Indian Social Institute

The monkeypox epidemic poses a serious global health threat, making effective control strategies essential. Using a mechanistic SEIR (Susceptible-Exposed-Infectious-Recovered) model, this study incorporates both pro-and anti-vaccination attitudes among susceptibles to examine their impact on transmission. Sensitivity analysis via partial rank correlation coefficients (PRCC) identifies key parameters affecting the basic reproduction number (R0). The model reveals both forward and backward bifurcations, indicating potential for stable infection states and persistent epidemics. To address vaccination behavior, a coupled vaccination game based on imitation dynamics is introduced. Results show that higher imitation rates increase pro-vaccine adoption and reduce infections. The study highlights the role of social dilemmas, where low pro-vaccine uptake and frequent strategy switching worsen outbreaks. High vaccination costs further reduce social payoff, but strong social learning still promotes uptake, even with low susceptibility or high costs. Overall, social learning strategies can enhance vaccination rates and curb monkeypox spread.

With rapid urbanization and persistent agrarian distress in rural areas, millions of people in India are migrating from rural to urban areas in search of work, primarily in the informal sector. While adult children’s migration for work can improve household income through remittances, it may also disrupt traditional caregiving structures and emotional support for elderly parents left behind. This study examines how adult children’s migration for work shapes the material living satisfaction and psychological well-being of left-behind elderly parents in the Middle Ganga Plain (MGP) – one of the most out-migration-prone regions in India. Using cross-sectional data from 1,080 elderly aged 60 + years, the study employed Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and negative binomial regression models, along with alternative specifications, to analyse the associations. Regression results showed that left-behind elderly parents had a significantly higher satisfaction with material living conditions (β = 0.33, p < 0.05) than their non-left-behind counterparts. It is possible that an economic benefit associated with migration could be used to improve material living conditions. Moreover, left-behind parents were less likely to report emotional distress (β = −0.20, p < 0.001) compared to non-left-behind parents. Perceived economic security and household improvements associated with migration may partially explain this finding. However, frequent visits to parents were positively associated with emotional distress (β = 0.04, p = 0.005) among left-behind parents, perhaps due to heightened parental anxiety during visits driven by health or family crises. Findings highlight that economic and symbolic gains from migration may offset the psychosocial costs of separation in the resource-poor rural context of eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

This paper deals with quantum Uncertainty Relations (UR) subjected to the Standard Deviations (SD) of the relevant dynamical variables. It is important to note that these variables have to obey the two distinct periodicities of the knotted paths embedded on the torus. We compute generalized forms of the SDs and the subsequent URs (following the Kennard–Robertson formalism). These quantities explicitly involve the torus parameters and the knot parameters where restrictions on the latter have to be taken into account. These induce restrictions on the possible form of wave functions that are used to calculate the SDs and URs and in our simple example, two distinct SDs and URs are possible. In a certain limit (thin torus limit), our results will reduce to the results for a particle moving in a circle. An interesting fact emerges that in the case of the SDs and URs, the local geometry of the knots plays the decisive role and not their topological properties.

Despite social reforms in the nineteenth century and several legal and programmatic efforts since independence, child marriage remains a persistent issue in West Bengal, especially in rural areas. West Bengal is not the worst-performing state in gender indicators, highlighting a paradox of high child marriage prevalence. Against this backdrop, this study aims to unpack the persistence of child marriage practices among girls in West Bengal. Drawing on data from the National Family Health Survey (NFHS), it tries to explain the extent to which household poverty and women’s educational attainment are related to child marriage using an intersectional lens. Findings suggest that child marriage is common among all social groups in rural areas. Its prevalence is persistently high among both Hindus and Muslims. Higher levels of educational attainment, particularly above the secondary level, are associated with substantially lower prevalence of child marriage across rural and urban settings. Household wealth (women from wealthier families) is associated with lower prevalence only in urban areas, not in rural areas. Further, child marriage remains significantly lower among women with above secondary level of education, irrespective of economic status. The study suggests the importance of addressing structural and normative constraints alongside promoting girls’ education. Policy responses should focus on transforming gender norms, expanding educational opportunities, enhancing girls’ agency, and creating employment pathways, with interventions tailored to specific social and spatial contexts in West Bengal.

In this letter, we investigate the implications of recent CMB observations for Higgs-Starobinsky inflationary models and their associated reheating dynamics, utilising data from ACT DR6, Planck 2018, BICEP/Keck 2018, and DESI, collectively referred to as P-ACT-LB-BK18. In addition to direct CMB constraints, we incorporate indirect bounds arising from the potential overproduction of primordial gravitational waves (PGWs), particularly through limits on the effective number of relativistic species, ΔNeff, during Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN). These constraints become especially relevant in scenarios featuring a stiff post-inflationary equation of state wRH≥0.58. Our analysis shows that, when both P-ACT-LB-BK18 data and ΔNeff bounds are considered, the viable number of inflationary e-folds is restricted to the range 57.9-62.2 at the 2σ confidence level (C.L.). Correspondingly, the reheating temperature is constrained to lie between the BBN energy scale and 1012 GeV, with the post-inflationary equation-of-state parameter satisfying wRH>0.41. However, no parameter space remains viable at the 1σ C.L. once ΔNeff constraints from PGWs are included, rendering the Higgs-Starobinsky model highly restricted.