Given the rapid growth and emerging trend of e-commerce have changed consumer preferences to buy online, this study analyzes the current Indian legal framework that protects online consumers’ interests. A thorough analysis of the two newly enacted laws, i.e., the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 and Consumer Protection Rules, 2020 and literature review support analysis of 290 online consumers answering the research questions and achieving research objectives. The significant findings are that a secure and reliable system is essential for e-business firms (...) to work successfully; cash on delivery is the priority option for online shopping; website information and effective customer care services build a customer's trust. The new regulations are arguably strong enough to protect and safeguard online consumers' rights and boost India’s e-commerce growth. Besides factors such as security, privacy, warranty, customer service, and website information, laws governing consumer rights protection in e-commerce influence customers’ trust. Growing e-commerce looks promising with a robust legal framework and consumer protection measures. The findings contribute to the body of knowledge on e-commerce and consumer rights protection by elucidating the key factors that affect customer trust and loyalty and offering an informative perspective on e-consumer protection in the Indian context with broader implications. (shrink)

The issue of ‘mandatory publications’ has generated serious flak about its usefulness among the various stakeholders. A lot of debate centers around the question of ‘lack of will’ or ‘lack of skill’ as a reason for the diminishing research interests among the medical faculty in India. In our view, it is the lack of will to publish good quality research which is to be blamed rather than the lack of skill to do good quality research.

A major reason for the emergence of naturalism in philosophy of science in recent years is the rejection of the idea of a priori principles to which science must conform. A naturalistic attitude also underlies the new developments in sociology of science. Traditional sociologists of science believed that the cognitive content of science was beyond their rightful scope. The new sociologists challenge this premise, arguing for the legitimacy of a sociological study of scientific knowledge. They offer an alternative approach to (...) traditional epistemological issues. This has resulted in a debate between philosophers and sociologists. The purpose of this dissertation is two-fold. The first is to examine the issues underlying the debate between naturalist philosophers of science and sociologists of scientific knowledge. The second is to understand the relationship between the two disciplines. ;The second chapter critically examines Laudan's rationalist account of science. He rejects the traditionalist rationalism and the relativism of Kuhn and attempts to establish a position which can avoid the problems that beset these viewpoints. This middle position, I argue, is not viable. The third chapter is concerned with the central claims made by the Edinburgh strong programmers. I discuss and criticize the import of their relativist-symmetrical approach and also their instrumentalism. My argument is that the interest explanation is inadequate because it ignores constraints offered by the natural world. The fourth chapter is a discussion of the issues underlying the debate between naturalist philosophers and sociologists of knowledge. I examine the treatment accorded by both sides to nature, human nature and society in their accounts of science and criticize Giere's normative naturalism. The fifth chapter deals with relativist, constructivist and discourse-analytic trends in the sociology of knowledge. I criticize their anti-realist stance. The sixth chapter is a critical examination of Latour's actor-network model of science and technology which aims to go beyond the rationalist and relativist views discussed earlier. Finally, I examine the relation between philosophy and sociology of science and conclude that fundamental differences remain between them, despite efforts by some philosophers to reconcile these differences. (shrink)

This paper examines John Rawls' renowned theory of justice, which outlines two principles of justice and their respective significance. It explores how Rawls' notion of equality aligns with the philosophical concept of equity, emphasizing that his call for citizen equality inherently incorporates fairness. Additionally, the paper discusses the application of Rawls' "Difference Principle" to India's reservation policy. Rawls' principles, which aim to support the worst-off in society, are reflected in India's system of reservations for marginalized groups, including backward classes and (...) differently-abled individuals, to promote equitable opportunities. However, the paper cautions that excessive reservations could limit opportunities for more privileged groups. Ultimately, it is argued that Rawls' concept of social justice has contributed to the promotion of social justice in India. (shrink)

In this study, we develop a new theoretical framework of Coping Intelligence which examines relationships between coping strategies and organizational commitment among boundary spanning employees. We collected data from 452 boundary spanning salespeople using multiple sources. Results demonstrate that a formative model of Coping Intelligence is superior to a reflective model and that problem-focused coping contributes to CI which, in turn, is related to affective and normative commitment. Further, our more parsimonious formative model illustrates that positive problem-focused coping and negative (...) emotion-focused coping contribute to both affective and normative commitment. After controlling for gender and salespeople’s commission in separate analyses, results remain significant. We provide additional insights: Females are likely to use emotion-focused coping than males, but gender is not related to organizational commitment. Salespeople’s commission is positively related to both affective and normative commitment but unrelated to coping strategies. We shed new lights on boundary spanning employees’ Coping Intelligence and organizational commitment and offer theoretical, empirical, and practical implications to coping strategies and business ethics. (shrink)

