Province Of Bengal Research Articles

Status of Rice Brown Spot (Helminthosporium oryza) Management in India: A Review

Rice is one of the most widely consumed staple food for more than half of the population in the world. Brown spot caused by Helminthosporium oryzae accounts for 5% yield loss worldwide annually. Adversely affected fields show yield loss as high as 45%. The present study focuses on the several management aspects that are currently used to curb out the disease incidence and measures to be taken in near future for designing effective disease management protocol. The disease is of historic significance and a devasting outbroke in the Bengal Province during 1943 ended as the Great Bengal Famine resulting in starvation and an estimated demise of 2.1 to 3 million people. Brown spot is still devastating on looking the present scenario of damage to rice. Different approaches have been adopted ranging from the use of brown spot resistant rice cultivars, chemical ameliorations and biological control measures for the management of the disease. But, still the disease seems to be chronic and adverse in the current scenario. In this review, we have highlighted epidemiology, control measures practiced and several quantitative and qualitative gaps with respect to disease management, which if rectified, would lead to a strong impact on crop disease control and the sustainable Rice production that are pertinent to the present situation of farmers.

Importance of food security in India

It's essential for living like air and water. It is more than getting two square meals. It has three dimensions- 1) Food availability i.e. total food production in the country plus the imported food plus buffer stocks maintained in govt. granaries like FCI in previous years. 2) Food accessibility i.e. food should be within the reach of every person. 3) Food affordability i.e. an individual should have enough money to buy proper, safe and nutritious food to meet his dietary needs. Just as you and your family need sufficient, safe and nutritious food, likewise, each and every citizen has a right to get food. Just think of poverty-stricken, it is very hard for them to get two square meals a day. Somehow they manage by eating through dustbins or loungers carried on by some charitable or religious institutions or even they resort to beg. You would not believe that in tribal areas, people are forced to eat wild plants. Those who are unemployed, they can also be food insecure. If some natural calamity happens like BENGAL FAMINE IN 1943(it killed thirty lac people in the Bengal province), flood in Bihar, tsunami in southern parts, earthquake in Gujarat, food shortage can arise and less supply and high demand hike the prices. it is also a case of food insecurity. 1.02 billion People in India are suffering from hunger and hence, malnutrition. India holds 2nd rank in the world of the number of children suffering from malnutrition. Those who have a meager income, and if inflation occurs, then they also have to make some adjustments in food. Or it may happen that sometimes, they eat and sometime don't. Food security will be helpful if enough food is available for all the persons, there is no barrier to access offood and all persons have the capacity to buy food of acceptable quality.

Kalighat Paintings as a medium of communication in Colonized Bengal province

Kalighat’s paintings originated in West Bengal, India in the 19th century, near Kalighat Kali Temple, in Calcutta, India, and and from being souvenir pieces taken by visitors to the Kali Temple, the paintings developed over a period of time as a distinct Indian form of painting and art. The Kalighat Paintings developed to depict a range of themes ranging from mythological characters to depictions of the social scene. The paintings served as a kind of mirror of the society in which they worked. Under the influence of an increasingly growing European society, they underwent a transformation. They were able to rapidly adapt the interests of then popular interest and reflect different contemporary themes., and to represent different contemporary themes. The charm of the Kalighat paintings lies in the fact that they captured the essence of everyday life and have inspired contemporary artists like the late Jamini Roy even to this day. Experts find the brushwork on these paintings to be precise, flawless, elegant and one of India’s smoothest art types.

Ecology and Imperium: State Formation in Early Colonial Bengal c. 1765–1800

This article looks at the process of state formation in Bengal in the second half of the eighteenth century when the English East India Company emerged as the paramount authority in the province. The article argues that compared with the previous regime of the Nazims who were content in exercising a loose sovereignty over the outlying regions of Bengal, the Company showed greater initiative in conquering and pacifying the remote areas of the province. In terms of its ecology, the province of Bengal could be divided into three distinct zones: the plains, the hills and the delta. The process of state formation varied in these three distinct eco-zones. While it was easy for the Company to establish its control over the Bengal plains, it became increasingly difficult for them to establish their power and authority in the hill forests (home to autonomous tribal communities who resented and resisted British interference) and in the deltaic tracts where the maze of rivers provided safe refuge and a means of escape to the Magh pirates and every other state fugitive. This article is an account of the Company’s struggles to establish its supremacy in Bengal, but it also looks at the resistance offered by autonomous tribal groups to retain and preserve their independence. Finally, this article attempts to link ecology with the process of state formation in early colonial Bengal.

