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The awareness level of humans varies depending upon various known and unknown factors. Environmental awareness of an individual is the reflection of his/her thoughts, feelings and sensitivities towards the environment and its associated problems like degradation. It is the most important parameter for the measurement of implementation of government’s policies designed for the safeguard of environment and other related issues. The Indian Government decision for the complete ban on the Single-Use Plastic Bags (SUPBs) has been implemented in the whole country since 01 July 2022. Single-use plastic bags pose serious concerns for the environment and the economy of the country. The consumption as well as the disposal of plastic-related products is increasing day by day in India. Around 3.5 million tonnes of plastic waste are generated every year (CPCB 2020). The present paper is about the appraisal of the awareness level of consumers and shopkeepers about the use of plastic bags. In the present study, the primary survey is conducted to understand the awareness of consumers and shopkeepers regarding Single-Use Plastic Bags (SUPBs) in Lanka market, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh. The study tries to relate the level of literacy, economic status, hesitation to carry own bags and demand for the plastic bags with the environment awareness level. Study reflects, there is a strong relationship between uses of plastic bags with economic, social, cultural, political status of the people. It also reflects the lack of enforcement of policies about the Single-Use Plastic Bags (SUPBs).

Did ordinary Italians have a 'Renaissance'? This book presents the first in-depth exploration of how artisans and small local traders experienced the material and cultural Renaissance.

This article engages with a form of visual culture that is, W. J. T. Mitchell (2002: 170) reminds us, 'not limited to the study of images and media', but extends also 'to everyday practices of seeing and showing'. In the spirit of this openness to multiple manifestations of the domain of the visual and visual practices, the article explores how a particular mode of vigilant or watchful visuality has come to be mobilized in the 'homefront' of the so-called war on terror. In homeland security programmes from border and financial screening to Highway Watch, how has sight become represented as the sovereign sense on the basis of which security decisions can be taken? Taking its illustrative cue from Paul Haggis's film Crash, and from a body of work that conceives of touch as 'integral to' seeing, the article asks how we might subvert watchful politics by seeing seeing differently.

Many subjects in lab experiments exhibit small-stakes risk aversion, consistent with loss aversion. Those with greater math skills are less likely to show small-stakes risk aversion. We argue that departures from expected utility maximization may help explain why many firms in developing countries leave high expected return investments unexploited. We show that among a sample of Kenyan shopkeepers, inventories are negatively associated with small-stakes risk aversion and positively associated with math skills.

Much of the history of Indian businesses and merchants outside the subcontinent has emphasized the role of specific trading groups that created and utilized ties with India. The rise of Trinidad’s Indian shopkeepers tells an alternative story: former labor migrants turned to commerce. Indentured labor formed the connection between India and Trinidad, an area outside traditional Indian merchant activity. Trinidad’s organic Indian business community arose owing to the absence of traditional trading groups in the immigrant population, the large distance from India, and the growth of the Indian population that in turn demanded services. Shopkeepers came disproportionately from upper castes, who possibly relied on their greater social status and new network ties in Trinidad. However, shopkeepers did not rise into the upper echelons of commerce. This break shows the limits of traditional Indian traders in establishing ties in the farthest reaches of the British Empire.

Most action can be explained in Humean or teleological terms; that is, in most cases, one can explain why someone acted by reference to that person's beliefs and desires. However, trusting and being trustworthy are actions that do not permit such explanation. The action of trusting someone to do something is a matter of expecting someone to act for certain reasons, and acting trustworthily is one of acting for these reasons. It is better to say that people act out of trust, rather than for some end. Thus, teleological considerations do not suffice to trust. This is the negative claim of the paper. Its positive proposal is an account of the practical rationality of trust. The key idea is that in trusting one takes on commitments, not merely to act in certain way, but also to premise one's practical reasoning on a trust-based view of the interaction situation.

Regulatory infringements are extremely common in low-income countries, especially with respect to retail pharmaceutical sales. There have been few practical suggestions on public policy responses other than stricter regulatory enforcement, which governments are often unable, or unwilling, to do. This paper explores the challenges of regulating retail drug sellers, and potential solutions, through a case study of malaria treatment in rural Tanzania where small drug shops are a common source of medicine. Infringement of health-related regulation was extremely common. Most stores lacked valid permits, and illegal stocking of prescription-only medicines and unpackaged tablets was the norm. Most stocked unregistered drugs, and no serving staff met the qualification requirements. Infringements are likely to have reflected infrequent regulatory inspections, a failure of regulatory authorities to implement sanctions, successful concealment of regulatory violations, and the tacit permission of local regulatory staff. Eliminating regulatory infringements is unlikely to be feasible, and could be undesirable if access to essential medicines is reduced. Alternatives include bringing official drug regulation closer into line with locally legitimate practices; greater use of positive incentives for providers; and consumer involvement. Such a change in approach has the potential to provide a firmer platform for public-private collaboration to improve shop-based treatment.

Survey researchers have produced a body of evidence suggesting that people’s understandings of democracy are surprisingly consistent worldwide. This article challenges that finding by comparing the results of a 2002 survey conducted in the Philippines with the results of my own 2001 fieldwork in one Philippine community where, using interpretive rather than survey-research tools, I also investigated how people understand democracy. The article identifies three generic methodological problems—compression, compartmentalization, and homogenization—that have led survey researchers in the Philippines and beyond to simplify meanings and falsely twin roughly equivalent words in different languages. The global consistency in meaning that survey researchers have discovered appears to be the product not of converging worldviews, but of specific procedures used to record, code, and interpret interview responses. Insofar as democracy-promotion initiatives are shaped by such surveys, their misleading quality is not only of methodological concern, but of immediate political relevance.

The steady growth of Chinese migrants to South Africa in the past decade provides an opportunity to use Sen's (2001, Development as Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press) capabilities approach in the field of immigration. This theoretical framing reveals that the Chinese employ, what I call, a small pond migration strategy – utilizing mobility to maximize their social, economic, and human capital. I argue that the Chinese move to South Africa because of a desire to venture out of China and pursue freedoms associated with being one's own boss. Once in South Africa, they choose to stay because of comfortable weather and a slower pace of life, despite losing freedoms associated with high crime in Johannesburg. The findings suggest alternative ways of understanding factors of migration as well as a model that explains migration from more developed countries to less developed ones.