One of the important aspects of educational philosophy is that it helps to construct a comprehensive system of education. During different periods, India has witnessed various stages of development. New priorities have emerged in education with the influences of monastic scholastic, realistic, idealistic and pragmatic trends. While education institutions have evolved, there remain several gaps between the philosophical ideals proposed by educational institutions and their everyday functioning. The paper brings forth the urgent need to bridge the gaps in order to (...) attain a comprehensive philosophy of education, in principle and in action. The authors posit that the Indian philosophy of education, normatively speaking, could extend the culture and tradition of the philosophical positions of Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Sri Aurobindo and Swami Vivekananda. Such an approach could help in developing an integrated approach of teachers towards education and assist in strengthening their role in shaping the inner potential of a learner in a constructive manner. (shrink)

This research paper explores the implications of emotional intelligence and the Big Five personality model on virtual team effectiveness. It illustrates how emotional intelligence and Big Five personality traits help team members better understand interpersonal relationships and develop constructive virtual teams. The widespread use of virtual team meetings for collaborative work over in-person interaction with diverse personalities creates discord and trust among team members, limiting overall productivity. A quantitative analysis approach is used, with hypotheses tested and a series of multiple (...) linear regression analyses performed on data collected from relevant industries using convenient sampling. The findings show that the Big Five personality affects the virtual team's trust and collaboration parameters. However, the relationship between personality traits and team effectiveness is mediated by emotional intelligence. Also, it is explored that having control over emotional intelligence or developing emotional intelligence would improve team performance while managing and working with a diverse group of people. (shrink)

In The Dreaming Mind: Understanding Consciousness during Sleep, Melanie G. Rosen embarks on an ambitious exploration of dreams, arguing that they are far more complex and varied than many tradition...

Regional food is grounded in local practices and heritage. With industrialization and post-green revolution threat to food produced within specific region and the associated knowledge has become imminent. Scholars have analyzed the revival of regional foods in different parts of the world. However, there have been limited studies focusing on the revival of regional food from the perspective of food as commons. The paper fills this gap by analyzing the efforts of Morarka-GDC Foundation along with farmers collective in Nawalgarh, India. (...) Employing the framework of commons, we examine how the foundation along with the collective is reviving Shekhawati region’s foods. We used primary and secondary sources to capture the social activities undertaken to sustain the commons. It was found that adopting organic agricultural practices helped in reviving the regional foods by creating and using stock of local resources. Further, social dilemma associated with culinary commons was avoided by creating networks between producers and consumers through _Shekhawati_ festival and Morarka Organics. These practices have resulted in rebuilding the local food system, local tourism, and intergenerational transmission strengthening the local gastronomic identity. However, linking regional food with gastronomic tourism can threaten the local gastronomic culture and survival of authentic regional food. We also find that for a sustained management of the regional foods, scaling-up plays an essential role which has further limitations. (shrink)

We present a computational model of multiple-object tracking that makes trial-level predictions about the allocation of visual attention and the effect of this allocation on observers' ability to track multiple objects simultaneously. This model follows the intuition that increased attention to a location increases the spatial resolution of its internal representation. Using a combination of empirical and computational experiments, we demonstrate the existence of a tight coupling between cognitive and perceptual resources in this task: Low-level tracking of objects generates bottom-up (...) predictions of error likelihood, and high-level attention allocation selectively reduces error probabilities in attended locations while increasing it at non-attended locations. Whereas earlier models of multiple-object tracking have predicted the big picture relationship between stimulus complexity and response accuracy, our approach makes accurate predictions of both the macro-scale effect of target number and velocity on tracking difficulty and micro-scale variations in difficulty across individual trials and targets arising from the idiosyncratic within-trial interactions of targets and distractors. (shrink)

The dissociation between statistical prediction and scientific explanation advanced by Bowers et al. for studies of vision using deep neural networks is also observed in several other domains of behavior research, and is in fact unavoidable when fitting large models such as deep nets and other supervised learners, with weak theoretical commitments, to restricted samples of highly stochastic behavioral phenomena.