Impact of optimal integration of renewable energy sources and electric vehicles in practical distribution feeder with uncertain load demand

Distributed energy resources (DERs) are a better option for fulfillment of load demand near the load centers. Optimal location and rating of DERs plays a vital role in the enhancement of distribution system performance in terms of power loss reduction, voltage profile enhancement, environmental friendliness, increasing reliability, and postponement of system upgrading. This paper addresses the Gbest-guided artificial bee colony (GABC) optimization technique for the optimal integration of renewable energy sources (RESs) and electric vehicles (EVs) in distribution feeder to improve the power loss reduction, voltage level, cost reduction, and emissions reduction under load demand uncertainty. In this work, mathematical models of RESs, that is, wind turbine generation system (WTGS) and photovoltaic generation system (PVGS), are employed to determine the generated output power. The foremost aim of this research work is simultaneous abatement of total active power loss, entire cost, and emissions generation; therefore a multiobjective-based fitness function is formed. Moreover, the impact of charging/discharging behavior of EVs on the distribution grid has also been considered in this study. The proposed methodology is applied on two test systems: (a) 28-bus practical rural distribution network located at Kakdwip zone in the province of West Bengal, India, and (b) standard 69-bus distribution feeders. Finally, from the achieved numerical outcomes, it is analyzed that, GABC algorithm generates better outcomes as compared to other optimization techniques. This indicates the viability and effectiveness of the proposed methodology.

<em>Muslim League</em> Leader Khwaja Nazim Uddin and 1937 Election Tragedy in the Bengal Province of British India

The paper focuses on the muslim political leaders’ activities, nature, ideology and legitimacy in the period of 1935 to 1937 and 1937 election in the Bengal province of British India. Khwaza Nazim Uddin and other Political Leader played significant roles in the socio-economic and political development of Bengal. However, Muslim Political leaders were competing with one another to obtain more power in Bengal politics. In particular, Khwaja Nazim Uddin was a popular leader in Bengal but defeated in the election in 1937. Thus, this paper explores Khwaja Nazim Uddin’s political career, ideology and the reasons of his defeat in 1937 election. To investigate, it utilizes historical and exploratory descriptive methods. Instrument used to collect data is review of relevant literature, books on autobiography, media reports and archival data. The archival data are historical records and British government document during the colonial rule in Bengal. The finding of the study suggests that the question of Muslim unity always a moving factor in Bengal politics in a situations of tense relations between Hindus and Muslims but Khwaja Nazim Uddin failed to remain united to fulfill the rights of Bengal people due to the lack of his ability in leadership.

A Review on the Decadal Irrigation System of Shali Water Reservoir

Irrigation is a prime factor for agriculture, fishing and afforestation in two water scant districts namely Bankura and Purulia of West Bengal province in India. To fulfill such purposes, Shali reservoir was erected on the Shali River near Bhairabpur village of Gangajalghati block at Bankura district in 1978. After the four decades of construction it was found that only a few studies were conducted by previous researchers on Shali reservoir. In these four decades many things like population, climate, soil type, reservoir life, hydro-meteorological parameters like rainfall pattern, evaporation rates etc., people’s behavior on water utilizations, river morphology -have been changed over periods. Therefore it is most needed to bring together all those previous researches for finding out the new need of any further detail research on Shali reservoir. This paper aims to coalesce all those researches in a succinct manner for the benefit of the people of Gangajalghati block in Bankura.

