A mid the prevailing uncertainty about the elections, the Chief received an urgent telephone call requesting him to visit the prime minister. However, when he arrived he found Koirala in a relaxed mood. He said, “We have to conduct the election in November at any cost.” The Chief told him, “The technical preparations from the Commission's side are progressing quite well. But probably, the Maoists need some positive incentives to contest the election”

Koirala replied:

The Chief said, “Many people believe that the June election was cancelled because of the delay in the unification of the Nepali Congress. When will the unification happen?”

The prime minister, who was also the President of the Nepali Congress, said:

Abstract: In their article “Comparative Cultural Studies and Pedagogy” Ronald Soetaert and Kris Rutten combine the concept of education with culture and literacy. Soetaert and Rutten start by analyzing the concept of cultural literacy as it was developed in traditional back-to-basics rhetoric followed by the problematization of the concept of literacy as developed in the field of multiliteracies and the concept of the study of culture as developed in comparative cultural studies. As a result of their postulates, Soetaert and Rutten present the outline of a framework for pedagogy with comparative cultural studies as theory and practice for the relevance of the teaching of students for competent and non-exclusionary participation in democracy, as well as for the acquisition of knowledge in culture.

Introduction

From the perspective of education, the concept of culture is often combined with literacy. The combination cultural literacy and pedagogy has become a field in the 1980s, inspired by the alleged lack of it (see, e.g., Levine). Meanwhile the at-risk trope has become widely spread: (Western) civilization, humanities, culture, universities, youth, etc. are all said to be at risk or in crisis. Many disciplines—from history to science, from literature to mathematics—have used the notion of cultural literacy to describe the fact that students lack the basic knowledge teachers assume they would have mastered as part of their general education. Thus, the back-to-basics movement came about as an answer to problems in education and society.

As soon as the new date was declared, the Commission moved quickly to arrange the nomination deadline. Unfortunately, before the election managers could catch their breath different ethnic groups, mainly from within the Madhesi community, re-started their agitation, which severely affected districts in the Tarai region. The Madhesi groups blamed the eight parties—the SPA and the Maoists—for failing to implement the 22-Point Agreement, which promised them greater representation. The resistance was fostered by the emergence of new Madhesi-based regional parties and cross-party alliances.

Senior Nepali Congress leader Mahanta Thakur quit his party to form his own party known as the Tarai Madhesh Lokatantrik Party (TMLP) or Lokatantrik party. He accused the mainstream parties of being insensitive to Madhesi concerns and of being indifferent to the under-representation of Madhesis in all state agencies and political parties. Thakur said he had no option other than to quit the Nepali Congress and to start a new party, which was committed to the interests of the Madhesis. Other Madhesi leaders, and parliamentarians from the mainstream parties, followed suit and joined the growing number of new Madhesi-based regional parties.

The Lokatantrik party immediately created a working alliance with a joint forum of two Madhesi-based parties—the Sadbhavana party and the Madhesi Forum party. (The Madhesi Janadhikar Forum or the Madhesi People's Rights Forum – a civil society organisation registered itself as a political party.

The period from 1856 to 1916 is considered a period of incubation for the emergence and consolidation of the Dravidian consciousness in the Tamil-speaking region of the colonial Madras Presidency. It corresponded with the spread of English education, the emergence of the new middle class trained in English education and the evolution of political organisations that began to play an active role in the presidency. The social formation engendered by colonialism took a consolidated form by the end of the nineteenth century in Madras Presidency. The story of Tamil Brahmin preponderance in the field of literacy, administration and the politics of the colonial Madras at the turn of the twentieth century is too well known and articulated to be repeated here. As we have detailed in the previous chapters, the persona of the Tamil Brahmin was not totally absent in the processes leading to the reproduction of classical Tamil literature from manuscript tradition to the print medium. It has to be studied how the ‘Tamil Brahmin’ was soon displaced as the ‘other’ in the regional politics of colonial Madras at the turn of the twentieth century. The classical Tamil ‘Sangam’ literature, beginning with the printing of the Kalithogai in 1887, was published before 1920. Confined earlier to the tiny circle of scholars, the Sangam literature was thrown open to the ‘wider public’ once they were printed.

