On the Constituent Assembly Election

The formation of an elected Constituent Assembly, which would draft a new constitution, has been an unfulfilled dream in Nepal for half a century. Finally, the 2006 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which ended the decade-long Maoist insurgency, paved the way for its realisation. The political leaders desperately sought a person who could lead this process.

“This country has invested so much in you. And now when the country needs you, you are running away from your responsibilities. Aren't you betraying your motherland?” These were the powerful words of the octogenarian Prime Minister, Girija Prasad Koirala, the icon of Nepal's peace process—who pressurised me into accepting the position of Chief Election Commissioner. This was an offer I had turned down several times before. After serving almost 27 years in public service, I was not interested in going back into that sector. Furthermore, the King had used extra-constitutional powers to reject my name for the same position in 2003, so I had no interest in the post.

The day I was appointed, 30 October 2006, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) was yet to be finalised and the Interim Constitution was far from being drafted. But I was strongly advised, by all the key political leaders, that I should not waste a single minute and start preparations as soon as possible for the Constituent Assembly election expected for mid-June 2007.

Abstract: In his article “Comparative Literature in Italian” Mauro Pala presents a historical, as well as contemporary overview of comparative studies in literature and culture. While there is no discernible school of comparative literature in Italy because the discipline is considered and practiced as part of literary criticism, there are broader orientations with regard to the understanding of art and culture. With regard to the contemporary status of the discipline, there are several areas since the 1990s where tenets of comparative literature have gained interest. These areas include postcolonial studies, the phenomena of hybridization, the relationship between town and countryside, identity formation, the role of language in the process of integration, travel literature, and processes of representation. On the institutional level, comparative literature has a relatively stable presence at a number of universities.

In 1997, Remo Ceserani raised the question as to whether it would be a possible to develop in Italy a specific school of thought and practices in the discipline of comparative literature (“Italian Literary”; see also Guida alio studio). In the time since then, a number of changes have taken place including the presence of several departments and programs in comparative literature. In contrast with the U.S. and Mainland China—two countries where the discipline has the largest institutional presence, as well as specific types of comparative literature (see Gillespie; Wang and Liu) or in contrast to Germany (see Lubrich) or France (see Tomiche)—in Italy there is no discernible school of comparative literature because it is considered and practised as part of literary criticism.

It remains for us to look at various aspects of form in Narayan's writings because ultimately in all literary analysis, we must be attentive not only to what is said but how it is said. A literary work is both communique and artifact, a thing said and a thing made. From this point of view it is appropriate to recall that Narayan has tried his hand at different genres. He is an essayist, a short story-writer, a novelist and a ‘faction’ writer, by which one means that one sees a brilliant fusion of fact and fiction in his work. In works like Dateless Diary, My Days and Grandmother's Tale, we see a remarkable mix of fact and fiction. Here we can speak of the facticity of fiction and the fictive nature of fact. This, as we have noted, is very much a feature of writing in contemporary times. Commentators like Hayden White in Tropics of Discourse (1978) have explored this link between reality and writing, or history and literature, quite boldly. Narayan, in addition, is a writer of novels or novellas and finally, he is a transcreator of Indian myths and folk legends. This variety makes him a very interesting writer and in what follows, an attempt will be made to touch on questions of Narayan's adherence to realism, a point repeatedly alluded to in earlier parts of this book, and to see if this realism is ‘English’ or ‘Indian’.

In an editorial preface to the revised third edition of Robert Caldwell's A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian Family of Languages published in 1913, Rev. J. L. Wyatt and T. Ramakrishna Pillai wrote:

In a convocation address to the graduates of the Madras University in 1879, Caldwell himself was making an appeal to the educated ‘natives’ to venture into the study of their history, literature and archaeology. He observed:

Marketing of Sorghum in India

The marketing process of sorghum in India is generally smooth and constraint-free as it is relatively easy to market it as a food grain. At times, linked or tied output and credit markets lead to distress sale by small and marginal farmers. The existing marketing arrangements may not be favourable for the industries that use sorghum and millet. These industries may resort to bypassing the regular channels to obtain sorghum and millet more easily for dual purpose: for food and for industrial applications (Marsland and Rao 1999). With the gradual commercialisation of Indian agriculture and its integration with the world markets coupled with the increasing demand for sorghum, marketing of sorghum, an erstwhile subsistence crop, assumes great importance.

