The World Psychiatry Exchange Program offers opportunities overseas for early career psychiatrists (ECPs), fostering immersion in clinical and cultural contexts. In this article, we present the experiences of two Tunisian ECPs in India. Activities included observing interviews, and attending courses and webinars. Challenges and opportunities in perinatal psychiatry and in child psychiatry were observed, emphasising cross-cultural nuances. Language barriers were overcome through translation. Notably, collaboration and proximity between departments countered mental illness stigma among medical professionals. This exchange underscores the importance of cultural awareness, collaboration and contextual adaptation in psychiatry. Lessons from this cross-cultural experience offer insights for enhanced care and research in diverse settings. This exchange also allowed for a rich scientific and cultural experience and brought to light many commonalities between India and Tunisia.

This article contributes to disciplinary histories of International Relations (IR) by revealing a little-known history: how a Nazi diplomat, Curt Max Prüfer, occupied the first chair in IR in India. While the paper documents how Prüfer, a discredited diplomat, landed in Delhi through his connections with peripatetic Indian anti-colonial networks and spent slightly over two years as the first IR chair at Delhi University, it also makes broader claims about how we narrate disciplinary histories. Intellectual genealogies, the predominant way in which disciplinary histories are written, often miss the contingent factors that play a considerable role in the fashioning of the discipline. Contingency-filled narratives also point towards the fact that International Relations/Affairs, at least in its early period of formation, operated as a term of mythical heft – a placeholder to fit anyone with academic or practical expertise in varied fields such as international law, colonial administration, anthropology, diplomacy, history, political economy, and military strategy.

Research has shown that the relationship between economic freedom and corruption is rather complex. While some studies suggest a negative relationship, others show the matter to be more nuanced. While more regulations are known to foster corrupt institutions, a competitive market can also incentivize bribery and corruption. Our study examines the role of economic freedom as it relates to perceived corruption, measured via a survey for India. Using firm-level data, we explore the relationship between perceived corruption in the formal sector and economic freedom across Indian states. In our baseline results for Indian firms, we find a significantly negative relationship between perceived corruption and lagged economic freedom. These results hold when we design matching models and include a number of potentially confounding factors to control for identification issues. Additionally, we show that small and young firms and those with sole ownership perceive greater benefits from higher economic freedom. In contrast, older firms perceive higher corruption when economic freedom is higher. This lends support to the idea that competition facilitated by economic freedom can increase rent seeking behavior. Our study contributes to the literature by emphasizing that the relationship between economic freedom and corruption in India is layered, with firm characteristics playing a crucial role.

High premature adult deaths in developing countries are gaining attention, as recent studies show their increasing impact on overall mortality rates. This paper has twofold objectives: firstly, it investigates the long-term trends and patterns of adult mortality between 1970 and 2018 in India. Secondly, it attempts to detect age, period, and cohort (APC) effects on adult mortality decline over time. Data on age-specific mortality rates and disease-adjusted life years for adult age groups (15–59 years) were collected from the Sample Registration System and the Global Burden of Disease study, respectively. The trends in age-standardized mortality rates were presented graphically, and critical change points were highlighted using a change-point analysis. The intrinsic estimator model was applied to estimate the independent effects of APC on adult mortality. The findings revealed that adult mortality declined between 1970 and 2018 with multiple critical change points. The APC effects showed a notable decline in adult mortality during 2005–2018 and for the recent birth cohorts, 1980–2004. However, the rate of mortality declined slowly over time. Results also indicated that mortality started increasing from mid-adult ages and peaked in older adult ages due to the age effects and provided evidence of a rise in adult life loss due to non-communicable diseases in recent years. Overall, the study underscores the importance of implementing health policies aimed at reducing life loss in the most economically active ages that can have long-term negative implications for the country’s economic growth.

India is being projected internationally as a country of good growth and good governance, which in turn, it is asserted, should lead to prosperity for its people, especially in terms of proper employment, income, and overall standard of living. Drawing on certain dimensions of decent work proposed by International Labour Organization to measure the quality of employment in India, this article explores how far the notions of good/high growth and good governance discourse are corroborated by the evidence of good quality employment in India. The study is based on the nationally representative unit/individual-level data published by the Government of India during the three periods 2009–10, 2018–19, and 2022–23. The main findings of analysis are: (a) the overall quality of employment in India is poor and stagnant or deteriorating, and (b) the macro-level (sub-national state-level) aspects, such as the overall volume of economic activities, the extent of quality governance, the flexibility of business regulatory environment and better labour law-related compliance, have had a significant negative influence on the quality of employment. Thus, this paper suggests that the very policy environment and the pattern of economic growth have put a drag on the quality of employment in India. Given this, we suggest a variety of countervailing policy options and emphasise the role of civil society and politics.