Abstract: In her article “Abject Spaces and the Hinterland in Bolaño's Work” Stacey Balkan discusses magical realism, the trope of the return (to a precolonial utopia), and the use of the quixotic in Bolaño's texts. Bolaño's signatures are “visceral realism” and global contexts which represent a transnational imaginary over and against the precolonial. The ambiguous borderlands emphasized in “Macondo” literature are herein replaced by a new epistemological horizon. The border is no longer a fixed point, but is, instead, a shifting hinterland that separates the objective real from the subjective imaginary, an imaginative horizon over and against a specific geopolitical mapping. More amorphous than its previous incarnation, Bolaño's transnational Latin American borderland is a polycentric spatial matrix that resists normative categorization because it relies on new conceptions of geography and identity. Balkan postulates that a focal point in Bolaño's texts functions as a commentary both on traditional notions of colonialism and globality and on their representations in the Latin American literary canon.

Introduction

If “world literature” implies a mode of circulation (see Damrosch)—read often by comparatists as an ordered system conceived within a global paradigm that insists on the centrality of Anglophone scholarship and the alterity of the non-English speaking Other—it follows that it likewise implies a specifically colonial cartography that posits an educated and civilized urban space (i.e., Angel Rama's “lettered city”) against a rural hinterland characterized by premodern savagery or the non-English speaking other. This is why David Damrosch in What is World Literature?

SWOT Analysis of Jowar Food Products

Strengths

1. • There is a prior awareness on jowar being a healthy and nutritious food.

2. • Good response for quality certification from NIN.

3. • Strong research and development facility is available.

4. • DSR's brand ‘Eatrite’ is the only brand in the market offering versatile product range based on jowar.

5. • Easy to be adopted in terms of appearance, preparation, and taste when compared with traditional products.

6. • Taste of the product was liked by the respondents.

7. • People are willing to consider the product if ‘Eatrite’ is launched in the market.

Weaknesses

1. • New brand in the market.

2. • Lack of awareness about the product among the non-traditional respondents.

3. • Lack of commercial business operation and good sales/distribution network; and there is limited presence in the market.

4. • Immature economy of scale.

5. • Lack of promotion of the product.

6. • Shelf-life of the product is short (one month).

7. • The typical smell of jowar is disliked by the non-traditional consumers.

8. • Difficulties are encountered in the preparation/cooking of jowar by urban consumers.

9. • Appearance of the jowar is inferior as compared with the traditional product.

Opportunity

1. • Growing willingness in consumers to try new products with health benefits.

2. • Diabetic and obese consumers are happy with the product having major health benefits for them.

3. • A good substitute for traditional products in terms of variety.

Traditionally, ready-to-eat (RTE) and ready-to-cook (RTC) products are made from fine cereals such as rice and wheat. There has been no systematic effort to make these products from coarse cereals such as jowar, bajra, and ragi due to a variety of issues related to RTE and RTC products, their processing, and the technology involved. Besides, the health benefits of the coarse cereals have not been communicated to the new age consumers effectively.

The Directorate of Sorghum Research (DSR), Rajendranagar, Hyderabad, conducted a project on ‘Creation of demand for millet foods through production to consumption system value chain’ with the financial assistance of Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR)/National Agricultural Innovation Project (NAIP). Consequently, the DSR has conducted a lot of research over the years and has successfully overcome product-/process-related barriers/issues through innovation. It has brought out over 20-odd products made from sorghum. Out of these products, five most popular products (jowar-rich multigrain atta, jowar biscuits, jowar vermicelli, jowar suji/rawa/semolina, and jowar flakes) have been chosen for launch in the market. The processing technologies for these five products have been perfected to commercial scale. Before inviting private entrepreneurs, DSR initiated a demand assessment and consumer acceptability study for these products. The impact of the major outcome of the study on consumer acceptability of these five products has been documented along with an estimation of demand and the potential marketing and pricing strategy.

