, modern food, etc., are the parameters grouped in this dimension.

Comparison of jowar-rich multigrain atta with traditional wheat atta: The comparison of jowar-rich multigrain atta with traditional wheat on the basis of difficulties in preparation process and taste is the major attribute included under this dimension.

a. George Washington and the Jefferson-Hamilton Debate

George Washington, the most powerful military and political leader of America between 1775 and 1799, was born in an affluent, well-connected family of tobacco planters in Virginia that used slave labour.

Environmental history as a separate sub-set or sub-discipline of history actually emerged out of the growing environmental crisis due to massive industrialization and urbanization that paved the way towards preservationist, conservationist approaches, and environmental movement or environmentalism in the United States. Concern for nature reflected much earlier in the writings of scholars like Thucydides and Herodotus and also in the narratives of Fernand Braudel (Braudel was perhaps the first historian of the Annales school who wrote the history of the Mediterranean world beginning it with a chapter on ‘The Role of Environment’ in 1939), Le Roy Ladurie, Bodin, Machiavelli, Montesquieu, More and Bacon, but there is a need to understand the bifurcatory line between environmental consciousness and environmental history as a discipline. The US was the pioneer and trend-setter in the birth of environmental history as a separate discipline of history with its well-sketched out methodological canon.

King Gyanendras confidants claim that the King's real intention behind the takeover in February 2005 was to reduce the Maoists' military strength, reduce their bargaining power and compel them to engage in talks. The King hoped this move would establish his role as peacemaker, enhancing the position of monarchy for years to come. He believed the monarchy should play a constructive role in the process of re-building the nation.

But many of the King's close associates politely and discreetly questioned the wisdom of his adoption of the Chairmanship of the Government, which no King, except his power-hungry father, had done before. King Gyanendra justified his action by indicating that ‘an extreme situation demands extreme measures…A little less would have yielded no results at all.’ What happened next was far from expected, like everything else in Gyanendra's bizarrely peculiar life.

Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev was born in Narayanhiti durbar on 7 July 1947, the fourth child of His Royal Highness Crown Prince Mahendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev and Her Royal Highness Crown Princess Indra Rajya Laxmi Devi Shah. Amidst great celebrations, the Royal Nepal Army gave a 19-gun salute in honour of the birth of a new Adhirajkumar, or the prince.

Unfortunately, within a few minutes of his birth, the court astrologer ominously declared that the newborn would bring bad luck to his father. So he was sent to live with his maternal Rana grandparents in Baghdurbar (the Tiger Court, a residence of Rana rulers).

While all these international negotiations were continuing, on 15 January 2007, around 185 parliamentarians in the recently reinstated House of Representatives voted unanimously in favour of promulgating the Interim Constitution.

Nearly 56 years after King Tribhuvan approved the first Interim Constitution for Nepal, which included preparations for a Constituent Assembly election, this second Interim Constitution was legislated with the same mission, albeit without the involvement of the Royal Family. In fact, it was the first Constitution of Nepal that rendered the King powerless. The Interim Constitution was similar to the first one in many ways. Both subscribed to liberal democratic ideas of a representative government, adult franchise, the rule of law, and freedom and liberty for individuals and groups, and both envisaged the new state as a positive instrument for improving human welfare and social justice. However, the 1951 Interim Constitution was greatly influenced by the Indian Constitution—reflecting principles such as separation of state power, checks and balances of power, independence of judiciary, a bicameral legislature, a majoritarian election system and an executive prime minister. In contrast, the 2007 Interim Constitution was a document of compromise—influenced by the internal political dynamics of a transitional Nepal, and lacking coherent principles or cogent ideology.

Soon after the royal takeover on 1 February 2005, the deputy leader of the Maoists, Baburam Bhattarai was released from house arrest. In October 2005, the Maoist party held a central committee meeting in Chunwang, in the Rukum district. In the prevailing context of King Gyanendra's seizure of power, this meeting concluded that the Maoist party should collaborate with parliamentary parties to overthrow the autocratic monarchy. This meeting also decided to campaign for a Constituent Assembly election and ultimately, a democratic republic. This decision came after the Maoists analysed that they would not be able to capture the state through direct armed confrontation against the army.