The Malabar dwarf puffer, Carinotetraodon travancoricus is the smallest known pufferfish (family Tetraodontidae) and one of the smallest freshwater fishes of the Indian subcontinent. Due to their miniature size, wacky behaviour and appearance, they are much preferred in the international aquarium fish trade, although little is known regarding their breeding activity in captivity and their embryonic development. The purpose of this study was to fill these knowledge gaps. Wild-caught Malabar dwarf puffers were acclimatised to conditions, and pairs were introduced to breeding tanks. Adult fishes were fed with live and frozen diets including Artemia nauplii, moina and bloodworm. During spawning seasons, adult fish displayed elaborate courtship behaviour around sunset. Carinotetraodon travancoricus is a batch spawner releasing 1 to 5 eggs per diem. The eggs were spherical, and non-sticky, with a diameter of 1.48 ± 0.1 mm, and hatching took place after 108 to 116 h post-incubation. The newly hatched larvae were 3.5 ± 0.2 mm in length, and weighed 2.9 ± 0.4 mg. The early larvae have substantial yolk and oil globules as an energy reserve. Histological studies on mature females suggested the batch spawning nature of the species and low fecundity. Given its unique reproductive behaviour and characters, in situ protected habitats are required to ensure their continued survival in the wild, apart from encouraging captive breeding to augment the demand in the international aquarium fish trade.

India has one of the highest burdens of childhood undernutrition in the world. The two principal dimensions of childhood undernutrition, namely stunting and underweight can be significantly associated in a particular population, a fact that is rarely explored in the extant literature. In this study, we apply a copula geoadditive modelling framework on nationally representative data of 104,021 children obtained from the National Family Health Survey 5 to assess the spatial distribution and critical drivers of the dual burden of childhood stunting and underweight in India while accounting for this correlation. Prevalence of stunting, underweight and their co-occurrence among under 5 children were 35.37%, 28.63% and 19.45% respectively with significant positive association between the two (Pearsonian Chi square = 19346, P-value = 0). Some of the factors which were significantly associated with stunting and underweight were child gender (Adjusted Odds Ratio (AOR) = 1.13 (1.12) for stunting (underweight)), birthweight (AOR = 1.46 (1.64) for stunting (underweight)), type of delivery (AOR = 1.12 (1.19) for stunting (underweight)), prenatal checkup (AOR = 0.94 (0.96) for stunting (underweight)) and maternal short-stature (AOR = 2.19 (1.85) for stunting (underweight)). There was significant spatial heterogeneity in the dual burden of stunting and underweight with highest prevalence being observed in eastern and western states while northern and southern states having relatively lower prevalence. Overall, the results are indicative of the inadequacy of a “one-size-fits-all” strategy and underscore the necessity of an interventional framework that addresses the nutritional deficiency of the most susceptible regions and population subgroups of the country.

In the late 1850s and early 1860s, the idea of building a passage through the Isthmus of Kra in the Malay Peninsula was hotly debated amongst British officials, merchants, and investors. This study finds that the British East India Company's rule over the Straits of Malacca had been a dilemma for itself and British merchants in China. The Second Opium War and the Indian Revolt of 1857 exacerbated the dilemma and pushed some British policymakers and investors to seek an alternative route between India and China. The proposal of the Kra passage was the response and solution to the Malacca dilemma. In historicising the Kra passage proposal and putting it in the context of the British empire's simultaneous crises in Asia in the mid-nineteenth century, the case of the proposed Kra passage reveals the complex relations between different actors within the British empire and the challenges of integrating multiple imperial interests into a British world system

India has made significant progress in improving the enrolment of students with disability but still has a long way to go before schools can be called inclusive. Despite the widely acknowledged relevance of assessments in shaping teaching and learning practices, little research has been done in disability-inclusive assessment in the Indian setting. In this paper, we explore teachers’ perceptions of disability inclusion in formative assessments, including the use of various kinds of accommodations and adaptations, factors that affect the implementation of disability-inclusive formative assessments, and challenges. It is argued that teacher professional development and teacher–parent partnerships are essential for ensuring the inclusion of students with disability in formative assessments. Unless assessment is given its due importance in disability-inclusive education, achievement gaps between children with and without disability may widen due to the unavailability of learning data and its use.