Management research has attracted a plethora of research intending to optimize performance within and outside firms. We have seen plenty of progress in various dimensions; however, we also notice domains where the struggle still exists. This work tries to develop a theory of a hypothetical firm that goes beyond the current theories and takes inspiration from the texts of the Bhagavad Gita. We look at the theory of a hypothetical firm through the lens of the Bhagavad Gita. Precisely, this work (...) theorizes about the three aspects of a firm: leadership, governance and motivation. Governance provides a structure to business management; leaderships play a pivotal role in converting inputs to desired outputs; and motivation acts as a catalyst in any process that builds and runs the firm. Moreover, this work integrates the understanding of certain shlokas of the Bhagavad Gita for theorizing. (shrink)

This study attempts to compare ‘the ethical value positioning’ of students of Business and Management studies from India and Germany. A complete enumerative survey was conducted for management students using the Ethical Positioning Questionnaire of Forsyth. There were 134 respondents from India and 57 from Germany. The objective was to confer the differences in ethical positioning of students of two economically and culturally diverse nations. By the end of the research, it was constituted that both German and Indian students demonstrate (...) a high degree of Idealism and Relativism and can be qualified as situationists. Exploratory analysis of the responses resulted in extraction of four factors : Non-Violence, Individualism, Non-Consequential, and Situational value. Within the analysis, Indian students displayed a higher preference for Individualism compared to their German counterparts. This study contributes to the literature in cross-cultural ethical value positioning of young managers. This study also opens a window for future research in the factors such as educational qualification, closed social groupings, and background of the students. (shrink)

While COVID-19 has taken a toll on many professions and livelihood of all walks of lives, technology has amplified its intrusion to ease the necessities. Innovative technology, therefore, has improved the glitches and provided the software to adhere to these new normal. However, individuals' awareness and attitude toward the advancements of these technological trends need to be addressed. Although the government has taken measures to prevent and curb the growing cases for COVID-19 with the help of technology, the support from (...) the individuals would depend mostly on their level of awareness and the attitude toward those measures. The present qualitative study explored the techno trend awareness, perception and attitudes of techno experts and technical professionals toward social connectedness and mitigating factors of COVID-19. Besides, it also explained individuals' shift toward virtual interaction to maintain social connections during the pandemic. The thematic analysis generated four prominent themes. Social Connectedness, emphasized on the emotional connections that created a positive feeling of belongingness. Technological Advancement provided three sub-themes highlighting perception, techno trend awareness and desirable attitudes toward the mitigation of COVID-19. The categories under Treatment and Preventive Measures indicated the enhanced self-care of individuals and also the tendencies to minimize the spread of diseases. The emergence of the theme Inclination toward Indigenous Knowledge, which is an important finding, indicated the techno-experts inclination toward the indigenous knowledge amid vague scientific shreds of evidence. (shrink)

Meditation refers to a family of self-regulation practices that focuses on training attention and awareness to foster psycho-emotional well-being and to develop specific capacities such as calmness, clarity, and concentration. We report a prospective convenience-controlled study in which we analyzed the effect of two components of Preksha Dhyāna – buzzing bee sound meditation and color meditation on healthy college students. Mahapran and leśya dhyāna are two Preksha Dhyāna practices that are based on sound and green color, respectively. The study population (...) represents a suitable target as college students experience different stress factors during the school year. This study measures the individual and combined effects of two techniques, on short-term memory, attention, and affect, in novice meditators. We used a battery of cognitive, performance, and compared results with baseline and control values. We found improved cognition, especially attention, short-term memory, and affect in terms of positivity and reduced negativity. Overall, the two techniques produced variable benefits and subjects showed improved scores over baseline for short-term memory, cognitive function, and overall wellbeing. Further studies are required to understand underlying mechanisms for the observed differences between the two techniques and to elucidate mechanisms underlying the more pronounced and global benefits observed with the combined techniques. These results underscore a need to examine individual components of meditation practices in order to individualize treatment approaches for attention disorders in young adults.Clinical Trail Registration:ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT03779269. (shrink)

In the annals of Indian modernity, narratives of tricksters and counterfeiters have a long, popular, and cautionary history. The topographies of deception outlined by colonial and post-colonial police reports established both its history as an aspect of modern industrial life as well as the city as the ‘scene of the crime’. This article explores the meanings that attach to certain contemporary acts of deceiving and faking, and the ways in which they are both produced by being in the city as (...) well as producing certain kinds of relationships. The article focuses on the residents of a Delhi slum and their various acts of producing fake identity cards and a variety of other documents. It offers a discussion about simulation and dissimulation, feigning and duplicity, and passing and pretending as significant contexts for gaining security of livelihood and residence in the city as well as constituting specific senses of community. Faking and counterfeiting, the article suggests, are arenas where the state both constitutes itself and contributes to the making of imagined non-state sensibilities of community. (shrink)