Abstract: In her article “Comparative Literature and Ex-centricity” Tutun Mukherjee argues for the discipline of comparative literature to locate itself globally. The journey of comparative literature from an idea to a discipline has been a long and arduous one from its inception in the nineteenth century. The hallmark of this journey—fraught with crisis and anxiety—is its bi-directionality. While on the one hand there has been a continuous churning within the discipline, on the other hand, there has been a travel outwards into time and space which meant grappling with and addressing new issues and realities in an attempt to re-invent itself. Mukherjee discusses aspects of the discipline's self-examination that is marked by rumination and reflexivity, leading towards its resurgence. It also discusses the possible role comparative literature can play in new contexts and locations.

Introduction

Time and space—or history and geography—inform our literary imagination: they shape our thoughts and direct our perception of the world around us. Over a decade into the new millennium, drastic temporal and spatial changes have so re-mapped the human social, geo-political and ecological habitat that questions regarding the nature and function of literature—what it is and/or what it should be—demand to be re-visited. Such re-assessment would also make evident the successive changes that have become manifest in the sphere of its production, consumption, and reception.

Abstract: In her article “Comparative Literature in French” Anne Tomiche presents the current situation of comparative literature in France, institutionally and pedagogically, as well as intellectually. She stresses the most recent changes that have happened in the field, focusing on the evolution of the discipline within the academic curriculum, on the evolution of research organization, and on the evolution of academic and scholarly domains of research in comparative literature. Finally, without claiming any bibliographical exhaustivity, she refers to recent scholarship that has marked the evolution of the discipline in French with emphasis on works published in the past fifteen years. Further, although she focuses on comparative literature in France, Tomiche presents aspects of French-language comparativism in Belgian French, Swiss French, and Québécois Canadian scholarship.

Without devoting too much space to the pre-history of French comparative literature—already well-documented (see, e.g., Brunel, Pichois, Rousseau; Chevrel, “Littérature (générale) et comparée”; Pageaux)—it might be worth recalling that while the first French textbook using the expression “comparative literature” in its title was François Noël's Cours de littérature comparée which merely juxtaposes French, English, and Italian “lectures,” the true initiators of the discipline were Abel Villemain (whose 1828 lectures at the Sorbonne focused on the reciprocal influences of France and England over each other and on French influence in Italy in the eighteenth century), Jean-Jacques Ampère (whose inaugural lecture at the Sorbonne in 1832 dealt with medieval French literature in its relations with foreign literatures and who promoted what he called the “comparative study” of literature), and Philarète Chasles (who dedicated his inaugural lecture at the Parisian Athénée in 1835 to la littérature étrangère comparée).

Abstract: In her article “Comparative Cultural Studies and Linguistic Hybridities in Literature.” Sturm-Trigonakis takes her point of departure with Goethe's notion of Weltliteratur and proposes that owing to globalization, literature is undergoing a change in process, content, and linguistic practice. The framework Sturm-Trigonakis constructs is based on comparative cultural studies and its methodology of the contextual (systemic and empirical) approach to the study of literature and culture and the concepts of the macro- and micro-system. In order to exemplify her proposition, Sturm-Trigonakis discusses selected literary texts which show characteristics of linguistic hybridity, the concept of “in-between,” and transculturality, thus located in new Weltliteratur.

Introduction

In 1827 Goethe inaugurated the age of Weltliteratur with his observation that national literature has lost importance and must now be substituted by world literature (Goethe qtd. in Eckermann, Gespräche 174). Goethe's ambiguous inheritance has provoked a plethora of interpretations since then (with regard to current work on this, see, e.g., Birus; Koch; Lamping; Pizer; Prendergast; Schmeling). Two aspects of Goethe's notion, namely world literature as a process of communication and exchange between various national literatures and the anchorage of world literatures in the economic and technical context of Europe at the outset of the nineteenth century offer a common denominator with the contemporary age of globalization.