Although significant quantity of sorghum is traded, markets are still not well developed. There is a need to popularise value-added and ready-to-use sorghum food products. It is important that there is a collaboration with different industries and a general understanding of the behaviour of market players. New channels for the promotion of alternate uses of sorghum like in syrup, industrial products, jaggery from sweet sorghum, brewing of potable alcohol, and fuel alcohol from sweet stalks need to be explored.

Marketing of sorghum grain fits no ordinary marketing model. Traditionally, only 8−9 per cent of the crop carries over to the next marketing year. There are two primary reasons for this low carry-over. First, sorghum as a commodity moves in and out of feeding channels as a replacement for maize in most markets due to its lower price. Second, the traditional market for sorghum is a replacement of starch market. Starch is marketed as binders for making wallboard and for ethanol production. One of the fastest growing areas of utilization of sorghum is the production of ethanol, which now uses approximately 12 per cent of the total sorghum grain production in the country.

As negotiations with a range of partners commenced, the Election Commission of Nepal also began to engage with the United Nations.

The UN's involvement in Nepal's peace process began when Secretary-General Kofi Annan visited Nepal in March 2001, two months before the palace massacre. The following year, in August 2002, in his annual report to the UN General Assembly Annan offered his good offices. This offer came after political leaders, including the Maoists, indicated their preference for engagement with the UN—due to its global composition.

Padma Ratna Tuladhar, one of the facilitators in the peace talks between the Maoists and the government in 2001 and 2003, recalls some interesting details about the UN's engagement in Nepal. In an interview, Tuladhar said:

Abstract: In her article “Comparative Literature in Arabic” Marie-Thérèse Abdel-Messih presents a brief history of the discipline's development in its intellectual and institutional provenance. Abdel-Messih's approach to the history of comparative literature in Arabic is with focus on translation understood as a “planetary movement.” Of note is that the discipline was taken up and propagated by literary journals prior to the establishement of comparative literature in the academe. Owing to the colonial histories of the region, Francophone scholarship remains as a driving force although U.S.-American comparative literature is gaining in interest.

Historical CONTEXT

Locating geographies and dating beginnings of comparative scholarship in Arabic would ignore its multiple histories and distinct practices. Instead, I describe comparative literary scholarship in Arabic as part of a planetary movement that came in response to historical events which required mutual translation (see, e.g., Allush; Gould). Relevant is that this counters exclusionary approaches based on competitive scenarios of priority and origins; besides, Arab cultural processes cannot be studied as self-enclosed systems divided from world systems. Scholars of Arabic—regardless of origins or geographical locations—ought to be looked at as actors and creators of discourse in comparative scholarship. Among Western scholars, Rebecca Gould acknowledges that comparative scholarship in Arabic may be considered as part of a planetary movement when Arab-European contacts along history would be taken into account (169). In the Western Middle Ages, Arabic translations from Latin texts abounded.

Abstract: In his article “Meltzl de Lomnitz, Comparative Literature, and Philosophy” David Marno discusses the importance of Hugó Meltzl de Lomnitz's work. Meltzl de Lomnitz (1846–1908), neglected until recently, has reappeared in discussions of the state of comparative literature at the beginning of the new millennium. The reason behind this new interest in the scholar and editor of the first comparative literature journal in Europe is that his work stands symbolic for a past that the discipline of comparative literature is thought to be able to reclaim. Marno examines both this new interest in Meltzl de Lomnitz and his agenda to suggest that there is a discrepancy between them. Further, Marno argues that what the discipline of comparative literature needs to face is not simply the challenge of its own history, but the aborted project of philosophy of history.