Property and Sovereignty: Creating, Destroying and Resurrecting Property Rights in British India (1600 - 1800)

This paper, the first in a series of three papers, constitutes the first systematic legal attempt since the late nineteenth century to describe the changing configuration of property rights of zamindars (landlords) and ryots or raiyats (peasants) relative to the English East India Company in colonial India over a period of two hundred years from 1600 to 1800. This period begins with the Company’s first arrival in India to the court of the Mughal Emperor Jehangir in 1600 as merely a trading company. It ends with the introduction of the Permanent Settlement in Bengal by Lord Cornwallis, the Governor General of Bengal in 1793, pursuant to the Company’s exercise of sovereign authority over the provinces of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa. As described in the paper, during this period of great political upheaval, scandal, and intrigue, as the East India Company gradually transitioned from a monopoly trading company to a conquering and then an administering power, Company officials, including the Governor General, and later the Supreme Council of Bengal, created, destroyed, and resurrected property rights of landlords and tenant cultivators. Following a series of experiments with land revenue administration and the lives of zamindars and raiyats, with the sole objective of maximising revenue for the East India Company, Lord Cornwallis introduced the Permanent Settlement of Land Revenue in 1793, which completely destroyed the rights of peasant cultivators in favour of zamindars, and wreaked great injustice and misery upon the people of Bengal. It would take nearly seventy years for British government to begin to reverse this injustice through tenancy protection legislation enacted in 1859, and this reversal in law would only be completed following land reforms introduced by provincial governments post India’s independence in 1947. These later developments will be the subject of the next two papers in this series.

Partition: An International History

In trying to assemble the structure through which bilateral relations between India and Pakistan could be conducted, policy makers drew heavily from European models of inter-state peace-making evolved in the inter-war decades. The aftermath of the break-up of large multinational empires along ethnic-majoritarian lines posed administrative questions that were, in many ways, also similar to the aftermath of the partition of the subcontinent along religious lines. In this article, I attempt to relate these developments with the signing of the Nehru–Liaquat Pact of 1950, between the governments of India and Pakistan. According to this Pact, both governments would now be accountable to one another for the protection of their minorities in the Bengal province. I argue that this approach to dealing with the question of minority populations after a partition, had been initially developed by the League of Nations, and that emulating these models were part of an attempt by India and Pakistan to borrow from, but also further refine models of European statehood for their own purposes after their partition. This article attempts to evaluate the extent to which these expectations were met in the making of a ‘minorities’ regime’ in South Asia.

Historical Geography of Forestry and Forest Culture in Sub-Himalayan West Bengal, 1757-2015

Re-examining a range of archival data and information regarding colonial forestry in the state of West Bengal, India, it has been found that the colonial period was the clear-cut turning point of the forest landscape in terms of environmental changes of the state. In West Bengal, the British colonial rulers were in a highly dominating position; and they had implemented one single model of forest management throughout the Indian subcontinent including the Bengal Presidency. The primary objective of the present study is to understand the changing nature of colonial forest landscape through plantation (Sal, Tea, and Cinchona) activities and the establishment of forest villages through Taungya process in the sub-Himalayan West Bengal from 1757 to 1947. In particular, this study aims to examine as to how the colonial plantation activities changed the forest landscape of this particular region. It also examines civil society movement based on forest resource rights and problems in the implementation of the Forest Right Act (2006) in the sub-Himalayan West Bengal till 2015, since independence. The colonial forest management authority was more interested in the plantation and cultivation of trees with high timber values compared to the natural forest. For this purpose, the saplings of Teak, Mahogany, Sisso were supplied to different parts of Bengal province to increase the timber productions. In 1886, for the first time in the Indian forest history, an area of about 15,5,399.29 sq.km was demarcated as Reserved Forest which included the whole western Dooars region located on the right bank of the river Teesta in the northern part of West Bengal. It was the starting point of 'scientific' forest management in the then Bengal Presidency or present West Bengal. The Taungya system of scientific forest management was first initiated in the Bengal Presidency in colonial India after colonial Burma (Myanmar). The system has changed the traditional cultivation practice within the forest land. Due to the Taungya system, 168 forest villages were established in the Himalayan foothills of Bengal. And since India’s independence in 1947, West Bengal has witnessed a number of civil society movements linked to the welfare of poor forest villagers demanding the forest resources rights, for example, the Jangal Mahal movement. The Forest Right Act (2007) has also created conflicts in different parts of the study area. In a nutshell, rapid exploitation of forest resources along with trading monopoly of forest management by the state Forest Department has done historical injustice to the people of sub-Himalayan West Bengal.

