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This essay studies two literary texts on Kashmir, The Collaborator (2011) by Mirza Waheed and Curfewed Night (2010) by Basharat Peer and analyzes the discourses of power, overt forms of violence that the works present. It first contextualizes events from the last three years that have occurred in Kashmir to present forms of violence Kashmiri subjects undergo in the quotidian of life. The essay, thus, argues that the selected literary works represent Kashmir as a unique postcolonial conflict zone that defies an easy terminology to understand the onslaught of violence, and the varied forms of power. As analyzed in the article, one finds a curious merging of biopolitics and necropolitics that constructs the characters as "living dead" within this emergency zone. For this, the theoretical trajectory of the essay is mapped out to show the transition from Foucault and Agamben's idea of biopolitics to Mbembe's concept of necropolitics. Thereafter, essay concludes how the two texts illustrate Agamben's notion of the bare life is not enough to understand subjects living in this unique postcoloniality. The presence of death and the dead bodies go beyond bare life and shows how that bodies become significant signifiers that construct a varied notion of agency.

The Yeats -Tagore friendship and the eventual curious fallout between the two remain a mystery; the focus of this volume is a postcolonial reading of the two writers' friendship, the critical reception of Tagore in 1912 England, and Tagore's erasure from Western literary discourse. The essays in this volume take a decolonial turn to critically analyze the two writers in the discourse of power that is a part of their larger story. The nuances that appear in the pages of this illuminating book explore the meaning of "the politics of friendship" and the sense of intercultural relationship marred by colonialism. The volume re-envisions what the "postcolonial" can mean, be, and do. We can learn from the two major figures and their work and create a new vision of that problematic preposition "post.< - Professor Mieke Bal, ASCA (Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis). This volume offers a magnificent illustration of how to retell the story of a cross-cultural literary relationship from a decolonial perspective. Ghosh and Redwine's edited collection exemplifies the need of the hour: to reassess the value of literary traditions, institutions, and relationships while illuminating the politics of colonialism and racism that compromises them. - Deepika Bahri, Professor of English, Emory University; Author of Postcolonial Biology

India's Imperial Formations explores the ways in which empire building occurs and consolidates through the Indian and diasporic cultural landscape where a collusion with whiteness, Hindu fundamentalism, casteism, and religious and racial bigotry are rampant, and denies a democratic space of multiple Indias to coexist together.

"An important task for scholars of cultural studies and the humanities, as well as for artistic creators, is to refigure the frames and concepts by which the world as we know it is kept in place. Without these acts of refiguration, the future could only ever be more of the (violent) same. In close dialogue with literary and cinematic works and practices, the essays of this volume help refigure and rethink such pressing contemporary issues as migration, inequality, racism, post-coloniality, political violence and human-animal relations. A range of fresh perspectives are introduced, amounting to a call for intellectuals to remain critically engaged with the social and planetary"--

INTRODUCTION: Hospital-acquired infection (HAI) rates were reported to have declined in healthcare settings during the Covid-19 pandemic. Needless to mention that HAI is of paramount interest and relevance to a primary care physician who need to care from womb to tomb inside pandemic. OBJECTIVES: This study was conducted to find the impact of Covid-19 pandemic on the four parameters of HAIs, namely, catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI), central-line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSI), ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) and surgical site infections (SSIs) with hand hygiene compliance rates among healthcare workers. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This retrospective data mining was undertaken in a 700 bed multispecialty teaching hospital in the Eastern India which was a Government of Bihar approved speciality Covid Care Hospital. Data from the monthly routine infection control monitoring and surveillance activities was collated from January 2019 to December 2020. Control charts with upper and lower control limit set at mean ± 1 SD were used to monitor monthly trends of HAIs. RESULTS: The CAUTI rates reduced by 28.01%; the CLABSI rates declined by 37.61%, the SSI rates reduced by 62.39%, while the highest VAP rates were reported in November 2019 (1.9 per 1000 ventilator days). The hand hygiene compliance rates from January 2019 to December 2020 among different healthcare staffs showed a sharply rising trend. CONCLUSION: Covid-19 pandemic highlighted paramount importance regarding compliance to hand hygiene and implementation of standard infection control practices as recommended by World Health Organisation and Centres for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC), which can drastically reduce range of HAIs.

There is abundant literature on domestic safe water supply and hygienic sanitation. Yet, there is a paucity of research studies on adequate supply of safe drinking water and toilet facilities in places of population movement and congregation in India. This study stresses on the importance of availability of safe water and sanitation facilities in all the places of human congregation and movement in India. 49 research studies were identified from 169 potentially relevant publications. Studies were selected: first, all protocols of water and toilet facilities among published literature were meticulously searched. Second, information sources on sanitation facilities in public life, viz., railways, roadways, waterways, market places and shopping complexes, schools, and other higher educational institutions, fairs and festivals, entertainment establishments, healthcare facilities, were explored from publications of various resources of different levels. Third, published reports from apex bodies of national and international importance like Indian Council of Medical Research, World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF, USAID, etc. were given due weightage. Of late, the concept of cleanliness and making communities free from open defecation are in limelight as the Government of India has taken up Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM); even then, contextual gaps remain. This is the cause for concern as both safe water supply and basic sanitation are directly linked to health promotion of the community. Further, this research group have noted that due importance has not been integrated in the planning of SBM regarding availability of safe water and scientific sanitation facilities in all the places of human movement and congregation. Hence, there is more need for creating awareness among general population as well as stakeholders regarding this aspect of cleanliness. It is noted that despite considerable improvement in safe water and sanitation facilities in domestic life, there is considerable population left, who are still lacking ...