This is a short, modern, and motivated introduction to mathematical logic for upper undergraduate and beginning graduate students in mathematics and computer science. Any mathematician who is interested in getting acquainted with logic and would like to learn Gödel’s incompleteness theorems should find this book particularly useful. The treatment is thoroughly mathematical and prepares students to branch out in several areas of mathematics related to foundations and computability, such as logic, axiomatic set theory, model theory, recursion theory, and computability. In (...) this new edition, many small and large changes have been made throughout the text. The main purpose of this new edition is to provide a healthy first introduction to model theory, which is a very important branch of logic. Topics in the new chapter include ultraproduct of models, elimination of quantifiers, types, applications of types to model theory, and applications to algebra, number theory and geometry. Some proofs, such as the proof of the very important completeness theorem, have been completely rewritten in a more clear and concise manner. The new edition also introduces new topics, such as the notion of elementary class of structures, elementary diagrams, partial elementary maps, homogeneous structures, definability, and many more. (shrink)

This paper is going to be a small study in the arena of comparative philosophy of the east and west. This study will show that ancient philosophies of India are still relevant in the modern world, and the modern philosophies in the western world is not a fruit of frustration, but both of them are two chief currents of thebrilliancy of human mind according to the development of human being and their need. Advaita Vedanta finds its extreme in nonduality, or (...) non-existence of brahman, which is the negation of all materialistic subjects\ topics \things in this world, or basically it denies the complete existence of the present world. On the other hand, Post Modernism finds its goal in decentralization of any object\theory in this world. Therefore, we can say that the both the systems have almost same conclusion regarding the non-existence or decentralization, but there is a radical difference in their dates. Advaita Vedanta and Post Modernism have also similarity in their methods to find their conclusions: “netineti” is a prime tool for Advaita Vedanta to prove the non-existence of brahman, and Post Modernism follows the “logic of Difference” to decentralize any existence in this world. This study will explore the differences and similarities of both of the systems, and will try to present a common conclusion, which should be acceptable for both of the systems. (shrink)

In this paper a new technique of dual image watermarking is proposed for protection of ownership rights which utilizes salient properties of homomorphic transform (HT), discrete wavelet transform (DWT), singular value decomposition (SVD) and Arnold transform (AT). In embedding algorithm host image is splitted into reflectance and illumination components using HT, DWT is further applied to the reflectance component resulting in frequency subbands (HL and LH) which are transformed by SVD. Two image watermarks are selected for embedding process whereas security (...) of proposed algorithm is strengthen by performing scrambling of second watermark through AT. Both watermarks are transformed with DWT and SVD. Singular values (SVs) of both transformed watermark are embedded into SVs of host image. Simulation results clearly signifies for high robustness and imperceptibility of proposed algorithm as it is examined under various attacks. Superiority of proposed technique is illustrated by comparing it with other reported methods. (shrink)

... Achievement motivation in Gita 99-125 characteristics of achievement- oriented individual 100-103 its significance for Indian management 108-109 Aquinas ...

Papers presented at the National Seminar on "Dharma, Virtue and Morality : the Indian Ideal of Human Perfection, held at Kanpur in 2005.

On the conception of God in the philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore, 1861-1941.

This volume brings together essays that discuss and contextualise Gandhi's ideas on pluralism, religious identity, non-violence, satyagraha, and modernity. It interrogates the epistemic foundations of Gandhian thinking and weltanschauung, identifies diverse strands within his arguments, and gives it new meaning in contemporary society. This book focuses on Gandhi's engagements with religious, political, and social conflicts; his reflections on faith and modernity; and his argumentative dialogues with Mohammad Ali Jinnah and B. R. Ambedkar. It provides critical insights into Gandhi's philosophy and (...) suggests ways of engaging with his ethical and moral ideas in contemporary intellectual and political discourse. Comparing and contrasting Gandhian thought and strategies with contemporary issues and conceptions of religious freedom, conflict resolution, and liberalism, the volume reformulates and reconstitutes his intellectual and political legacy. This book points to new and possible future directions of research on Gandhian concepts and will be useful for scholars in the fields of political science, Gandhian studies, sociology, and philosophy. (shrink)