Abstract: In his article “Possibilities and Limits of Comparative Literature Today” Darío Villanueva discusses the itinerary of comparative literature and its problematics and queries the discipline's adherence to literary history and its identification with the theory of literature. Villanueva's discussion is with particular reference to Spanish-language works such as by Claudio Guillén's systemic view of literature and the study of literature, as well as similar approaches to the study of literature such as by Siegfried J. Schmidt, Itamar Even-Zohar, and Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek. Further, Villanueva discusses aspects of the field of (comparative) cultural studies he sees relevant and useful for the study of literature comparatively.

In an attempt to abandon the identification of genetic relationships to justify comparativist research, the last twenty-five or thirty years have seen the emergence of a new paradigm of comparative literature. A basic principle of the new paradigm is that whenever the same or a similar phenomenon appears in two separate literatures or in one literature and in another type of artistic expression, the comparative approach must include a fundamental theoretical element, that is to say, a possible or hypothetical point of departure. The immediate consequence of such an approach is comparative literature's if not exclusive, then at least preferential link with literary theory (see Fokkema 3). Thus, since the 1970s, roughly, comparative literature developed with a theoretical component and that gave the discipline its innovative character.

Abstract: In his article “Comparative Literature in German” Oliver Lubrich discusses the status quo of the discipline against the backdrop of recent debates about the future of literary theory and comparative literature as a global discipline. Starting with the as-of-yet rarely explored history of comparative studies under national socialism, Lubrich sketches the development of the discipline after World War II with particular focus on the work of Peter Szondi. Further, Lubrich reflects on selected areas of study including German colonialism, travels to fascist countries, postsocialist literatures, and (im)migrant writing. Brief mention is made about German-language comparative literature in Austria and Switzerland.

Introduction

In recent years some scholars stated—not for the first time—that comparative literature is dead. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's Death of a Discipline and Terry Eagleton's After Theory epitomize this provocative position. Eagleton takes a polemical look at the literary and cultural theories of the last decades and laments their “postmodern” disinterest in politics. He demands a repoliticizing of theory and, consequently, of the disciplines it inspires. In the past years, the most widely discussed development in the humanities, postcolonialism, has intended to do just that. The study of (post)colonial literature is both political and comparative because it treats cultures in their (conflicting) relationship to each other—e.g., conquest, colonization, domination, (im)migration. Spivak's argumentation for the renewal of comparative literature with a postcolonial grounding is about bringing together comparative literature with area studies and thereby forging an alliance between the humanities and the social sciences.

To make connections both tangible and virtual is a powerful motivator in scholarship. A tensile filament stretches towards another filament to create the spoke for yet another filament until electronic communication and the world wide web has spread worldwide. This is the figurative environment of knowledge and the transmission of knowledge of our borderless world in the twenty-first century. Linking texts and contexts, cultural products, and the economies of their production, authors, audiences, languages and literacies, politics, and the circulation of power creates the complex texture of interrelated knowledge systems and human relationships that encompass the planet. As Rabindranath Tagore's song goes, “your net spans the world, how can one escape/I'm a half-captive already, the other half eagerly waits,” being trapped within the fluid play of meaning-making, its construction and deconstruction, is the ideal location for negotiating the tangled semantic and cultural interdependence of our time because texts without texture would just be a group of isolated entities, diminished in themselves when unrelated to one another and the world at large. The negotiation of the network of relationships in the rapidly transforming “glocal” milieu requires more than appropriate pedagogies: importantly, it requires a major shift in cultural and aesthetic paradigms and attitudes and a re-orientation towards being more inclusive globally.

Five months after the signing of the 12-Point Understanding, the Democratic Alliance and the Maoist party launched an agitation against the Royal government. The first point in the 12-Point Understanding called for an end to the autocratic King's rule, through the force of the People's Movement. Building on this, civil society leaders played an important role in laying the groundwork for the mass uprising, which called for democracy and goaded the political parties into action. Accordingly, in the spring of 2006, the Democratic Alliance called a general strike demanding restoration of peace and full democracy.

Thousands of ordinary Nepalese people from different parts of Nepal joined the demonstration—including farmers, labourers, workers, teachers, students, drivers, clerks, shopkeepers, housewives, doctors and lawyers. This was despite the presence of a large posse of security personnel, who had been ordered to quell the movement with tear gas, rubber bullets and even live rounds. The people were brave and defiant, and attended rallies across the country, ignoring the curfew.

The movement was also supported by the wider international community. Many western donors had cut foreign aid on the eve of the 2006 People's Movement, in order to pressurise the King to respect human rights and democratic freedom. Both moral and financial support was extended to the People's Movement by many foreign countries, especially India.

Industry Size Estimation

Multigrain atta industry

1. • The market size of the multigrain atta is very small as compared to the normal atta market.

2. • The market is estimated to be around 15,000−25,000 tonnes per annum (on an average 1−1.5 per cent of total packed atta industry in India).

3. • Mostly organised players dominate the segment and national brands are available in the market.

4. • Few regional players are also there in the market.

5. • Multigrain atta is sold at a premium (Ashirvaad, Pillsbury, Saffola).

6. • Growth of this particular segment is estimated to be 3−4 per cent annually.

Biscuit industry

1. • Biscuit industry size is estimated to be about 25−30 lakh tonnes per annum (Indian Biscuit's Manufacturing Association [IBMA]).

2. • About 55−65 per cent of the total volume catered by the organised players. Glucose biscuits constitute 45−50 per cent of the market, followed by Marie that forms 10−15 per cent of the total biscuit consumption basket.

3. • Share of cookies is estimated at about 3−4 per cent of the total market size.

4. • Growth of the overall biscuit sector has been estimated at about 12−15 per cent per annum (IBMA).