Value Co-Creation as a Dialectical Process: Study in Bangladesh and Indian Province of West Bengal

The process by which technological innovation is adopted and diffused within an industry persists as a key research interest in the existing literature. Furthermore, the innovation and diffusion of ICT (information and communications technology) in general and smartphones in particular are viewed as a useful resource to support and foster socio-economic wellbeing in developing countries. As such, sustainable design and development of smartphone industry in developing world and their contribution to socio-economic wellbeing has drawn significant research attention. In the current study, we explore and analyse various factors and their inter-relationships that initiate, support and disseminate technological innovation within the smartphone industry in Bangladesh and Indian province of West Bengal who share linguistic, historical and cultural ties. Drawing on the concept of co-creation of value we develop a dialectical perspective toward multi-stakeholder involvement in smartphone industry’s creation of value. Through in-depth interviews with senior government and private sector employees, industry experts, researchers, and small and medium enterprise owners, we conclude that the development of ancillary industries, contextually appropriate apps and innovation by small enterprises and inter-industry collaborations contribute to current and future innovation and sustainable development of smartphone industry.

Accountability, Democratisation and the Right to Information in India

ABSTRACTAccountability is a core democratic value. It envisages that citizens hold the powerful to account for omissions and commissions. Influenced by the global agenda for good governance, the Right to Information (RTI) Act in India was designed to build accountability through transparency. RTI is primarily a result of democratic politics. It emerged from intense grassroots activism – articulating poor and ordinary citizens’ discontent over corruption and other abuses of power. This study is based on six empirical cases of RTI usage in India’s West Bengal province. I argue that even though it is primarily designed to elicit accountability, RTI has emerged as a “seed right” because of its enabling, foundational and evolving dimensions push forward the process of democratisation. When operating individually, our respondents experienced negligible empowerment, but when the relatively powerless citizens organised collectively and were able to work through political institutions such as political parties and CSOs/NGOs, they could convincingly bargain with the powerholders, and elicit some cooperation, if not accountability.

Non-Performing Assets (NPAs) of Urban Co-operative Banks (UCBs) in Coimbatore District of Tamil Nadu: An Empirical Study

Co-operation is a special method of doing work jointly and suits the poor more than the rich. The rich, however, are not precluded from coming with its fold. All those who want to co-operate must, as a condition precedent, have a common need and to fulfill it, should agree to work selflessly. The origin of Indian Co-operative Credit Movement can be traced as far back as to 1844 as per the Report of Woodhead Famine Commission of Bengal Province. The said commission recommended that credit should be given at low rate of interest to the needy people. The Maclagan Committee’s recommendations (1914) have much to contribute in evolving the urban cooperative credit movement and such banks have started developing in all the states of the nation. Banking is a service industry. The main objective of the banking is to provide the financial support to its customers / members in co-operatives. The Urban Co-operative Banks (UCBs) occupy a significant place in the urban credit movement. The urban co-operative credit movement started in India with the chief object of catering to the banking and credit requirements of the urban middle class. The expanding NPAs in banking Industry are a major concern for banking industry. NPAs affect the performance of banks and growth in NPA which bring down the entire profitability of the sector. In backlash of this situation, the core objectives of this empirical study to bring the real status and conditions of Non-Preforming Assets in Urban Co-operative Banks in Coimbatore District of Tamil Nadu. Further, the study can explore the factual outlook and effects of the same on different heads such as assets classifications (Standard asset, sub-standard, Doubtful Assets 1(D1),D2 and D3 Assets, Loss Assets, Sector-wise analysis, Gross and Net NPAs etc., all about, the findings of this empirical study can give a better understanding about the sector to the people who are associated with academic, research scholars, banking professionals, policy makers and consultant are in particular and allied groups are in general.

