In emerging economies like India, there is a clear conflict between development priorities and environmental concerns. With the ever advancing urbanization and rural transformation processes, construction sector seems to be playing a major role in the contemporary efforts towards growth and development. However, rising material costs and increasing carbon emissions have posed as serious causes of concern. The efforts to bridge the existing gap in decent housing facilities, reconstruction due to frequent occurrence of natural calamities and urbanization not only pose a challenge for our development process, they also emerge as potential threat for environmental sustainability. With the Indian countryside currently going through one of the largest initiatives by the Government of India for addressing homelessness through a major unit assistance programme called the Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana Gramin (PMAYG), the overall expenses are definitely going to be huge, albeit a welfare priority of the government it is also intertwined with enormous environmental costs with conventional construction technologies. The present paper explores an alternative framework that may simultaneously achieve our development priorities for housing, cost reduction and environmental sustainability, with replacement of cement, steel and the likes with greener alternatives, as have been suggested in previous works. Using 108 suggested housing models in 15 different States of the country, the study concludes that substantial reduction in financial burden and carbon emissions is possible in the rural housing sector alone.

What determines electoral choice has drawn a lot of interest among scholars ever since the behavioural revolution in political science. Electoral politics in Odisha in the recent decade is marked by the continued dominance of Biju Janata Dal under the leadership of Naveen Patnaik along with the rise in vote share of Bharatiya Janata party and the fall of Congress. What factors are responsible for the overwhelming victory of a regional party vis-a-vis the national parties in Odisha? This article has reviewed various election studies since 2004 to find out the key determinants of electoral choice in Odisha. While the major factors behind the BJDs victory are Naveen Patnaiks leadership, his welfare policies and voters satisfaction with the performance of his government, the lack of state-level leadership and poor organisations have hampered the electoral prospects of national parties in Odisha. The Modi wave and the rightward shift in ideological middle ground after 2014 have helped the sharp rise in BJPs vote share in 2019 general election in Odisha.

This paper is an attempt to examine the concretisation of the Indian state in the borderlands of Arunachal Pradesh through infrastructure building as development strategy. The paper argues that this strategy is an exercise in undoing this imagery of remoteness, constructed during colonial and immediate post-colonial years through continuation of colonial exclusionary administrative regulations, for transformation of what existed as a frontier region into a securitised border. The paper explores the twin development strategies of expansion of road network and construction of hydropower projects by the Indian state towards this borderland. Further, the paper delves into the environmental implications of these developmental projects in the Himalayan borderlands. Based on the fieldwork conducted in Tawang district of Arunachal Pradesh the paper examines the nature of ongoing development projects from the perspective of local aspirations.

This paper aims to trace the events leading up to the liberation of East Pakistan and the creation of Bangladesh. The principal argument of the paper is the issue of identity and how it plays a role in influencing the political climate of a newly independent nation. The paper analyzes the events leading upto the first democratic elections in Pakistan and how it culminated into the 1971 Indo-Pak war which eventually led to the creation of the newly independent nation of Bangladesh. This paper explains the philosophical basis of partition which carved out Pakistan on religious basis, i.e. the two nation theory and how religion ceased to serve as a primary identity post partition. The paper analyzes the chief differences between Urdu and Bengali language as a whole and the idea of purity. The imposition of Urdu as the national language of Pakistan in 1952 led to the reactionary movement of Bengali nationalism, not unlike the one caused by Lord Curzon via the partition of Bengal in 1905. The paper also analyzes the role played by the Indian government and the motivation behind military intervention in the liberation of Bangladesh. The paper finally attempts to analyze how a country formed on communal basis dismantled due to linguistic differences.

Birsa Munda, the torch-bearer of Tribal movement on one hand and an unsung warrior of Indian Independence on the other. This article basically deals with the efforts and contributions of Birsa Munda as a tribal leader which thereby leads to the independence of our nation India. We will also be discussing the ways adopted by Birsa Munda like the implementation of Birsait faith among tribal community to generate the feeling of nationalism against the colonial masters. Also, how Munda emerged as an eminent and fearless freedom fighter by adopting guirella warfare techniques to fight against the British Raj. The later part of this articles discusses the prevalent problems faced by tribal communities and how the government of India has initiated certain measures, legislations and constitutional acts to safeguard the rights of Scheduled tribes. In conclusion, there is brief argument by Ranajit Guha and his counter argument by Alpa Shah on Birsa Munda led tribal movement along with a broad step taken by the current government in trying to remove the tag of Unsung from the freedom fighter Birsa Munda.

Historical inquiry into the events of the past has helped us fathom better knowledge of the present and tracing the history of climate change can be a crucial determinant of this phenomenon. Climate change has been a prolonged, recurring phenomenon throughout the history of the globe and it has dictated survival of species and persistence of cultures to a great extent. This paper engages with several secondary documents and sporadically uses the Rajatarangini as the primary source to trace the ecological context of the subcontinent and relevance of the issue of climate change through a historical lens across different geological epochs, phases and episodes of history. It also entails the intersection of history and its sister disciplines in the broad study of climate change and attempts to look at the linkage with scholarly scrutiny. Moreover, the paper brings in the element of contemporariness embedded in the issue of climate change and comments on its increasing imprints on the social spheres of existence.