Department of Liberal Arts

Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad (IITH) is a premier institute of science and technology established in 2008. IITH has been consistently ranked in the&nbsp;<a href="https://iith.ac.in/reports/" rel="noopener noreferrer">top 10 institutes</a>&nbsp;in India for Engineering&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nirfindia.org/2021/EngineeringRanking.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">according to NIRF</a>&nbsp;making it one of the most coveted schools for science and technology in the country.

IITH offers&nbsp;<a href="https://iith.ac.in/academics/under-graduate/">undergraduate programs</a>&nbsp;in all the classical engineering disciplines, applied sciences, design, as well as several modern interdisciplinary areas. Students are given a flexibility to explore a broad set of areas, and potentially pursue a minor or double major in a discipline that is not their own. Students who wish to seek a deeper understanding of their own discipline are strongly encouraged to get involved in cutting-edge research with the help of a faculty to mentor them, and earn an Honors in their own field.

The very foundation of IIT Hyderabad is based on&nbsp;<a href="https://iith.ac.in/research/">research and innovation</a>. The vibrant research culture is evident from the number of patents and publications that IITH produces consistently every year. IITH offers&nbsp;<a href="https://iith.ac.in/academics/programmes-offered/">graduate programs</a>&nbsp;at both a masters, and a doctoral level, in several diverse areas. There are separate programs for technology, design, science, and liberal arts. The&nbsp;<a href="https://iith.ac.in/academics/post-graduate/">MTech program</a>&nbsp;is offered in various modes and durations to cater to the ever-growing need of postgraduate level professionals in the country.

IITH encourages and supports&nbsp;<a href="https://iic-iith.netlify.app/index.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">innovation and entrepreneurship</a>&nbsp;at every stage. The minor program in entrepreneurship is open to all students of IITH, and many of the courses are offered by industrialists who are entrepreneurs themselves. There are various&nbsp;<a href="https://iith.ac.in/research/centres-incubators/">innovation centers and incubators</a>&nbsp;that promote entrepreneurship and help mentor young innovators. IITH has been very successful in building tie-ups with leading academic institutions around the globe.

IITH enjoys a very special relationship with Japanese universities and industries that goes beyond academic and research collaborations. In fact, some of the iconic buildings in IITH campus will carry the signature of Japanese architecture.

IITH creates a unique holistic ecosystem for education that offers interactive learning, a very flexible academic structure, cutting-edge research, strong industry collaboration, and entrepreneurship. This is an environment which enables students and faculty to translate their dreams into realities.

IIT Hyderabad

In thinking about care, much research has focused on kin relations, family-related care, and formal (medical) or informal care providers. Yet, how do we understand care responsibilities in contexts where kin care is absent despite being a desired social norm, and people turn to other community sources or practices? This paper draws on ethnographic research in a Sufi religious shrine in western India well-known for providing succor to those in distress, including those with mental illness. Interviews were conducted with pilgrims who had left homes due to strained relationships with kin members. For many of them, the shrine emerged as a sanctuary, even while not entirely a safe one, allowing women to live alone. While both academic research on mental health institutions and state responses have delved into the abandoned or ‘dumped woman’ in long-stay institutions or care homes, this paper argues that ‘abandonment’ is not a straightforward condition, but rather a dynamic discourse that works in different ways. For women bereft of kinship ties, narratives of being abandoned by kin became ways of justifying long (and sometimes permanent) residence in religious shrines, which were able to absorb such ‘abandoned’ pilgrims who had nowhere else to go, even if half-heartedly so. Importantly, these alternative forms of living made possible by shrines reflect women’s agency, enabling women to live alone even while belonging to a community. In a context with limited social security options for women in precarious family situations, these care arrangements become significant, even if they are informal and ambivalent forms of care. Keywords: kinship; abandonment; agency; care; religious healing. © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Anthropology and Medicine

‘I do not feel well here as such. But it has become my home’: abandonment and care in healing shrines

We revisit the twin deficits hypothesis (budget and trade deficits) for the United States during 1791–2019, using the system-equation ADL test for threshold cointegration proposed by Li (2017). This model can demonstrate the existence of both asymmetric adjustment and asymmetric role in the relationship between trade and budget deficits. Our empirical evidence suggests a nonlinear long-run relationship between the two variables, thus finding the presence of the twin deficits hypothesis. Further, we find time–varying cointegration between the two, and an asymmetric adjustment process. Budget deficits play a vital adjustment role at low regimes (when error-correction terms are below the threshold of 1.11), and trade deficits play an important adjustment role at higher regimes (when error-correction terms are above the threshold of 1.11). © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

