Dimoria College, is a general degree college situated at Khetri in Kamrup district, Assam. This college is affiliated with the Gauhati University. This college offers different courses in arts and science..
Early widowhood in rural Assam emerges due to the confluence of agrarian distress, rising substance dependence among unemployed youth, and the political economy of illicit liquor consumption. Rather than a mere loss of interest in agriculture, repeated environmental shocks and crop failures trap young men in a vicious cycle of despair and “waithood,” driving them toward the consumption of sulai—a toxic, chemically adulterated illicit liquor that has contributed to a surge in premature deaths. This study investigates the socioeconomic, emotional, and gendered effects of such early deaths on women’s lives using in-depth, semi-structured interviews of ten young widows within a qualitative and phenomenological framework. The findings reveal how the sudden death of a spouse does not initiate household poverty, but rather structurally weaponizes it, catalyzing the feminization of poverty. The widows inherit compounded debts and are thrust into immediate socioeconomic destitution, forced to assume the “double burden” of being the sole breadwinner and primary caregiver within a patriarchal rural economy. Furthermore, these young widows confront heightened moral scrutiny, sexual stigma, and social exclusion, marking a sharp distinction from the social perception and vulnerability experienced by older widows. Their children face significant intergenerational trauma that affects their schooling, self-worth, and early exposure to risks such as drug addiction. The study concludes that early widowhood in rural Assam is an outcome of faltering agricultural systems, the marginalization of unemployed youth, and an unregulated shadow liquor economy. Sustainable interventions must move beyond palliative support for widow beneficiaries and actively address the macro-level ecological, economic, and regulatory factors that manufacture this gendered precarity.
Heatwaves in India have intensified in recent decades, with previously less-affected regions such as Upper Assam becoming increasingly vulnerable. This study investigates the heatwave characteristics over Upper Assam during 1991–2024 and assesses how soil moisture (SM) and other key hydro-meteorological variables jointly modulate heatwaves. Daily maximum temperature (Tmax) at the 90th percentile threshold from ERA5-Land is used to derive long-term heatwave metrics, while SM, solar radiation (SR), relative humidity (RH), rainfall (RF), sensible heat flux (SHF), and land surface temperature (LST) are analysed from ERA5-Land, IMDAA, and SMAP. For the most intense events between 2015 and 2024, 16-day windows centring the longest heatwave duration each year are used to examine short-term land–atmosphere feedbacks via spatio-temporal correlations. Interpretable machine learning (ML) models (Random Forest, LightGBM, XGBoost) are then employed to rank the relative importance of these drivers for Tmax during heatwave periods. Results show a significant rise in both the highest and threshold heatwave temperatures, alongside an increase in total heatwave days over the last decade. During core heatwave days, SM commonly declines by up to about 30
This study evaluated the nutritional composition of the muscle tissue of male freshwater crab Maydelliathelphusa harpax collected from the Jia Bharali River basin of Assam, India. The muscle contained 77.32 ± 0.18% moisture, 15.65 ± 0.01% crude protein, 1.11 ± 0.02% crude fat, 2.71 ± 0.02% ash, and 3.21 ± 0.12% carbohydrate on a wet-weight basis. Mineral analysis revealed calcium, magnesium, and potassium as the dominant elements on a wet-weight basis. Phenylalanine was the most abundant measured essential amino acid, proline was the predominant conditionally essential amino acid, and alanine was the only quantified non-essential amino acid. Vitamin E and vitamin C showed the highest concentrations among the measured fat-soluble and water-soluble vitamins, respectively. Lead, cadmium, chromium, arsenic and mercury were below the analytical detection limits in the analysed muscle samples. The study provides species-specific and region-specific baseline nutritional data for an underutilized freshwater crab and supports further evaluation of its nutritional potential, minerals bioavailability and food-safety status.
