Gender Equity and Inclusive Participation of Women: With Special Reference to PRIs

Gender equity defines participation, level playing field and ensures. The term "gender equity" defines participation, level playing field and ensures inclusiveness for all. The principle of gender equality is preserved in the Indian Constitution in its preamble, fundamental rights, fundamental duties, and directive principles. The 73rd Amendment Act has given the power to women for their participation in terms of equal distribution, justice, and fairness. In other words, the 73rd Amendment Act has led the term equity to equality. Gender equity led the gender equality as a key driver for sustainable transition and inclusive growth of modern, well-functioning society and for inclusive participation. The purpose of the amendment was for the development of the women and the backward classes for the upliftment of the weaker groups. The objectives of the proposed research are: center dot To study the degree of participation of women in terms of the 73rd Amendment Act. center dot To investigate the current status of the Act (after 25 years of its inception). center dot To examine the awareness and challenges faced by the PRIs representatives working in the Burdwan (East) district of West Bengal towards execution of the Act on ground level. In this paper, an attempt has been made that how the concept of gender equity and participation of women has contributed in the local government of India. With a qualitative approach, along with the secondary sources, the proposed paper would be using in-depth interviews of PRIs representatives of the district to examine the set objectives. Due to the current ongoing restrains under the COVID-19 pandemic, these interviews would be conducted through virtual mode (using phone and video calling with the help of a questionnaire). For sampling, 10% of the total women PRIs representatives would be taken through quota and snowball sampling methods. Thus, the proposed study of the East Burdwan district (West Bengal) would be based on the investigation of the role and participation of Women PRIs representatives of the Panchayat Samiti and Gram Panchayat level. The study will discuss and analyse how the Act empowered PRIs representatives at the grass-root level to ensure democratic decentralization and the inclusive participation of women in terms of gender equity.

DETECTION OF COVID-19 FROM JOINT TIME AND FREQUENCY ANALYSIS OF SPEECH, BREATHING AND COUGH AUDIO

The distinct cough sounds produced by a variety of respiratory diseases suggest the potential for the development of a new class of audio bio-markers for the detection of COVID-19. Accurate audio biomarker-based COVID-19 tests would be inexpensive, readily scalable, and non-invasive. Audio biomarker screening could also be utilized in resource-limited settings prior to traditional diagnostic testing. Here we explore the possibility of leveraging three audio modalities: cough, breathing, and speech to determine COVID-19 status. We train a separate neural classification system on each modality, as well as a fused classification system on all three modalities together. Ablation studies are performed to understand the relationship between individual and collective performance of the modalities. Additionally, we analyze the extent to which temporal and spectral features contribute to COVID-19 status information contained in the audio signals. © 2022 IEEE

Covid-19 digital Contact-tracing: A doorway to well-being or a backdoor to security vulnerabilities?

Digital Contact-tracing through mobile applications require gathering of location and other personal information of an individual by the government or private organizations and became an essential solution for moderating the pandemic and slackening lockdown measures. However, the moral and legal boundaries for such privacy-sensitive information reconnaissance procedure and the ambiguity in the security measures of such technologies has gained controversial reputation.In this work, we performed static profiling of 10 different Android Contact-tracing applications, developed by the health departments of 10 different states within the United States and studied possible security threats posed by them. To the best of our knowledge, our work is the first to heuristically analyze the users' attitude towards these applications to understand the user-perceived contribution of these apps towards their well-being. We collected user feedback for each of the apps and trained a logistic regression classifier on cleaned, pre-processed and vectorized texts to identify positive or negative outlook towards these apps. Using the confusion matrix, our predictive model showed up to 85% accuracy, 94% precision, 93% recall and 83% f1 score. in predicting the sentiments. The sentiment prediction shows, users in some states did find the apps to be helpful where some other states found them wasteful. Whereas, our static analysis shows none of the apps are malicious themselves but all of them request permission that can be abused to gain escalated privileges. © 2021 IEEE.

Impact of analyst report on the behavior of retail investors: a study during COVID-19 in India

Purpose: One of the adverse effects of COVID-19 is on poor economic and financial performance. Such economic underperformance, less demand from the consumer side and supply chain disruption is leading to stock market volatility. In such a backdrop, this paper aims to find the impact of COVID-19 on the Indian stock market by analyzing the analyst’s report. Design/methodology/approach: The sample includes a cross-sectional data set on selected Indian firms that are indexed in BSE 100. The authors calculate the score of disclosure tone by using a textual analysis tool based on the analyst report of selected BSE 100 firms' approach in tackling COVID-19’s impact. The relationship between the tone of the analyst report and stock market performance is examined. This empirical model also survives robustness analysis to establish the consistency of the findings. This study uses both frequentist statistics and Bayesian statistics approach. Findings: The empirical result shows that tone has negative and significant influence on stock market performance. This study indicates that either analysts are not providing value-relevant and incremental information, which can reduce the stock market volatility during this pandemic situation or investors are not able to recognize the optimism of the information. Practical implications: This study provides an interesting insight regarding retail investors' stock purchasing behavior during the crisis period. Hence, this study also lays out crucial managerial implications that can be followed by preparers while preparing corporate disclosure. Originality/value: In the concern on pandemic and its impact on the stock market, this study sheds light on investors' preferences during the crisis period. This study uniquely focuses on analyst reports and investors' preference which has not been studied widely. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study in the Indian context, which aims to understand retail investors’ investment preferences during a pandemic. © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Psychological impact of ‘lockdown’ on behaviour of children during COVID-19 pandemic: An online survey

Background: COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown has disrupted the daily routine and required an adjustment to ʼnew normal’. The psychological impact of ‘lockdown’ as a social distancing strategy among children needs to be studied well. Aim: To assess the psychological impact of ‘lockdown’ on behaviour of children and adolescents. Methods: An online survey was conducted among parents of 3-15-year-old children by using Google Form. A 35-item self-designed questionnaire was used for the purpose of the study. Total 645 responses were received by the stipulated time. Results: The mean age of the children was 8.3 years (± 3.5). Majority of the children were male (51.6%), 1st born child (82.2%), and studying in primary school (44.8%). Near about onethird on the children became irritable (35.3%), hyperactive (33.3%), defiant/ disobedient (38%), anxious (29.9%), and crying often (32.7%) during the period of lockdown. Near about two-third of the children engaged more in mobile phones (63.4%) and watched television (58.1%) compared to their usual self during lockdown. Near about two-third (58.3%) and onethird (32.2%) of the children reported change in their sleeping and feeding habit respectively. Majority of the male (38.7%) and female (42.6%) children coped well with the lockdown. Conclusion: Index survey suggested that one-third of the children and adolescents were adversely affected due to lockdown.

Shifting towards online training-possible challenges from educators/trainers perspective in Indian setting

Emergence of novel coronavirus has resulted in global chaos within days of its first detection in Wuhan, China. To curb the spread of Covid-19, stringent actions like lockdown and social distancing were imposed comprehensively around the World, training Institutes in India and globally, were widely affected by these restrictions. Henceforth, giving rise to an immediate need to extemporize modules to be adjusted to disseminate knowledge through e– learning platforms. This observation is an experience document to share the challenges and usefulness of shifting towards e-learning encountered by The National Cold Chain and Vaccine Management Resource Centre (NCCVMRC), Delhi. This piece additionally discusses the practices that could assist academic institutions in dealing with limitations associated with moving toward e-learning. © 2020, Indian Association of Preventive and Social Medicine. All rights reserved.