TEST BY FIRE

In 2013,when Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed the Belt and Road Initiative,at that time people understood very little about what a shared future for all humanity meant.And they understood even less the vision that sought to unite without unifying,spoke of a moral leadership without moralizing,and conceived of a power based on partnerships and not alliances.     

A note on persistence and polarisation

Increased opportunity of productive employment in the market due to the process of polarisation is unlikely to be an important reason for the stability of land ownership of the small holders in Bangladesh. It is argued that the stability is achieved by destabilising the ‘household’ itself. The relative stability of small owners is also due to the fact that in Bangladesh a larger proportion of them belong to the young household category than the households in the rich groups. In fact, a comparison between land ownership at the inception of the households with their land ownership at a fixed point in time may not be useful in understanding either the stability of households or the process of polarisation.     

Afghanistan since the revolution

Buddhism under Mao. By Holmes Welch. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1972. Pp. 666. Illus.     

Making political citizens? Migrants’ narratives of naturalization in the United Kingdom*

Citizenship tests are arguably intended as moments of hailing, or interpellation, through which norms are internalized and citizen-subjects produced. We analyse the multiple political subjects revealed through migrants’ narratives of the citizenship test process, drawing on 158 interviews with migrants in Leicester and London who are at different stages in the UK citizenship test process. In dialogue with three counter-figures in the critical naturalization literature – the ‘neoliberal citizen’; the ‘anxious citizen’; and the ‘heroic citizen’ – we propose the figure of the ‘citizen-negotiator’, a socially situated actor who attempts to assert control over their life as they navigate the test process and state power. Through the focus on negotiation, we see migrants navigating a process of differentiation founded on pre-existing inequalities rather than a journey toward transformation.     

Impact of job location on relationship between job satisfaction and self‐esteem of employees: Evidence from the Indian BPOs

Does job location impact on job satisfaction and self‐esteem? To answer this question, a sample of 298 responses was drawn from business process outsourcing employees working in four different locations in two south Indian states. The study conducted in both rural and urban locations witnessed that the job location (rural/urban) has a significant impact on job satisfaction and self‐esteem despite similar job demands and resource support conditions for all the respondents. Results show a very large divergence in self‐esteem between rural and urban settings and some divergence across genders. Location of delivery centres in smaller towns could thus be an effective solution for the high turnover experienced at urban delivery centres handling data capture and such low end processing.     

Dark side of social media and academic performance of public sector schools students: Role of parental school support

Students are regularly engaged in several things at the same time during class and school time. They are using smartphones, tablets, laptops, and using social media on these devices while learning and attending class. However, there are some situations likely influenced by this, current study tests the influence of technostress, cyberbullying, and media multitasking in the context of students in technology‐saturated classrooms and how this is affecting their academic performance. This study further explored the buffering effects of parental school support on the relationship between technostress, cyberbullying, and student's performance. By using the person‐environment fit model, this study surveyed 248 public sector school students in two waves and examined the impact of these variables on student's academic performance. Results show that technostress, cyberbullying, and media multitasking have a negative impact on student performance, and school parental support moderates the negative relationship between technostress and student performance. Implications and contributions have also been discussed.