Allele frequency of six STR loci among three predominant population groups of eastern India

Allele frequencies for the six STR loci HumTHO1, TPOX, CSF1PO, vWA, FESFPS and F13AO1 were obtained from 94-120 unrelated individuals belonging to three important population groups of eastern India.     

Detection of species of graft in xenotransplants using arbitrary primed polymerase chain reaction.

Because of a shortage in the availability of human organs, xenografts have been attempted in humans with cardiac, renal, and hepatic failure, despite limited success. Use of xenografts, however, is regulated under law in various countries. In xenotransplant cases related to violation of transplantation law, determination of species of the source of tissue and organ(s) becomes highly essential. Random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) protocols using six sets of arbitrary short-sequenced primers have been standardized for verifying claims of porcine cardiac and renal grafts in human transplantation cases. Six arbitrary primers used were found to generate unique amplicon patterns at 36 degrees C annealing temperature. Among the selected primers, a single primer set having the sequence 5'- GGTGCGGGAA -3' is found to be the most informative in discerning porcine tissue contamination in humans. The patterns obtained were consistent for a particular genome. The grafted organs in the studied case were analyzed to be of porcine origin.     

Insecure peace: understanding citizen and local government relations in a Maoist-affected region in India

This paper examines emerging citizen and local government relations in a village in the Junglemahal region of the state of West Bengal, once a major bastion of the Maoist insurgency in India. Since 2014, Junglemahal has not experienced a single Maoist-related incident. This has been widely attributed to the West Bengal government’s “model” handling of the insurgency, which rests on the rapid mobilization of public services through the non-elected arms of local governments, bypassing elected officials. How have Junglemahal’s residents experienced this particular form of post-conflict governance? Drawing on the culture-centered approach that ethnographically observes the processes of identifying development problems and developing community-grounded solutions to these problems, our findings indicate that the hyper-developmental state was paradoxically experienced by our respondents as a very distant entity. A recurrent theme in our interviews is the absence of a locally embedded party leadership that could be approached regarding issues of distributive justice. We argue that this desire for party mediation in public service delivery is an expression of a powerful social norm that has survived the conflict and ought to be integrated into post-conflict governance structures if the current peace is to endure.     

Things Fall Apart: The Cinematic Rendition of Agrarian Landscape in South India

This article explores the transitional decade of the 1970s in the history of the southwestern state of Kerala, India, through the films and novels of M.T. Vasudevan Nair, arguably the most important litterateur in Kerala today. After the historic election of a Communist ministry to power in 1957, Kerala then stepped gingerly back from a radical politics and moved towards a restitution of an older masculine, agrarian order. By looking at the shifts in politics and the social order simultaneously with the progression of Vasudevan Nair's own filmic sensibility, the article raises the question of whether historical time and filmic time can be easily mapped on to each other.     

On Diarrhoea in Adolescents and School Toilets:Insights from an Indian Village School Study

The economics literature on the determinants of diarrhoea focuses on infants; but what about school going adolescents? Our survey in an Indian village school affirms that sanitation, defecation practices at home and school, and the degree of crowding of living space at home are all significant determinants of diarrhoeal incidence for adolescents. Usage of toilets at school varies as a function of gender and existence of a toilet in student’s home. Access to toilets is not sufficient to guarantee their usage. To eliminate open defecation: toilets installation, behavioural change, and sustainable mechanisms to maintain school toilets seem necessary.