Vermicelli industry

1. • Indian vermicelli market size is estimated at about 30,000−40,000 tonnes per annum (Source: Pasta Manufacturer Association India 2009/10).

2. • The organised players handle 75−80 per cent of the total volume.

3. • Regional brands dominate in their respective regions. However, few popular regional brands like Bambino and MTR are also available in other markets.

4. • The sector is estimated to grow by 15 per cent annually (including pasta).

An issue that continued to threaten the election, and which was a constant headache for the Commission—was the electoral system.

The main Constituent Assembly Member Election Act, passed in June 2007, had established a mixed electoral system with a Constituent Assembly of 497 members—240 of whom would be elected through the First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) system and 240 through the Proportional Representation system. Additionally, seventeen members would be appointed by the Council of Ministers. Voters would get two ballots, voting separately in the FPTP and the PR races, and each element of the election would be counted separately. Decision on this process was reached by the parties after a series of negotiations.

It had to be agreed that the nature of the electoral system was critical, not least because it had been the focus of the Maoists' armed struggle. Since the restoration of multiparty parliamentary democracy, in early 1990, Nepal had adopted a majoritarian system, known as the First-Past-The-Post for its three parliamentary elections in 1991, 1994 and 1999 as well as for its two local elections in 1992 and 1997. In this system—practiced, for example, in the UK and India—candidates with the highest number of votes in a constituency are elected. Unfortunately, this system failed to meet the aspirations of Nepal's diverse society, which consisted of over 100 ethnic groups, speaking multiple languages.

In the scholarly writings on the reconstitution of the Tamil literary canon in nineteenth-century colonial Tamil society, a predominant emphasis has been placed on the life and activity of a Tamil scholar named Uthamathanapuram Venkatasubbaiyar Swaminatha Iyer, known widely as the grandfather of the Tamil language – Tamil thatha. His autobiography, En Charitram (The Story of My Life), written between 1940 and 1942, continues to remain a standard source for historians to understand the processes of the reproduction of classical Tamil literary works from manuscript form to print medium during the nineteenth century. Scholars also mention the role of Arumuga Navalar and Damodaram Pillai when it comes to what is called the ‘rediscovery’ of Sangam literature during nineteenth-century colonial Tamil Nadu.

Abstract: In her article “Painting and Representation in Teaching Balzac” Janet Moser explores the relation of text and image for use in pedagogy. The roots of Balzac's realist representational program in seventeenth-century Dutch genre painting have been noted frequently and studied extensively. However, description and narrative are in many respects oppositional and the Balzac/Dutch analogy can be taken only so far. Balzac believed that he had grafted ethically meaningful dramatic action onto a morally static model of Dutch descriptive realism. In class discussions and exercises — through the analysis of Balzac's rhetoric and a survey of Dutch painting — students explore the connections between Balzac's understanding of representation in Dutch painting and his representation of the culture of Restoration Paris.

Introduction

The classic nineteenth-century European novel in translation sits at the hub of a network of fundamental interdisciplinary connections within the teaching institutions of the English-speaking world. Playing the role of the “immediate Other” opposite the study of the contemporary English novel, continental fictions have served both to link the rhetorical tactics generically, representational strategies of the English novel to cognate literary concerns, and to provide students with a broader, less Anglo-centric view of how the novel came to represent concerns arising in the industrializing worlds of the nineteenth century. A byproduct of the generalization achieved by dislodging the novel from its traditional embedding in language-based studies is an emerging, institutionally-important role for studies of “realism” and the nineteenth-century novel as models for critical inquiry into issues of representation in visual, material, and social worlds.

Food processing in all the sectors involves the conversion of raw material into a finished end-product of higher value to consumer. In some situations, processing is a one-step conversion of raw material to a consumer product. The history of food processing emphasises on establishing and maintaining microbial safety, as well as economic shelf-life of the food. All developments in food processing have similar origins. One common aspect is achieving and maintaining microbial safety in the product. Food processing methods are used worldwide as they improve nutritional quality of the grains, digestibility, and shelf-life. Food processing operations mainly involves primary and secondary processing steps.

Primary processing is a crucial step to maintain the quality of grain, which is a vital consideration in ultimately ensuring the quality of processed foods. In this process, stones, sand, dust, hay, glumes, animal excreta, and other foreign matter are removed. Grading and sorting are usually employed that aid in the removal of oversize, undersize, immature or poor quality grains. Secondary processing is a set of operations, wherein the processed raw material obtained after primary treatment is converted into ready-to-eat (RTE) and ready-to-cook (RTC) products. These finished products minimise the cooking time and are used as convenience foods.

Sorghum, the indigenous millet, is a traditional staple food in Africa, India, and other Asian countries. The consumption pattern of sorghum is quite traditional, and sorghum is not available as commercially processed food in the Indian market. This is due to lack of processing technologies, inavailability of machinery, and inconsistent grain availability. In semi-arid regions, dehulling and milling are done by hand pounding, and unfermented baked food and fermented food are used to prepare sorghum-based food.

a. Agricultural Revolution

The post-Civil War Agrarian Revolution resulted out of a combination of several factors. Huge availability of arable lands, equally large numbers of tillers of soil, startling inventions in agricultural implements, scientific researches in plant genetics, and techniques of crop production, all combined and brought about a spectacular breakthrough in the agrarian sector.

By the mid-nineteenth century, America came to possess a vast amount of arable lands which, between 1860 and 1900, increased from three million to 60 million and the number of farms from two million to six million. On an average the production went up by three times or 300 per cent. For example, in 1860 the production of wheat was 250 million bushels which jumped up to 655 million bushels by 1900. Similarly, the production of corn was a little less than one million bushels which leapt up to two and a half billion bushels in 1900.