World University root node

Journal of International Trade and Economic Development

Revisiting the twin deficits hypothesis in the United States: Further evidence based on system-equation ADL test for threshold cointegration

With minimal access to legal protections, support, and exploitative conditions, Malayali women domestic workers in the Gulf struggle to forge meaningful connections and a sense of home in the UAE. This study aims to understand the experiences and perspectives of Malayali women, with a specific focus on the ways in which their idea of home and belonging are shaped by factors such as identity, diaspora, gender, and motherhood. The work also intends to comprehend how a sense of belonging helps the women to navigate through the sense of grief, guilt, and shame. Through their narratives, the article exposes how the migration of Malayali women domestic workers entail losing belonging, occupying liminal spaces, and relinquishing home. © 2023 Asian Center for Women's Studies, Ewha Womans University.

Asian Journal of Women's Studies

Being a Khaddama: Narratives of home, belonging and identity for women domestic workers in the Gulf

This study reassesses the dynamic relationship between stock, oil, foreign exchange markets, and COVID-19-induced uncertainty. For estimation, we utilize the monthly data from January 2020 to December 2021 and utilize panel vector autoregression econometric techniques in emerging market economies. The empirical findings reveal that heightened uncertainty during the pandemic had a negative impact on stock and oil, and foreign exchange markets. Findings further suggest that uncertainty during the pandemic slanted the relationship between oil and stock and foreign exchange markets due to the precautionary approach followed by economic agents. • COVID-19 uncertainty negatively impacted the oil, stock, and foreign exchange markets. • Uncertainty had a non-linear impact on stock and oil prices. • During the initial period of COVID-19, uncertainty distorted the relationship between oil, stock and exchange markets. © 2022

MethodsX

Reassessing the dynamics between exchange, oil, stock markets and uncertainty during COVID-19 in emerging market economies

This paper empirically estimates Fiji's bilateral equilibrium real exchange rate with two of its key trading partners, the US and Australia. Applying the Behavioural Equilibrium Exchange Rate (BEER) approach, we estimate the equilibrium exchange rate by considering the productivity differential, real interest rate differential, net foreign assets, money supply, and terms of trade. Using monthly data from March 2011 to September 2022 and a system approach to cointegration, a strong relationship between the real exchange rate and its fundamentals is found, but importance of factors differed by trading partner. Our findings show that the Fijian Dollar has been undervalued against both US Dollar and Australian Dollar in recent years, but to varying degrees. Our analysis underlines the importance of assessing bilateral exchange rate misalignments in basket pegs when devising exchange rate policy. © 2023 Economic Society of Australia, Queensland

Economic Analysis and Policy

Assessment of Fiji's exchange rate

This study examines the impacts of India’s unconventional monetary policy on the exchange rate, stock market, and bond market during the COVID-19 crisis. The Reserve Bank of India announced an asset purchase programs (APPs) four times during the pandemic. Using daily data from January 1, 2019, to August 13, 2021, and applying the EGARCH methodology, this study finds that the APPs effectively reduced the yield rate in the bond market and its volatility. However, the first two announcements did not impact the financial market significantly. In contrast, the third and fourth announcements helped to compress the yield rate and its volatility. Further, the AAPs also helped to restrain the exchange rate depreciation and its volatility. Overall findings suggest that APPs had a desired impact on the targeted variables. © 2022 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Emerging Markets Finance and Trade

How Do the Financial Markets Respond to India’s Asset Purchase Program? Evidence from the COVID-19 Crisis

Natural language meaning has properties of both cognitive representations and formal/mathematical structures. But it is not clear how they actually relate to one another. The central aim of this article is to show that properties of cognitive representations and formal/mathematical structures of natural language meaning, albeit apparently divergent, can be united, as far as the basic properties of semantic structures are concerned. Thus, this article will formulate the form of unified representations for semantic structures. With this goal, this article takes into account standard formal-semantic representations and also Discourse Representation Theory (DRT) representations on the one hand and semantic representations in different versions of Conceptual/Cognitive Semantics (Jackendoff's, Langacker's and Talmy's approaches to Conceptual/Cognitive Semantics) and representations of Mental Spaces (Fauconnier's approach) on the other hand. The rationale behind the selection of these approaches is that the representations of semantic structures under these approaches are all amenable to unification. It must be emphasized that showing that the representations of semantic structures under these approaches can be unified does not simply amount to unifying these theories/approaches in toto. Rather, it is to demonstrate that cognitive representations and formal/mathematical structures can be shown to be inter-translatable for at least some accounts of linguistic meaning. © 2023 the author(s), published by De Gruyter.