Estimation of rainfall thresholds for landslide occurrences in Kalimpong, India

The Indian Himalayan locale has been essentially influenced by the increase in the frequency of landslide events. Out of 0.42 million km2 of India’s landmass prone to landslides, 42% falls in the North East Himalaya, especially Darjeeling and Sikkim. The harm due to landslides is massive, causing loss of life, property and agricultural land, thus initiating a dire need for formulating strategies to minimize its impact. There have been many attempts to establish rainfall thresholds on global, regional and local scales which compare analysis at various levels. Rainfall thresholds anticipate landslide occurrence and help in issuing a warning to civil authorities and the general population. However, empirical relations defining the relationship between landslide occurrences and rainfall events in Kalimpong remain unattended. In this paper, rainfall thresholds for landslide occurrence have been ascertained for Kalimpong area of Darjeeling Himalayas, in the Indian province of West Bengal. A threshold for landslide occurrences which describes intensity–duration threshold was estimated using the power law equation. The relationship for the study area is I = 3.52 D−0.41 (I is rainfall intensity (mm/h) and D is duration (h)). Results show that events with a rainfall intensity of 0.95 mm/h with a duration of 24 h have a high risk of slide initiation in this region. It also demonstrates that for 10- and 20-day antecedent rainfall, an intensity of 88.37 and 133.5 mm is required for landslide occurrence in this region. Such data would help in implementing early warning systems that focus on rainfall thresholds and forecasting rainfall measurements. Rainfall thresholds for landslide initiation in Kalimpong can be enhanced with more precipitation and landslide data as and when available.

‘A Fanatical Reverence for Gandhi’: Nationalism and Police Militancy in Bengal during the Non-cooperation Movement

ABSTRACTPolice militancy and strike actions featured prominently throughout the British Empire in the years after the First World War. While the demands of police for greater pay and better conditions of service were rooted in economic circumstances, police in diverse locales also forged tentative alliances with labour and trade union movements, sparking government fears of police ‘Bolshevism’. In the Indian province of Bengal, Indian police officers took a more radical stance and expressed widespread sympathy with the non-cooperation campaign of Mohandas Gandhi and its goal of swaraj or independence. Police discussed Gandhian teachings, threatened strike actions and formed the first association of non-European policemen in India, the Bengal Police Association. While ultimately the police remained loyal to the British Raj, the events in Bengal demonstrate the continuing links of colonial policemen to social, economic and political currents within the societies in which they operated, the force of nationalism in Bengal during the noncooperation movement and the strategies used by the colonial state to maintain police loyalty. An interrogation of Bengal police support for Gandhi not only complicates our portrait of the policemen who upheld the raj, but also sheds light on a significant moment in the ‘modernisation’ and professionalisation of colonial police forces and the tensions between their role in upholding colonial authority and their relationship to emerging labour and nationalist movements.

Study of the useful characteristics of the red pigments of Serratia marcescens strains isolated from the soil

Red pigment producing two bacterial strains have been isolated from soil in the area of Paschim Medinipur, West Bengal province of India. The biochemical and 16s rRNA analysis have confirmed that the strains are Serratia marcescens. The GenBank accession numbers of these strains are KU726553 and KU707218. Pigment production has been optimized using various inorganic salts such as Sodium chloride (NaCl), Magnesium chloride (MgCl2), Potassium chloride (KCl), Calcium chloride (CaCl2) in the media. MgCl2 has been shown to have best effect in pigment production. Pigment has been extracted from the bacteria by mixing with methanol followed by centrifugation and finally passed through HPLC. The pigments mixed with methanol or ethanol has been left in normal room temperature for several months but the colour of the pigments remains intact. Pigment was purified through HPLC and partially identified by UV-Vis spectrometry. The Rf values of the extracted pigments are 0.88 in TLC method. Pigments have shown to have very good antioxidant activity. Pigments have antibacterial activity against E. coli, K. pneumoniae. One of them has been applied as dye for cotton and plastic materials and its potentiality as dye has been found to be very high.

Legacy of the Bengal Renaissance in public library development in India

The 19th- and 20th-century Bengal Province in India was a nerve-centre with hosts of socio-cultural and religious reform movements due to its early association with secular liberal western education. Modern institutions of higher learning, established by colonial rulers, European missionaries and contemporary social reformers, led to the awakening of Bengali educated communities. This Bengal Renaissance had contributed towards strengthening production of Bengali literature and the development of the Bengali language. Socially active reformers established community libraries as community learning space in their respective localities. Many century-old libraries are still in existence. These community libraries extended their access to the youth, students, industrial workers and lifelong learners. With this background, this paper aims at in-depth analysis of the legacy of the Bengal Renaissance in the development of public libraries in India during colonial British rule. This paper also looks into the role of the individual reformist genres in the design and delivery of effective public library services and library outreach services in the province.

