This book conceives of "religion-making" broadly as the multiple ways in which social and cultural phenomena are configured and reconfigured within the matrix of a world-religion discourse that is historically and semantically rooted in particular Western and predominantly Christian experiences, knowledges, and institutions. It investigates how religion is universalized and certain ideas, social formations, and practices rendered "religious" are thus integrated in and subordinated to very particular - mostly liberal-secular - assumptions about the relationship between history, politics, and religion.
The individual contributions, written by a new generation of scholars with decisively interdisciplinary approaches, examine the processes of translation and globalization of historically specific concepts and practices of religion - and its dialectical counterpart, the secular - into new contexts. This volume contributes to the relatively new field of thought that aspires to unravel the thoroughly intertwined relationships between religion and secularism as modern concepts.

With a GDP that just reached $2.6 trillion, India is poised to become the world's third largest economy in less than a decade. In doing so, it will have moved one step closer to reclaiming its pre-industrial glory when it accounted for one-sixth of the global output and ranked second in economic size. This rapid movement in the absolute size of the economy will be insufficient, however, to bring prosperity to India's vast population. Today, 44% of the country's workforce remains in agriculture and another 42% in small enterprises with fewer than twenty workers. Labor productivity of both sets of workers remains low and they live overwhelmingly on subsistence-level incomes. In New India: Reclaiming the Lost Glory, Arvind Panagariya outlines a concise strategy to transform India from a primarily rural and agricultural economy to an urban and industrial economy with well-paid jobs for those with limited skills. Panagariya argues that the creation of good jobs requires the emergence of medium and large enterprises in industry and services, especially labor-intensive sectors such as apparel, footwear, and other light manufactures. He explains that India needs policies conducive to the growth of firms from small to medium, medium to large, and large to larger still. Such policies include greater outward orientation; more flexible land, labor, and capital markets; concerted effort to improve the quality of higher education; faster urbanization; and improved governance at all levels. Written by a preeminent authority on the Indian economy, New India: Reclaiming the Lost Glory provides a data-driven and persuasive roadmap for India to eliminate abject poverty, accelerate economic growth, and return to its historically prominent position in the global economy.

Medical images can highlight differences between healthy tissue and unhealthy tissue and these images can then be assessed by a healthcare professional to identify the stage and spread of a disease so a treatment path can be established. With machine learning techniques becoming more prevalent in healthcare, algorithms can be trained to identify healthy or unhealthy tissues and quickly differentiate between the two. Statistical models can be used to process numerous images of the same type in a fraction of the time it would take a human to assess the same quantity, saving time and money in aiding practitioners in their assessment. The book discusses feature extraction processes, reviews deep learning methods for medical segmentation tasks, outlines optimisation algorithms and regularisation techniques, illustrates image classification and retrieval systems, and highlights text recognition tools, game theory, and the detection of misinformation for improving healthcare provision. This edited book provides state of the art research on the integration of new and emerging technologies for the medical imaging processing and analysis fields. This book outlines future directions for increasing the efficiency of conventional imaging models to achieve better performance in diagnoses as well as in the characterization of complex pathological conditions. The book is aimed at a readership of researchers and scientists in both academia and industry in computer science and engineering, machine learning, image processing, and healthcare technologies and those in related fields.

Novel Approaches towards Wastewater Treatment and Resource Recovery Technologies discusses various cost-efficient aspects of wastewater treatment along with resource recovery options. The book covers biological wastewater treatment, the application of membranes and their modifications, advanced oxidation techniques, and the application of nanoparticles for the enhancement of performance as well as various integrated technologies for resource recovery along with pilot scale potentials. The book covers both domestic and industrial wastewaters and provides resources for sustainable solutions. It provides the basic fundamentals and recent updated data. Case studies are included to give the glimpse of the real-world application. Similarly, pilot scale studies are considered for real life implementation of the concept.

Applications of Nanofluids in the Chemical and Biomedical Process Industry provides detailed knowledge about the mathematical, numerical, and experimental methodologies of the application of nanofluids in heat transfer, mass transfer, and biomedical processes. The book is divided into three main sections with the first providing a detailed overview of the thermophysical and optical properties of nanofluids enhancement in heat exchangers and boiling operations. The second section gives a detailed overview of nanofluid application in CO2 absorption/regeneration and metal extraction/stripping operations, while the third provides an overview of the application ofnanofluids in biomedical processes. The book includes recent advances, as well as challenges to nanofluid applications in industrial processes and will be useful for researchers and professionals working in industry or academia, as well as others interested in the applications of the nanofluids to industrial processes for design purposes.

This volume compiles recent research on phytoplankton primary productivity (PP) in the Indian Ocean to provide an understanding and consolidation of the driving mechanisms of PP variability in diverse oceanic ecosystems globally. The book aims to facilitate a holistic overview of the research carried out in this field in various oceanic realms such as Indian coastal and oceanic waters (estuaries, coastal waters, Bay of Bengal, Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean). The contents of this book also address the United Nations sustainable development goals i.e., SDG 13 (Climate Action) and SDG 14 (Life below Water), with a focus on the impacts of climate change oceanic ecosystems. The book can serve as a comprehensive baseline of information for researchers studying planktonic primary productivity and biogeochemistry-related research in the above-mentioned marine ecosystems and other global oceans. It is intended to attract the attention of researchers, professionals, undergraduate and graduate oceanography students, and policy makers in the field of marine sciences.