Introduction

In order to initiate a dialogue about the underside of multiculturalism the 2006 report on the situation of the discipline of comparative literature in the U.S., Comparative Literature in an Age of Globalization (Saussy), concentrates on globalization. The previous report—published in 1995 under the title Comparative Literature in the Age of Multiculturalism (Bernheimer)—promoted a future comparative literature as (multi-)cultural studies and to make this point it tended to criticize comparative literature as a historically non-multicultural or not sufficiently multicultural tradition. The 2006 report, by contrast, calls attention to the problems inherent to the idea of comparative literature as (multi-)cultural studies, and looks to comparative literature's past for alternatives.

a. The American Revolution: Causes and Events

Causes of the Origins of the American Revolution

The origins of the American Revolution can be explained mainly from the economic and ideological points of view. The crystallization of a wealthy, influential and a powerful class of American bourgeoisie who made their fortunes mostly in the plantation sector led inevitably in the long run to a growing conflict between them and Great Britain. The rising class of businessmen began to bitterly resent the mercantilist economic policy of the British government that was essentially concerned with the welfare of the mother-country. Louis Hacker thus argues that the American Revolution was a clash of conflict between British mercantilism and American capitalism. That Great Britain was trying to thwart colonial economy was evident in colonial restrictions in many instances.

The hydrogenic system, i.e., hydrogen atom or any one-electron-containing-an-ion system, is the only chemical system for which an exact solution of Schrödinger equation is known. In case of the problem related to many electrons atomic systems and molecules, the equations obtained are found to be too complex to be solved exactly. In other words, we can say that apart from a few simple cases, the solution of the Schrödinger equation is impossible in closed form. In many electron systems, the electrons interact with each other and the solutions of the equation obtained become difficult due to many potential energy terms.

Under the above circumstances, approximate methods or theories have been applied to get the solution. These approximate methods or theories are as follows:

• Perturbation theory or method

• Variation theorem or method

We shall acquire knowledge about each theory or method one by one.

Perturbation theory/method for non-degenerate states

If a chemical system is subjected to an electric or a magnetic field, the system becomes disturbed or perturbed. Under this situation, the system under consideration differs from an exactly solvable system by only a small disturbance, enabling an approximation to be carried out by expanding in powers of a smallness parameter.

Let H = perturbed Hamiltonian

H0 = zero order Hamiltonian without disturbance or perturbation of the system or zero order unperturbed Hamiltonian whose solution is known

(H − H0)= change/difference between perturbed and unperturbed Hamiltonian. H differs from H0 by only a small amount.

Then the effect of (H − H0) can be taken into account by utilising the perturbation theory. Further, let us consider that H0 has a spectrum of given values

Then we can express the Schrödinger equation as

It has been assumed that H is slightly different from H0 due to perturbation. Then H can be expressed as a polynomial in a perturbation parameter as

where, H0 = first order perturbation correction

H00 = second order perturbation correction

H000 = third order perturbation correction and so on (the magnitude of

perturbation is found to be inversely proportional to order)

Density functional theory (DFT) is one of the tools of computational chemistry. The density functional calculations are often said to be DFT calculations. It is just like abinitio and semi-empirical calculations based on the Schröodinger equation. It must be kept in mind that DFT does not compute a wave function but it directly gives a method to obtain the electron distribution or electron density function. Therefore, it may be said that the DFT is not based on the wave function, but it is based on the electron density or charge density or electron density function. It is represented or designated by p(x, y, z). The fact is that it is probability per unit volume, which is expressed as p(x, y, z) where P is the probability of finding an electron in a volume element dx . dy . dz. Note that p(x, y, z) is purely a number. It will be clear from the following representation:

The unit of p can be logically expressed as Vol−1. Therefore, p can be mathematically represented by

But for closed shell molecules ni = 2

We have used the words function and functional above. So we shall explain these two mathematical words one by one.

