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The term ‘fundamentalism’ has come of late into popular usage more than any other. It has been used for various Christian movements. During the twentieth century, the term came to be used in Christian–Protestant circles in an effort to define beliefs that are fundamental to Christian religion. The world that emerged after the Second World War saw the emergence of many former colonial and semi-colonial countries as independent nations. Their development caused ferment among the Muslim countries also. It took the form of a resurgence of fundamentalism, Islamic fundamentalism. During the last several decades, the Islamic revival that is sweeping from Morocco in the West to Mindanao in the Philippines is considered with some reason as a response to the predatory policies of Western imperialism. This was the reassertion and the response of the Muslims to the challenge of the West. This was the promise of the fundamentalist Muslims: self assertive Islamic nationalism and simplicity of argument in the hope of recapturing the pristine purity and political glory of Islam (Ahmad, 1991). The first Muslim to react against the alien accretions to Islamic society, not necessarily the result of external or foreign influence, was Shah Waliullah (1703–1762) who was almost a contemporary of Abdul Wahab (1703–1787) in Arabia. Both evolved from attempting to purge the Islamic society of foreign accretions to protesting oppression and corruption of Westernisation (Jansen, 1979). The fundamentalism today is different from that of the eighteenth century. It is not of much use to trace historical continuity in the fundamentalist ideology; although, this does not negate some linkages between Islam's past history and modern day fundamentalist movements (Ahmed, 1994).

Development efforts in education have failed to conceive of gender as a socially constructed process that legitimizes gender inequality, and this article attempts to explain why gender inequality in schools should be problematized in this way. I argue that in developing countries like Nepal, promoting access to and participation in existing formal education programs is clearly necessary, but it is not, in itself, sufficient to transform gender power relations in the broader society. Reports of unequal distribution of girls’ and boys’ participation in school tell only part of the story; to fully understand gender inequality in schools and in societies as a whole, what is needed is an exploration of how gender is socially constructed and maintained in both the school and the home. This article examines the complexities of gender in a rural village of Nepal. Specifically, I interviewed community members, parents, teachers, and students and conducted observations in school and home settings. This article focuses on the educational experiences of girls and boys as they were affected and influenced by attitudes about gender.

The strategic management literature emphasizes the concept of business intelligence (BI) as an essential competitive tool. Yet the sustainability of the firms’ competitive advantage provided by BI capability is not well researched. To fill this gap, this study attempts to develop a model for successful BI deployment and empirically examines the association between BI deployment and sustainable competitive advantage. Taking the telecommunications industry in Malaysia as a case example, the research particularly focuses on the influencing perceptions held by telecommunications decision makers and executives on factors that impact successful BI deployment. The research further investigates the relationship between successful BI deployment and sustainable competitive advantage of the telecommunications organizations. Another important aim of this study is to determine the effect of moderating factors such as organization culture, business strategy, and use of BI tools on BI deployment and the sustainability of firm’s competitive advantage.

This research uses combination of resource-based theory and diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory to examine BI success and its relationship with firm’s sustainability. The research adopts the positivist paradigm and a two-phase sequential mixed method consisting of qualitative and quantitative approaches are employed. A tentative research model is developed first based on extensive literature review. The chapter presents a qualitative field study to fine tune the initial research model. Findings from the qualitative method are also used to develop measures and instruments for the next phase of quantitative method. The study includes a survey study with sample of business analysts and decision makers in telecommunications firms and is analyzed by partial least square-based structural equation modeling.

The findings reveal that some internal resources of the organizations such as BI governance and the perceptions of BI’s characteristics influence the successful deployment of BI. Organizations that practice good BI governance with strong moral and financial support from upper management have an opportunity to realize the dream of having successful BI initiatives in place. The scope of BI governance includes providing sufficient support and commitment in BI funding and implementation, laying out proper BI infrastructure and staffing and establishing a corporate-wide policy and procedures regarding BI. The perceptions about the characteristics of BI such as its relative advantage, complexity, compatibility, and observability are also significant in ensuring BI success. The most important results of this study indicated that with BI successfully deployed, executives would use the knowledge provided for their necessary actions in sustaining the organizations’ competitive advantage in terms of economics, social, and environmental issues.

This study contributes significantly to the existing literature that will assist future BI researchers especially in achieving sustainable competitive advantage. In particular, the model will help practitioners to consider the resources that they are likely to consider when deploying BI. Finally, the applications of this study can be extended through further adaptation in other industries and various geographic contexts.

Shimla is a teeming city, with a population of 140,000, in the north Indian Himalayas. It sits in an area of high seismicity that was rocked by a devastating earthquake about a hundred years ago, yet is oblivious of the ticking time bomb below its foundations. Initiating risk reduction in this fast growing urban economic hub is an enormous challenge. SEEDS, a national NGO, started working in the city just before the earthquake centenary in 2005, with an aim to identify ways of reducing earthquake risk through actions that could be carried out by the citizens and the local government, with school children playing a catalytic role.