Nearly nine months after the royal takeover, on 22 November 2005, and around 800 kilometres away from the centre of Nepal's politics, Jhalak Sharma took leave of absence from his work at a small private firm in Green Park, New Delhi. A communist at heart, although not an active party cadre, Jhalak Sharma had participated in the first People's Movement in 1990. When the new democratic system failed to create any opportunity for him, Jhalak—like many people in Nepal—migrated to India in search of work. His diploma in commerce from Delhi University got him a job that was better than the low-paid menial jobs most Nepalese had to settle for. He worked to pay his bills and take care of his family, leading an ordinary non-descript life until November 2005.

Changes in history and weather often seem analogous. The change of seasons serves on many occasions as the ideal backdrop for the march of history.

The monsoon of 2006 coincided with a sudden transformation in a retired bureaucrat's career. As the Country Director of a US-based international nongovernmental organisation, Bhojraj Pokharel was striving to reduce stigma and discrimination against people afflicted by HIV and AIDS, and related groups like sex workers, intravenous drug users and homosexuals. Pokharel had no inkling of what was in store for him.

One afternoon while he was reviewing a project proposal, he received a call from Gokarna Poudel, Koirala's private secretary, requesting him to meet the prime minister. Pokharel had established a personal rapport with Koirala when he served in his government in 1992, as Home Secretary and they grew fond of each other.

The day after the phone call, Pokharel went to see Prime Minister Koirala. At around eight in the morning Pokharel passed through the silver gates of the Baluwatar fortress—the prime minister's residence. Inside the power-house there were many senior Nepali Congress members milling around, competing to prove their allegience to Koirala. Pokharel folded his hands in Namaste to greet these leaders and headed upstairs. He found Koirala seated in a high chair, especially made to suit his height.

About the Research

The consumer acceptability test is conducted under the study titled ‘Sorghum: An Emerging Cash Crop: Consumer acceptability of processed RTC/RTE Health foods’. The core objective of the study was to understand the following parameters: consumer behaviour on the acceptance of the products, consumer profiling with delineation of specific target segments in selected cities, advising on positioning, providing inputs on branding, communication strategy, pricing, and distribution strategies. The study was conducted for five jowar-based food products, namely, jowar-rich multigrain atta, jowar vermicelli, jowar rawa, jowar flakes, and jowar biscuits.

Sampling and Methodology

The cities chosen for the study were Hyderabad, New Delhi, and Pune. Based on the statistical significance level, respondents/samples from over 400 household were covered in each city. Except jowar biscuits, all other products require cooking prior to consumption. Each household was provided with a sample kit containing jowar-rich multigrain atta, jowar vermicelli, jowar rawa, jowar flakes, and jowar biscuits. Information on various factors was collected from the respondent in two stages, factors being packaging, product attributes before and after cooking, and experience while preparation and consumption. A structured questionnaire was used to get the information. In Stage-1, information pertaining to demographic profile (age, family size, dietary preference, income level, number of employed members, number of children, number of elders, and occupation of the lady members of the household) was collected.

The campaign for the long awaited Constituent Assembly election began in March 2008. In South Asia, election campaigns are usually marked by a high level of violence. Because of the relative weakness of the Nepalese government, vis-à-vis security matters, the potential for intense and widespread violence was high during the Constituent Assembly election. In an attempt to counter this, the Chief conceived an internal strategy, which consisted of appointing a Maoist-backed commissioner as the head of the election Code-of-Conduct (CoC) monitoring team. Most violations were expected to come from the former rebels, and it was hoped that the Commissioner would be able to pressurise them into adhering to the Code-of-Conduct. Moreover, if the Commission acted on the CoC Head's recommendations, the Maoists would not be able to say that the Commission was biased against them.

However, this strategy failed miserably.

Initially, all seemed well, and the political atmosphere became highly charged as nearly 10,000 candidates from fifty-four political parties geared up to contest what was viewed as a historically decisive electoral competition.

The political parties organised large rallies, cultural programmes, street corner meetings and door-to-door canvassing. They even used motorcades, comprised of open vehicles with loudspeakers, banner paintings and posters. Musically gifted party workers roamed around the cities and the countryside singing songs with catchy tunes and simple words about plausible dreams—that had instant popular appeal. Red, white and green party flags hung inside houses or fluttered from the rooftops of party supporters.