Function

A quantity 0y0 is said to be a function of another quantity 0x0, written as y = f (x), if a change in one produces a change in the other. Thus, in the statement y = 3x2 +5x, i.e., f (x) = 3x2 +5x, y is a function of x and a change in the value of x produces a change in the value of y. If x = 1, then f (1) = 3 ×12 +5 ×1 = 8, if x = 2, then f (2) = 3 ×22 +5 ×2 = 22. Thus, it is clear that the value of ‘y’ is dependent on the value of x.

The function can also be defined in the following manner:

A function f (x) is a mathematical rule, which connects a number with every value of x for which the function f is defined. For example, the function f (x) = x3 +1 connects the number 9 with x = 2, i.e., when we put x = 2, f (2) = 9; similarly, for x = 3 f (3) = (3)2+1 = 28.

The propagation of a periodic disturbance carrying energy is called the wave motion. At any point along the path of the wave motion, a periodic displacement or vibration about a mean position occurs. This may take the form of a displacement of air molecules (e.g., sound waves in air), of water molecules (wave on water), or of elements of a string or wire. The locus of these displacements at any instant is known as wave. The wave motion moves forward a distance equal to its wavelength in the time taken for the displacement at any point to undergo a complete cycle about its mean position. Waves in which the displacement or vibration takes place in the direction of propagation of the waves are called longitudinal waves, e.g., sound waves, but the waves in which the vibration or displacement occurs in a plane at right angles to the direction of propagation of the waves are called transverse waves. We are discussing the waves and wave motion, and therefore, we want to establish a relationship or an equation of wave motion. In order to do so, it will be convenient to consider the simplest type of wave motion, namely, the vibration of string, and then we shall derive an equation of wave motion.

Equation of wave motion

In deriving the equation for wave motion (e.g., vibration of string), let w = the amplitude of vibration at any point, the co-ordinate of which is x at a time t.

we can write

Differentiating Eq. (6.1) with respect to t, we shall get

This is the equation of wave motion in one dimension.

Equation (6.3) is a differential equation and it may be solved by the method of separating the variables, provided u remains constant. Thus w may be written as

w = f (x) .g(t)

where, f (x) = a function of x only

g(t) = a function of time t only

For the motion of standing waves, which occur in a stretched string, it is known to us that g(t) may be expressed as

g(t) = A sin2pƲt

where, Ʋ = frequency of vibration

A = constant, which is maximum amplitude

Therefore, Eq. (6.4) may be expressed as

This Chapter is intended to provide the students of chemistry with the mathematics they need in the course of study of quantum chemistry or quantum mechanics. The students will face difficulties in understanding the theoretical portion of quantum mechanics without the knowledge of mathematics. This chapter will help in developing a strong mathematics background for those who will continue into the mathematics of advanced theoretical chemistry. It is to be noticed that the subject of differential equations, for example, is no longer a series of trick solutions of abstract but the solutions and general properties of the differential equations, the students will most frequently encounter in the description of our real chemical world. The other topics such as matrices, determinants, vectors, etc., are equally important in quantum mechanics.

Differential equations

An equation involving the dependent variable and independent variable and also the derivatives of the dependent variable is called a differential equation.

Ordinary differential equation

A differential equation comprising derivatives with respect to a single independent variable is known as an ordinary differential equation.

For example:

Equations (3.1), (3.2), (3.3) and (3.4) are the examples of ordinary differential equations.

Partial differential equation

A differential equation consisting of partial derivatives with respect to more than one independent variables is known as a partial differential equation.

Order and degree of a differential equation

Order

Order of a differential equation is defined as the order of the highest derivative in the differential equation.

Degree

It is defined as the degree of the highest derivative which occurs in it, after the differential equation has been made free from fractions and radicals as far as the derivative is concerned.

Linear and non-linear differential equation

A differential equation is called linear if (a) every dependent variable and every derivative involved occur in the first degree only and (b) no products of dependent variables and/or derivatives occur.

General solution, particular solution, and arbitrary constants

General solution:

A solution of a differential equation having independent arbitrary constant equal in number to the order of the differential equation is known as its general solution.