This book offers a unique perspective on September 11 and our world after this tragic event, sharing lessons from an Asian religious experience that can help heal a world troubled by religious conflicts and deepening divisions, and promote a positive global transformation. Existing literature regarding the events of September 11 and our world afterward has focused mostly on the West and the Middle East. Asian Perspectives on the World's Religions after September 11 extends this discussion to include Asia-a continent and culture far too important to be ignored in any assessment of the global impact of this event. The book is organized along the following themes, as they emerged post-September 11th: religion and civilizational dialogue; religion, conflict, and peace; religion and human rights; religion and ethics; religion and the arts; religion, hermeneutics, and literature; religion and gender; religion and ecology; and religion and globalization. Individuals who are studying or teaching political science, international relations, philosophy, ethics, Asian studies, or religious studies will find the text invaluable, while general readers will appreciate the largely unvoiced Asian perspective on this topic.

Most discussions of India's substantive economic growth since the 1990s tend to focus on national level statistics or on particular sectors such as the financial and call service sectors or on the pharmaceutical industry. But with a population of 1.2 billion, India demands to be treated like a collection of individual "countries, " rather than a unified nation. Ten of its states have populations equaling or exceeding that of the United Kingdom. If the state of Uttar Pradesh were a country, it would be the fourth largest, behind China, India, and the United States. These facts pointedly tell us that if we are to understand the ongoing experiment in economic reforms and poverty alleviation, we must study India at the level of the state. In this spirit, State Level Reforms and Growth and Development in Indian States provides the first-ever comprehensive analysis of growth at the highly diverse state level. The authors argue that when the national government loosened its stronghold on industry and services, state governments were able to shape the fortunes of their citizens through state-level policy reforms. Because of this, every Indian state experienced accelerated growth, unlike China during the first two decades of its development when the eastern half flourished as the western half lagged. Every Indian state has grown faster in the last decade than any other decade in the post-independence era. In fact, some of the poorest states, notably Bihar and Orissa, have been growing the fastest. Professors Panagariya and Chakraborty and Dr. Rao refute the common assumptions that growth has not occurred or that poverty has not been reduced in all Indian states. The recent reforms have also led to improved access in every state to basic amenities such as permanent houses, electricity, water, and sanitation. These accomplishments notwithstanding, regional inequality on a per capita basis has grown as well. Reforms in state-controlled sectors such as agriculture, industry, healthcare, and education have not advanced as far as some analysts previously predicted. The authors outline the reforms in these areas and draw on the experience of states that have successfully carried out some of them. The authors pay special attention to reforms in the areas of education and health while recognizing that the Indian constitution vests in the states much of this legislative and other authority and while considering the real absolute rise in income, literacy, and health status across all the states.

In today s global society, microfinance affords lower income individuals the opportunity to improve their economic situation through a democratic, market-based process. Advanced Technologies for Microfinance: Solutions and Challenges is the first book to systematically address technology s impact on microfinance. It discusses a wide variety of technology applications that will define the next generation of the microfinance movement and it addresses the tough questions surrounding technology in microfinance. For instance, what are the disadvantages of technology-enabled microfinance and what will it mean for the inclusiveness and empowerment of the service? This dynamic collection is a must-have for anyone interested in microfinance, whether you are a donor, lender, or investor.

"Part of the Problem, Part of the Solution" unleashes religion's true potential to do good by bridging the modern divide between religion and an ever pervasive secular society, a notion often loathed by individuals on both sides of the religious aisle. As noted scholars such as Huston Smith, Karen Armstrong, Rosemary Radford Reuther, Harvey Cox, and Seyyed Hossein Nasr explain throughout the conversations related in this text, people of varied and conflicting faiths can come together to engage in civil, useful dialogue, and members of quite varied religious traditions can work together for the benefit of all humankind and can help defuse the world's current epidemic of violence. By showing how religion is an instrument in human affairs that can be tuned for both good and evil, this book lays the groundwork for an important cooperative effort to blossom.

Furthermore, today's trend of associating all religion with suspicion has spiraled into a dangerous situation-that in discarding all religion because some of it causes harm, one risks throwing away the baby with the bathwater. Books such as "When Religion Becomes Evil" by Charles Kimball, "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins, "The End of Faith" by Sam Harris, "Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon" by Daniel Dennett, and "God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything" by Christopher Hitchens have created quite a sensation, leaving the impression that religion, at its root, brings more heartache than handshakes. This development has dismayed many scholars, students, and practitioners of religion, of all faiths, who believe that only half the story-the negative half-is being told. Although demonstrating that certain religious beliefs have surely contributed to the violence that has occurred in this century, this book also explores how other religious teachings can help solve the epidemic of violence.