A consideration of Narayan's thematic preoccupations will further amplify our understanding of the fictional oeuvre of a remarkable writer. In this section we shall discuss Narayan's treatment of family and religion, children/childhood, friendship, love and marriage, filial relations, citizenly concerns like the relation of the individual to society, the East-West encounter, the transcendental ideal of Dharma and finally, what in a way is his over-arching concern, education.

First and foremost for Narayan, family and religion are very important considerations for writing. A rootedness in family and a strong religious cast of mind, he told Ved Mehta, results in good writing. This is very true of Narayan. His family values are strong and we know from the biography by the Rams how important family relationships were in Narayan's life. His attachment to his Grandmother who brought him up, his tenderness for his mother, his affectionate, but somewhat awe-stricken feelings for his Headmaster father, his relationship with uncles, siblings and with others in the family and friends of the family have been well documented in his biography and given expression to in his memoir, My Days. His friendships were part of this familial feeling and in his walks around Mysore he made many friends who even became characters in his fiction.

Abstract: In her article “An Intermedial Reading of Paley's Sita Sings the Blues” Ipshita Chanda discusses the film text of Nina Paley's 2008 animation film, a culturally reconceptualized version of Válmíki's Sanskrit epic Rámáyana. Chanda discusses the film as an intermedial retextualization of the Rámáyana in the film where media boundaries and genres are crossed in “textual,” audio, and visual media. The basic premise from which Chanda proceeds is that the condition of intermediality in film is produced by a “conceptual fusion” of different media which, in turn, are analyzed using theories of reception and contact between different media across time, space, and cultures with regard to “source” text and “received” text.

Chiel Kattenblatt defines intermediality as “those co-relations between different media that result into a redefinition of the media that are influencing each other and a resensibilization of perception. Intermediality, unlike transmediality, assumes not so much a change from one medium to another medium but rather a co-relation in the actual sense of the word, that is to say a mutual affect … Time and space are still the two main dimensions by which we distinguish media from each other and determine their specificity. Such a determination of the specificity of media is usually related to their materiality, although we may notice in the media comparative discourse there is apprehensiveness about ascribing the specific features of a medium to its materiality” (6–7).

Abstract: In his article “African Literatures as World Literatures” Isaiah Ilo proposes alternative criteria for language choice in modern African literatures via the example of drama. The two most influential constructs on the language question are Fanon's essentialism that rejects Western languages as instruments of subjugation and Achebe's hybrid approach which entails subversion of the foreign languages by infusing them with African verbal characteristics. Ilo argues that present reality rather than past experience should influence decision about language choice for modern African literatures. The ideal criteria should consist of practical consideration for audience needs, rather than a romantic fixation with the colonial experience that requires from writers rare or inaccessible skills in the use of mother tongue or usage of local lore to indigenize a foreign tongue.

Introduction

Linguo-aesthetics is the term by which I identify the subject known as the language issue in African literature. The concept has been a field of scholarly discourse since the 1960s and has materialized a body of prescriptive and descriptive literature on language aesthetics in African literature and literary creativity. The representatives of the two leading, albeit divergent ideas in the field, are Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and Chinua Achebe. The relationship between language and literature is so central in African writing that it constitutes the main aesthetic and critical standard. Considering the growing body of knowledge on the subject, it may be inappropriate to continue to recognize this field merely as “the language question,” “the language problem,” “the language factor,” or “the language debate.”

As someone who had dealt with the Kings of Nepal since 1950, Koirala was not surprised by the royal takeover in 2005. By late twentieth century, the monarchy in Nepal was well-established, modeled on its counterparts in medieval Europe, and the struggle for democracy was marked by confrontation with the King.

In 1950, King Gyanendra's grandfather King Tribhuvan supported the ongoing democratic movement, which made the collapse of the repressive Rana regime possible without much bloodshed. Nonetheless, when the regime caved in, King Tribhuvan's intentions changed. Encouraged by his reactionary Rana relatives, he wanted to consolidate power for himself, by weakening the democratic parties. Since then this strategy has been adopted by successive monarchs. King Tribhuvan's successor, King Mahendra ruthlessly suppressed democratic forces throughout his entire reign. His policy was to divide the leftist and rightist (or centrist) democratic forces, in order to weaken the movement that challenged the palace authority. Even the benevolent and wise King Birendra was said to have a soft spot for the Maoist armed insurgency, which made it difficult for democratic forces to effectively confront their violence.

