Current

Over past few decades of growth in population and economy has led to rise of middle-class consumer culture in Gujarat and have also brought increasing amounts of solid waste to its urban areas. Though innovations in consumer products have brought great convenience and sanitation in people’s lives but on other hand it has increased the amount of trash to many folds. Increase in the waste pile at dump-site is going to continue further and major part of it will come from the urban users. This paper discusses the socio and economic contribution of informal waste pickers of Ahmedabad. This paper also states the solid waste management done by the waste pickers and their livelihood pattern. The study is conducted at Ahmedabad as it has been one of the leading growing urban areas of Gujarat and it is becoming more integrated into global economy.  Such rapid growth demands more concerns about balanced development integrating economy, environment and people.  

Climate change is a very big term which has been there since the earth was evolved. Climate change occurs naturally but has increased after the interference of anthropogenic activities. The impacts of climate change can be observed all over the world. The impacts are observed in agriculture, transport, forestry, coastal etc. Majorly the impacts of climate change are on the agricultural sector and on coastal sector. Coastal life is very important as one third population resides near the coast. Most of the people residing nearby the coast are directly or indirectly relying on coast for their livelihood which also has direct as well as indirect impacts on the marine life. Coastal area is one of the key systems for global sustainability. Coastal regions gained importance because of multiple uses, like high productivity of the ecosystem, highly concentrated population, industry friendly, waste disposal, tourism, transportation, strategic planning in military and many more. These coasts are always in a dynamic state trying to change, and nature always work for maintaining the equilibrium. Despite all that Indian coasts are under threat due to multiple stresses like global climate change and human intervention. These stresses are driving vulnerabilities like sea-level rise, coastal erosion, frequent extreme events, and saltwater encroachment. In this scenario, coastal management has become one of the very important issues in last two decades. Thus, coastal vulnerability assessment methods have been developed to identify and manage vulnerable areas over the coast. Proper planning and protection strategies for Indian coast must be taken swiftly by the coastal management and policy makers to safeguard coastal ecosystem and livelihoods. In recent years, there has been much focus on the coastal vulnerability assessments using various kinds of data.

The novel Corona Virus (COVID-19) pandemic has been considered the greatest public health threat at all over the world since December-2019. In the absence of vaccines and particular medicine, countries around the world are implementing various forms of 'Social Distancing' as a policy to slow down the virus spread. Social distancing has multiple perspectives. This study shows it as a physical distance but in sociology, it shows a different perspective. This is normative social distance. In the crisis of COVID-19 in India, the Government has ordered a nationwide lockdown. Lockdown is a forced situation. The citizens cannot move to another place without permission and its violation is punishable. On the other side it is functional to society at personal, family, and wider levels. During this unlimited time people have a golden chance for mental and physical comfort. There is some latent function due to lockdown. This is very important as said by sociologist Merton and other functionalists.

Methodology

This is an online survey of the people. The main objectives of this paper are …

To know the impact of lockdown at Personal level

To know the changing division of labour during the lockdown

To know the latent function of lockdown

The sample consists of 200 respondents living in India.

The sociological term of functional analysis and social distance is included in this paper.

The paper is organized as follows. Part-I is on the introduction which includes basic concepts about COVID-19. The second part is on the methodology. The third part shows personal profile of the respondents. The forth part is on data analysis and discussion and the final part shows some important suggestions and conclusions

Indian Philosophy is a vast ocean of knowledge. Owing to India’s colonial history, many scholars from across the globe have come to witness the grandeur of its literature including the Vedas and other ancient scriptures. W.B. Yeats is a name that every literature scholar calls out with utmost respect as he has contributed immensely to the literary discourse. He openly accepted the great influence of Indian Philosophy on his enormous collection of poetry. His later work, shows greater depth and spiritual growth, which undeniably reflects his vast reading of Indian scriptures (some of which he translated into English). In the present paper, the researcher ventures through his spiritual journey and analyzes his poetry from the lenses of Indian philosophy. The present research contains the critical re-assessment of Yeats’s celebrated poems and their uncanny resemblance with many aspects and contexts of Indian Philosophy. 

The study was focused on the antimicrobial activity of leaves of Plumeria alba L. In this research, antibacterial and antifungal activities of the plant material was assessed. Plumeria alba L. belongs to Apocynaceae family. Apocynaceae family members have maximum number of alkaloids, which are highly toxic in nature. For antimicrobial activity Agar Well Diffusion method was used. E-coli culture was selected to assess antibacterial activity and Fusarium oxysporum fungus was selected to assess antifungal activity. Different concentrations of methanolic and ethanolic leaves extracts were used for the activities. Both the plant extracts showed positive results against E-coli and Fusarium oxysporum. Ethanolic extracts showed better positive results as compare to methanolic extracts. So, it can be concluded that Plumeria alba L. leaves has antibacterial and antifungal activities, which can be used in different pesticide preparation or else for preparation in different medicines.

Medicinal Plants play an important role in the development of potent therapeutic agents. About 80% of people in developing countries rely on traditional medicine based largely on various species of plants for their primary health care. Herbal medicines are currently in demand and their popularity is increasing day by day. Hence, keeping the present need in mind, the present study was undertaken to assess the presence of phytochemicals in the crude powdered sample of Centella asiatica (L.) Urb. leaves.

For every working men and women, managing domestic work is as crucial as managing careers. Domestic work takes up significant part of one’s time and is crucial to leading a comfortable and healthy life.

