Publications

This book offers a comprehensive perspective on policy theories, policy formulation and implementation, and alternative paradigm for dealing with complex social and economic systems. It presents insights into policies on major development sectors, including health, education, urbanization, climate change, innovation, advanced manufacturing, and economic growth. It delves into why public policies matter more than resources and are crucial for shaping the future of a country. It attempts a pioneering effort and delineates a complexity theory framework to deal with uncertainty, nonlinearity, emergence, and evolution. It comprises systems thinking, design thinking, complexity thinking, and tools for complexity analysis. Applicable to a policy system, economy, business, and organization, the complexity theory relies on phenomena like emergence, self-organizing property, adaptation, coevolution, and path dependency, in a clear departure from reductionism and Newtonian paradigm. Through academic rigor, it makes a convincing case for better understanding of application of complexity theory. It covers real-world examples and case studies related to evolution of economies of silicon valleys – Bengaluru (India) and San Francisco Bay (USA). These cases underscore the essentiality of complexity theory.

In terms of policy formulations, the book contains a policy design framework covering the science of policymaking, innovative approaches, and methodology for policy design. To deal with dynamic systems, it includes a step-by-step guide for the application of system dynamics. It articulates alternative paradigm – adaptive policies and policy design; alternative theory – complexity theory; and new public organizations and institutional development for meeting the challenges of the 21st century.

Aiming to reduce fuzziness, the book combines both researcher’s in-depth analysis as well as practitioner’s perspective, thus serving as a vital read for scholars of public policy, management, and economics. It emphasizes the primacy of policy process to discern deep understanding from the ground and to integrate micro-level realities and macro-level requirements. It argues for change from Weberian bureaucratic model to adaptive approaches and recommends policy system reforms, highlighting that countries should make the right policy choices early to steer ahead. In doing so, the book serves the requirements of policymakers and thought leaders.

Spread over 100 sq. km, the liquefaction features identified in central Kerala, suggest moderate-magnitude earthquakes in the past.

The historical expansion of tea agroforestry in North Bengal, India, over the past 150 years (1876–2023) is a fascinating agricultural and economic transformation journey. The region, particularly the Bengal-Dooars area encompassing Jalpaiguri and Alipurduar districts, has seen significant transformations driven by the cultivation of Camellia sinensis (Tea). During the British colonial period, tea estates (TE) rapidly grew due to favourable conditions. The use of remote sensing technology has further facilitated the efficient management and expansion of the Tea agroforestry ecosystem. From an initial 331 hectares, the area under TE expanded to about 95,800 hectares by 2023. New plantations, modern agricultural practices, and technological advancements drove this growth. While tea plantations boosted the local economy and employment, they also impacted the environment, particularly tree cover. Overall, the historical expansion of TE in North Bengal reflects a complex interplay of economic development, agricultural innovation, and environmental change. This transformation remains to shape the region’s landscape and economy today.

Over the past two decades, technological advancements have significantly increased image-based methodologies, particularly the use of camera traps, which have become invaluable tools in ecology for examining a wide range of phenomena, including animal activity patterns, habitat selection, abundance, densities and distributions. In this paper, we examine how and why camera traps transform research practices and methodologies, investigate how animals perceive and adapt to these modern technologies, explore the ethical implications of using such devices in animal research and finally, shed light on the complex interplay between technology, animal behaviour and research ethics in the rapidly evolving fields of human–animal interactions and wildlife studies.

This special issue memorial volume is dedicated to the late Professor Jean Cleymans, who made a visible contribution to high-energy nuclear physics and the search for the primordial matter of quarks and gluons, called quark-gluon plasma (QGP). An extraordinary scientist, educator and motivator, Prof. Cleymans, is known for his fundamental contributions to describing the matter created in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions for the creation of QGP in the laboratory, using a two-parameter statistical hadron resonance gas model, which accurately describes and predicts the abundance of different hadronic species and their transverse momentum distributions along with providing a robust confirmation of thermal and chemical equilibrium of the process of particle production. This memorial volume has scientific contributions from stalwarts in the field, who were extremely fortunate and privileged to have a Colleague and Collaborator like Prof. Cleymans.

Effective public administration is crucial for creating a better future for all. Governments struggle to function effectively without capable public administration, hindering sustainable development efforts. Recognising the importance of public service institutions, the UN passed a resolution in 2002 to observe 23 June as "The UN Public Service Day". Though the public trust in governmental institutions is increasing, more needs to be done.

 Every year, World Refugee Day is observed on 20 June. End of 2023, the world has seen ~117 million people displaced worldwide. 40% of them are children.  Prolonged wars, drought, and insecurity are a few of the several reasons why people seek refuge. The world must come together, in the first place, to avoid conflicts and prolonged wars. Organisations must work to ensure the safety of the refugees and build the process for their economic upliftment and social inclusion. The support is needed more than ever.