Abstract: In his article “Aesthetics, Opera, and Alterity in Herzog's Work” Jacob-Ivan Eidt analyses Werner Herzog's 1982 film Fitzcarraldo. Eidt's analysis is executed in the context of opera, cinema, and aesthetics. Eidt argues that Herzog uses opera as a romantic motif with which he creates a self-critical process whereby elements of the Romantic vision are called into question thus providing a nuanced reading of the main character and the Indigenous world he encounters. This process, Eidt argues, produces a complex narrative of colonial alterity where colonial self-inscription upon an Other is ultimately doomed to failure.

A prominent aspect of comparative humanities is not only its emphasis on multiple literary traditions, but also the ability to bring those traditions together to produce nuanced contextual readings of various text types (see, e.g., Finke; Tötösy de Zepetnek). In this study, I analyze Werner Herzog's 1982 film Fitzcarraldo and its image construction of colonial South America including the role of Otherness. I postulate that the film's image construction of the Other is based on German Romanticism and paradigms of aestheticism of nineteenth-century music. In keeping with the methods of comparative cultural studies, hierarchical relationships between traditions are avoided. Each tradition is read as contributing to an overall depiction, in this case of colonial alterity. This intertextuality draws attention to other cultures in a way that traditional film reading could not and it is through this contrast that the Other can be approached and thus included into what otherwise would remain a Euro-centric perspective.

As the election day neared, security became the most pressing issue for the Commission. The fragile security—including the weak rule of law and human rights violations—was identified by different international organisations such as the UNMIN, the OHCHR-Nepal and Carter Center as the major challenge to a free and fair election. In December 2007, a report on human rights was also published, covering the period since the signing of the Comprehensive agreement by OHCHR-Nepal. The report said that the emergence of armed groups, the escalation of violence among them, and the growing social unrest about issues of exclusion posed a serious challenge for the government and state institutions responsible for maintaining law and order and protecting the rights of the population. The report also raised concerns about the impunity enjoyed by perpetrators of murder and other violence—be they the State, the Maoist cadres or the armed ethnic groups. According to the report, between January and October 2007 around 130 civilians were killed, including 60 people killed by armed groups. These findings indicated that an outbreak of large-scale violence was still the greatest threat to the election.

The already bad security situation worsened two weeks before the election when a bomb exploded in a Mosque in the eastern part of Nepal, killing two Muslims and injuring many others. The international community, and local political party leaders in Nepal started questioning the wisdom of trying to hold an election in such a tense environment.

A few kilometres north of where King Gyanendra made his historic Royal Proclamation of 1 February 2005, inside an ordinary two-storey urban building in Maharajgunj, an old and feeble man appeared deeply worried. His face was wrinkled by stress and advancing age. Despite his apparent physical weakness, a dozen armed men were positioned outside his house to stop him from going out.

This man was Girija Prasad Koirala, the first political leader to be placed under house arrest following the royal takeover. From a trusted army confidant he had learnt of the King's intention to stage a takeover of the government the day before the Proclamation. Ever since, he felt restless.

On that first morning of February in 2005, Koirala was discussing the possible impact of the King's intended takeover with his close associates. One of them was Nona Koirala—the octogenarian leader's closest advisor. Nona was Koirala's sister-in-law, married to one of his brothers, Keshab Prasad Koirala. Many people close to the democratic veteran claimed that after the death of his brother Keshab, widower Koirala became close to Nona. They also said that she was responsible for both the successes and failures in Koirala's political career.

Another person engaged in the discussion with Koirala that day was Sher Bahadur Deuba, one of the most controversial figures in Nepal's democratic history and Koirala's once political rival in the Nepali Congress party. A few years earlier Deuba had been a controversial prime minister. In May 2002 he sought to extend the ongoing state of emergency, imposed by the government to tackle the Maoist insurgency.