In the Indian cultural context, domestic work is the responsibility of women. With increasing workforce participation of women in urban areas role of domestic workers assumes added significance.

Research objectives – The objective of this paper is to provide an insight into ‘Domestic Help Sector Professional Agencies’ working to provide manpower for cleaning, caretaking, cooking and other household work, and their initiatives in formalizing the sector.

Methodology – The paper is based on an on-going Doctoral Research study. This exploratory study is based on mixed methods of data collection, with use of a structured questionnaire, as well as personal interviews.

Relevance to the field of social work and law - The National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector (NCEUS) under the chairmanship of Arjun Sengupta studied the Condition of Work and Promotion of Livelihoods in Unorganized Sector. Domestic Workers, as part of the unorganized workforce, were studied under the category of ‘wage workers’. The study showed that more than 80% of domestic workers were paid less than minimum wages, both in urban and rural areas. They have no rights to workers' compensation, weekly holidays and minimum wages. Various Bills for domestic workers were introduced in 1990, 1996, and 2010.

However still there is no Act enacted for them. The NCEUS recommended system for registration of domestic workers, to fix a minimum wage, and to legislate on to regulate conditions of employment, social security and security of employment. The Unorganised Workers Social Security Act was enacted in 2008; however, it was not implemented in its true sense. A draft on National Policy on Domestic Workers is published in Jan 19, and the draft proposed mechanism for regulation of placement agencies handling domestic workers, right to enhance their professional skills and have access to courts and tribunals.

Major results - One of the key expected outcome of this paper is analysing the services provided by the existing ‘Domestic Help Services Agencies’, in Ahmedabad city.

Implications - To address various issues of Domestic workers the Domestic Help Sector need to organise themselves and have more professional approach towards their work. Many Domestic help sector agencies are now operating in urban areas and through Digital online platforms. These agencies are catalysts for giving recognition to the Domestic workers and deliver professional services for household work. 

Domestic work and workers continue to remain ‘invisible’ in national statistics, mostly due to low social status attached to the type of work. Moreover, the domestic workers are prey to all forms of abuse, harassment, ill-treatment and exploitation.

So far only as the Domestic workers have no coverage under any present Labour Laws, their inclusion in mainstream workforce is a challenge, which can be effectively handled by having such professional agencies working for their development and recognition.

The composition of population by gender is one of the primary demographic characteristics of human population. Gender composition reflects fertility, mortality and migration character of a given population. There are different indicator, but sex-ratio is one of the best indictors to measure gender balance in urban and rural life.

The overall sex-ratio (OSR) nationwide (the number of females per 1000 males) in 2011 census has improved by seven percent to 940 against 933 in census of 2001. The provisional data in 2011 census shows that the child sex-ratio (0 to 6) comes down to 914 female per 1000 males against 927 in 2001. This trend creates issues and challenges before urban and rural Indian population. This is an issue of great concern.

Aims / Objectives

The present paper aims at studying the trends and patterns of child sex-ratio in India.

The main objectives are to examine the causes for declining ratio of girl-children and its challenges.

Methodology

The study is based on secondary data such as census of India. It is also confined to various previous empirical researcher and our own observations.

Discussion

The gender composition in population focuses the trends and issues of status of girl child. Why millions of female-foetuses in India are killed before they are born way many of girl children do not reach the age of six ? What are the causes of such discrimination? What are our challenges? Is that due to gender bias? These are some of the points of concern & discussion.

Conclusion

This paper examines the spatial as temporal analysis on trends as well as patterns of sex-ratio. There are many causes, but preference for male-child and socio-cultural values are still the major cause for gender inequality. Declined child sex-ratio leads to future challenges. Therefore rigorous efforts are need to solve the issues of gender balance so far as Indian population is concerned. 

Disasters have had an impact on the lives of women all around the world. Generally women are looked at in disasters only as victims despite of the fact that the majority of victims in disasters are women and children. The central role of women in facing the aftermath of disasters is totally neglected. Disasters have continued to exact a heavy toll and, as a result, the well-being and safety of persons, communities and countries as a whole have been affected. Over 700 thousand people have lost their lives, over 1.4 million have been injured and approximately 23 million have been made homeless as a result of disasters. Overall, more than 1.5 billion people have been affected by disasters in various ways, with women, children and people in vulnerable situations disproportionately affected. The total economic loss was more than $1.3 trillion.i It has been observed that more than half of the victims in past disasters were women and they are not having any technical knowledge about disaster occurrence in general.ii Empowering women in planning, and decision making related to strategies for the Disaster Management is still needed.

This Paper suggests social inclusion of women by way of increasing capacity building and reducing vulnerability level for the better recovery, relief and rehabilitation aftermath of disasters.

There are worries about utilizing manufactured phenolic cancer prevention agents, for example, butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT) and butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) as food added substances in light of the announced negative impacts on human wellbeing. In this way, a substitution of these synthetics by cancer prevention agent extractions from different nourishments has been proposed. In excess of 8000 diverse phenolic mixes have been described; foods grown from the ground are the prime wellsprings of normal cell reinforcements. So as to concentrate, measure, and distinguish bioactive mixes from a wide assortment of foods grown from the ground, scientists utilize various procedures and strategies. This survey incorporates a short depiction of a wide scope of various measures. The cancer prevention agent, antimicrobial, and anticancer properties of phenolic normal items from leafy foods are additionally talked about.