Fulltext

Open Linguistics

Towards a unified representation of linguistic meaning

The state of Uttarakhand in India is referred to as dev bhūmi (Land of the Gods) as it is home to several devī-devtās (local deities), sages, and ṛṣis whose presence renders the geography of this land a potent one. The soundscape of temples in Uttarakhand includes bells, chants, mantras, and ḍhol-damauñ, the latter referring to two rhythmic instruments which are used to facilitate divine possession. Kandara village is situated in Uttarakhand’s Rudraprayag district where there is a temple of a goddess named Rājrājeshwarī Devī who is said to be a form of goddess Durgā. During the times of Navrātri, the nine forms of goddess Durgā are worshiped. It is also one of the times where various religious practices in conjunction with worship take place in the Garhwal Himalayan region. As a result, an older idol of the devī was replaced by a newer one during this time in the Rājrājeshwarī Devī temple of Kandara village. Like in the case of the Rājrājeshwarī Devī, through her naur (representative/ medium), the Rājrājeshwarī Devī engages with her devotees and ‘remembers’ their problems and conflicts which she attempts to resolve if asked. Through these transactions, a strong intimate bond at the level of everyday living is formed with a deity. This photo essay aims to provide a closer peek into the realm of lived practices and traditions from the Central Himalayas and to document such experiences which often lie in the zone of orality. The worship of the Rājrājeshwarī Devī holds not only a cathartic value but a protective function which she fulfills by ensuring good health and prosperity for the entire village. © 2023 Macalester College. All rights reserved.

Himalaya

Worship in Transition: An Encounter with the Rājrājeshwarī Devī of the Garhwal Himalaya

Kunwarikā Devī is one of the forms of Ādi Śaktī (primordial goddess) and is represented as a kanyā (unmarried little girl). She is worshiped both as a child and as a mother goddess in the Garhwal Himalaya. In 2019, there was a significant worship event of the goddess after a gap of 92 years (the previous worship had occurred in 1927). The Devī traveled to different villages to bless devotees and keep them safe. The Kunwarikā Devī worship practice can help illuminate the relationship between regional attachment and divinity, as Uttarakhand is referred to as the dev bhūmi, namely “land of the Gods.” The Kunwarikā Devī worship is located at the intersections of culture and society. The paper elucidates how the history of the Devī, her worship, story, and regional attachment are all connected. It argues that such journeys play a central role in integrating the Garhwali community but do not remove the organizational tensions that mark the Kunwarikā Devī procession. Finally, through detailed descriptions of the preparation and conduct of the worship, we highlight the organizational challenges involved in executing a ritual event on this scale. © 2023 Macalester College. All rights reserved.

The Divine as a Child and the Mother Goddess: On the History and Practice of Kunwarikā Devī Worship in the Garhwal Himalaya

Vulnerability is a pivotal concept for understanding transnational commercial surrogacy and the ethics of reproductive travel. While implicitly recognizing vulnerability as important, existing scholarship falls short of understanding the dynamism of vulnerability. Placing our empirical analysis in conjunction with the rich theoretical literature on this concept, we explore vulnerability in surrogacy arrangements in India as a “mode of openness,” defined by its multilayeredness and context specificity. We focus on two retellings of vulnerability. In the first narrative, we analyse the journey of an intended parent who becomes an agent, while in the second narrative, we focus on the trajectory of a surrogate and egg donor becoming an agent. In both narratives, the layers of vulnerability across different interconnected circuits of reproduction—of intended parent, agent, and surrogate—are explicated. Our analysis illustrates the complex and conflicting meanings of vulnerability and illustrates vulnerability as an instigator of agency and resistance; how it can propel upward social mobility and animate attempts to transform an unjust system, but also how such individual agency and empowerment may serve to uphold exploitative relationships. © The Author(s) 2023.