Introduction

The easy availability of ultrashort high intensity lasers has fuelled a variety of approaches for the selective control of bond dissociation using appropriate laser pulses[1−22, 24, 25, 27−30, 32−68]. Photodissociation is one of the most fundamental chemical processes. The process involves the distribution of products among the various possible quantum channels and provides unique insights into the energetics and the mechanism of bond breaking[8, 11, 43, 56, 67] which is of fundamental importance in chemistry. Considerable experimental and theoretical effort has been directed over the past few years towards the goal of laser assisted control of molecular dynamics[10, 12, 15, 20, 24, 39−42, 49−51, 58]. The important issue is how to control the branching ratio between chemically distinct channels. To change the branching ratio, several ways have been reported[19, 42]. Infrared mutiphoton excitation is one such process that induces selective bond dissociation. However, in this type of process, the intramolecular vibrational relaxation (IVR) creates a road block to selective control. With a properly designed laser pulse, the effect of IVR can be eliminated or minimized. However, the infrared mutiphoton excitation method requires very high intensity to detect dissociation probability and therefore may lead to molecular ionization.

Another way to investigate photo fragmentation is by using the photons in the ultraviolet part of the electro magnetic spectrum. The limitation of this process is that one of the excited states of molecule of interest must be purely repulsive. Also, with two lasers in the ContinuousWave regime, the dynamics can be explored in accordance with the Franck−Condon principle, which is known as passive control[19, 54]. In this approach, the first laser is used to excite the vibrational eigenstate of themolecule and the second laser to dissociate themolecule via excitation to the repulsive electronic state. The above method is suitable only for a molecule with local mode vibrational eigenstates such as the photodissociation of HOD molecule where the vibrational eigenstates are essentially local modes in the O−H and O−D stretch[6, 16, 22, 60, 61]. The method is inapplicable to those molecules where vibrational eigenstates are of normal mode type[2].

To overcome the limitations of passive control, there is another scheme which has been reported, known as the active control scheme[19, 54].

Introduction

Broadband optical sources find a wide range of inter-disciplinary application areas encircling science, medicine, defence, engineering etc. They have long been used owing to their spectroscopic applications. Recently, these sources have found their place in defence applications also, the most notable application being the directed infrared countermeasure (DIRCM) system and light detection and ranging (LIDAR) for detection of chemical and biological agents (an application that falls in the domain of spectroscopy). Tunability in the wavelength can be achieved by a number of techniques. Common tunable lasers include dye laser, tunable Excimer lasers, tunable solid state lasers, semiconductor lasers, free electron lasers (FEL) etc. However, for wide tunability, researchers have started exploiting the second order optical non-linearity associated with certain materials by means of optical parametric processes. The arrival of new non-linear optical materials as alternatives to the traditional oxides and silver-containing compounds has allowed development of compact and efficient optical parametric oscillators (OPO) with tunability extending from mid-infrared (mid-IR) to far-infrared wavelengths (also known as terahertz waves).

Optical parametric generation (OPG) essentially relies on phase matching. Phase matching can either be achieved by exploiting inherent birefringence of the material, in which case it is termed as birefringent phase matching (BPM), or by quasi phase matching (QPM), which is based on periodically reversing the non-linear coefficient of the material[1]. In QPM, the accumulated phase mismatch is offset by modulating the second order non-linear coefficient (d33) at a period that is twice the coherence length[1]. The distinct advantages of QPM over BPM have encouraged researchers to develop periodically poled materials. One of the most popular materials for accompli-shing QPM is lithium niobate (LN). A most efficient and commonly used technique to realize QPM structure is electric field poling (E-field poling) in which a high electric field greater than the material's coercive field is applied across the thickness of the crystal[1−2]. For example, periodically poled lithium niobate (PPLN) can be fabricated with this technique and it has been widely used for broadband mid-IR generation using OPO[2].

Recently, there has been a lot of interest in THz generation using PPLN. Although conventional PPLN may be used for THz generation using optical rectification of femtosecond pulses[3], the geometries of PPLN grating for THz generation using nanosecond laser is significantly different.