The Origins of Indirect Rule in India: Hyderabad and the British Imperial Order

The main problem with the orthodox account of modern world politics is that it describes only one of these patterns of international order: the one that was dedicated to the pursuit of peaceful coexistence between equal and mutually independent sovereigns, which developed within the Westphalian system and the European society of states....Orthodox theorists have paid far too little attention to the other pattern of international order, which evolved during roughly the same period of time, but beyond rather than within Europe; not through relations between Europeans, but through relations between Europeans and non-Europeans. Instead of being based on a states-system, this pattern of order was based on colonial and imperial systems, and its characteristic practice was not the reciprocal recognition of sovereign independence between states, but rather the division of sovereignty across territorial borders and the enforcement of individuals' rights to their persons and property. The American Revolution and the “revolution” in Bengal posed new political questions for domestic British politics and inaugurated a new era for the British empire. As the British committed themselves to the administration of a vast population of non-Europeans in the Indian province of Bengal, and estimations of financial windfalls were presented to stockholders and politicians, the center of the British Empire came slowly to shift toward the East. The evolution of a system of indirect rule in India as it related to larger political questions being posed in Britain, partly because of its protracted and diverse nature, has not received the same attention. Attention to Indian states, in the scholarship on eighteenth century South Asia, has closely followed the expanding colonial frontier, focusing on those states that most engaged British military attention: Bengal, Mysore, and the Marathas. And yet, the eighteenth century should also command our attention as a crucial moment of transition from an earlier Indian Ocean world trading system, in which European powers inserted themselves as one sovereign authority among many, to that of being supreme political authorities of territories that they did not govern directly. India's native states, or “country powers,” as the British referred to them in the eighteenth century, underwrote the expansion of the East India Company in the East. The tribute paid by these states became an important financial resource at the company's disposal, as it attempted to balance its books in the late eighteenth century. Additionally, the troops maintained to protect these states were significant in Britain's late eighteenth century military calculations. These states, in other words, were absolutely central to the forging of the British imperial order, and generative of the very practices that came to characterize colonial expansion and governance.

Stability analysis of elite chickpea genotypes tested under rice fallow condition in West Bengal

Ten elite chickpea genotypes with two check varieties were grown in rice fallow condition at three diverse environments of winter season during 2011 to 2014 in West Bengal province to check their stability. The pooled analysis of variance over environments displayed highly significant differences between genotypes, environments and genotype x environment interaction demonstrating the presence of considerable variations among genotypes as well as diversity of environments in rice fallow condition. Among 10 genotypes, the maximum mean seed yield over the environments was recorded in GCP-105 (1180.78 g) and the highest mean seed yield producing environment was during 2013–14 (1152.72 g). The genotypes GCP-105, JG-11 and PUSA-547 were found to be high yielding, most adaptable and less susceptible to the changes in the environment.

Pharmacological and Ethnomedicinal Overview of Heritiera fomes: Future Prospects.

Mangrove plants are specialized woody plants growing in the swamps of tidal-coastal areas and river deltas of tropical and subtropical parts of the world. They have been utilized for medicinal and other purposes by the coastal people over the years. Heritiera fomes Buch. Ham. (family: Sterculiaceae) commonly known as Sundari (Bengali) is a preeminent mangrove plant occurring in the Sundarbans forest located in the southern part of Bangladesh and adjoining West Bengal province of India. The plant has applications in traditional folk medicine as evidenced by its extensive use for treating diabetes, hepatic disorders, gastrointestinal disorders, goiter, and skin diseases by the local people and traditional health practitioners. A number of investigations indicated that the plant possesses significant antioxidant, antinociceptive, antihyperglycemic, antimicrobial, and anticancer activities. Phytochemical analyses have revealed the presence of important chemical constituents like saponins, alkaloids, glycosides, tannins, steroids, flavonoids, gums, phytosterols, and reducing sugars. The present study is aimed at compiling information on phytochemical, biological, pharmacological, and ethnobotanical properties of this important medicinal plant, with a view to critically assess the legitimacy of the use of this plant in the aforementioned disorders as well as providing directions for further research.