But in 2005 the King staged his takeover at the wrong time. The population was caught between the two armies of the State and the Maoists. For Koirala, King Gyanendra's takeover did not provide a solution but rather added to the already grave challenges facing the country because of the ongoing Maoist People's War.

Abstract: In his article “Comparative Literature in the United States” Gerald Gillespie outlines the repertory of comparative literary and cultural studies in the United States and points to relevant factors leading up to the effective merger of older literary criticism and sociological approaches. Gillespie argues that the fragmentation of comparative literature into a plethora of subfields is natural and corresponds to the complexity of the U.S.-American situation of scholarship. Further, Gillespie argues that the educational institutions hosting comparative studies have become stymied and have failed, thus far, to boost such studies to the level of current international awareness.

Introduction

Academic life in the USA has long been marked by a considerable participation of immigrants and occasional visiting scholars from a host of nations. This cultural resource was especially important in the discipline of comparative literature following World War II and continued to play a significant role. The enormous size and complexity of the U.S.-American system of higher education has contributed to what are the two primary characteristics of comparative literary and cultural studies in their entry into the new millennium in the USA: a) their extraordinary, probably unavoidable and irremediable fragmentation and b) the tendency to generate new waves on a fairly regular basis, originating from various sectors of the humanities and social sciences (on an earlier outline of comparative literature in the U.S., see Mourão). In hindsight, we can perceive something like a ten-year pattern or rhythm of overlapping generations.

Fundamentals of Mechanics is the culmination of our years of experience in research and teaching the subject. It takes into account our close observations of student responses. Furthermore, it is a sincere attempt to make the study of mechanics enjoyable and arouse interest in the subject. Mechanics, as a subject of physics, is taught at BSc and BTech level. Professor Suresh Chandra conceptualized the book to fulfill requirements of science and engineering students of this level. The other two authors put in their extensive effort to give it a shape of a comprehensive textbook. There are chapters on vectors, laws of motion, conservation laws, inverse-square-law forces, harmonic oscillator, theory of relativity and non-inertial reference frames to match the title with the syllabuses of mechanics at different universities. The chapters are supplemented by ample number of exercises and diagrams which would help in better understanding of the subject. Multiple-choice questions and problems are provided at the end of each chapter to test progress after a lesson is taught.

It was only with the help, support and encouragement of a number of people that this project could come to fruition. First of all, we would like to express sincere thanks to our colleagues for their constructive criticism. Suresh Chandra is thankful to the authorities of the Lovely Professional University for their constant support. We also thank our family members for their kind cooperation and express our gratitude to Cambridge University Press India Pvt. Ltd. for publishing this book. Any suggestion for improvement of the book will be greatly appreciated and may be addressed through the publishers.

Abstract: In her article “World Literatures and the Example of Joyce, Rao, and Borges” Bhavya Tiwari discusses the work of James Joyce and poses the question why Joyce is considered an important figure in Latin America and South Asia. Have Indian languages (e.g., Bengali and Hindi) responded differently to Joycean aesthetics? If yes, can there be political reasons behind this difference? Joyce's own position in Europe as a modernist aesthetician complicates his reception in the “periphery,” India and Latin America. Hence, Tiwari queries as to what happens when Joyce's texts are received on two different continents. In this context, Tiwari discusses Joyce's Ulysses (1922), Raja Rao's Kanthapura (1938), and Jorge Luis Borges's texts with regard to their linguistic innovations and word play. Tiwari's comparative and contextual analysis is meant to illustrate the relevance of the study of comparative world literature.

Introduction

In The Translation Zone Emily Apter postulates that although there are “historical and pedagogical reasons for maintaining geopolitical relations between dominants and their former colonies, protectorates, and client states, there are equally compelling arguments for abandoning postcolonial geography” (87). Hence, “Francophone” would no longer “designate the transnational relations among metropolitan France and its former colonies, but linguistic contact zones all over the world in which French, or some kind of French, is one of many languages in play” (Apter 87). Indeed, globalizing postcolonial studies by freeing it from the “master” and “native” narrative would be a path to broaden our notions of language, politics, aesthetics, and translations.