One cannot mandate honesty.– Veerappa Moily, Chair,Second Administrative Reforms Commission, 2007India did not invent corruption, but it seems to excel in it. Transparency International, (TI) in its September 2007 Corruption Perception Index, placed India 72nd (tying with China and Brazil) with its neighbors Sri Lanka at 94th, Pakistan 138th, and Bangladesh 162nd as among the most corrupt of the 180 nations it surveyed. Denmark, Finland, and New Zealand stood at the top as the least corrupt, while Mynamar and Somalia are ranked at the bottom as the most corrupt. In 2008, India was ranked at 74th (Transparency International, 2007, 2008). In its 2005 study, TI found that as many as 62% of Indians believe corruption is real and in fact had first hand experience of paying bribes (Transparency International, 2005). Three-fourths in the survey also believe that the level of corruption in public services has only increased during 2004–2005. It is estimated that a total of about $5 billion are paid annually as bribes. The police are ranked as the most corrupt, followed by lower judiciary and Land Administration. Yet Suresh Pachauri, the Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs, Government of India, declared: “Government is fully committed to implement its policy of zero tolerance against corruption. It is moving progressively to eradicate corruption by improving transparency and accountability” (Pachauri, 2008). This is a rather sorry state for a country known as the largest working democracy.

Is the nuclear sky falling? It appears so. With the quantitative and qualificative improvements in nuclear stockpile, a proliferation-pessimism finds expression in metaphors about nuclear dominoes, chains etc. With a number of threshold states, the catch-phrase is ‘credible deterrence’. However, much of the zero-sum cold war thinking on strategic defence has now become anachronistic. A phased adaptive approach, leading to universal disarmament is necessary, especially in India’s strategic interest. A nuclear weapon-free world could ensure a safer regional security environment for India. It’s all the more imperative in view of China’s interest to emerge as the strategic leader in Asia, even well beyond Asia.

New START initiatives are positive developments in this regard. However, it is necessary to bring into this fold other nuclear powers. (China has rejected the US and Russian levels of nuclear ‘transparency’ as part of its defence calculus; it has already crossed the multiple warhead Rubicon. It may also install a National Missile Defence System by 2020.)

Though a Nuclear Weapon-Free World (NWFW) cannot emerge instantaneously, an NWFW can evolve, if the following measures are evolved:

• (i)

  Change the mind-set devaluing nuclear weapons by strategically displacing ‘disbelief’ with ‘faith’ in the efficacy of nuclear abolition.

• (ii)

  Change the perception of  the utility and prestige associated with nuclear weapons.

• (iii)

  Redraft nuclear doctrines to restrict their role and break the ‘feed-back paradigm of the need for nuclear deterrence’.

• (iv)

  Take measures to build confidence in multilateral initiation on NWFW.

• (v)

  Ensure universal acceptance of ‘no first use’ (NFU) through a legally binding, universally accepted agreement.

• (vi)

  Have agreement prohibiting the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons.

• (vii)

  Devise agreements for controlling the continuous qualitative upgradation.

• (viii)

  Establishment of a Safeguard Regime with thorough organizational and institutional mechanism.

• (ix)

  Use advanced surveillance and monitoring technology to ensure compliance.

• (x)

  Implement effective enforcement strategy to penalize delinquent.

Change the mind-set devaluing nuclear weapons by strategically displacing ‘disbelief’ with ‘faith’ in the efficacy of nuclear abolition.

Change the perception of  the utility and prestige associated with nuclear weapons.

Redraft nuclear doctrines to restrict their role and break the ‘feed-back paradigm of the need for nuclear deterrence’.

Take measures to build confidence in multilateral initiation on NWFW.

Ensure universal acceptance of ‘no first use’ (NFU) through a legally binding, universally accepted agreement.

Have agreement prohibiting the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons.

Devise agreements for controlling the continuous qualitative upgradation.

Establishment of a Safeguard Regime with thorough organizational and institutional mechanism.

Use advanced surveillance and monitoring technology to ensure compliance.

Implement effective enforcement strategy to penalize delinquent.

It is in India’s interest to pursue universal disarmament with universal focus on economic and social cohesion for war prevention as the key to long-term security.

As the first Asian country to build a nuclear reactor, and as one among the handful of countries with full nuclear fuel cycle capabilities, India should strive to bring about universal disarmament of nuclear weapons so that world can meet spiralling demand for power through nuclear reactors, which pose no threat to the world peace.

Within developing countries, particularly in Africa, there is an emerging literature which highlights the unique obstacles faced by women entrepreneurs who start and develop their own businesses (De Vita, Mari, & Poggesi, 2014; Jamali, 2009; Minniti & Naude, 2010; Naude & Havenga, 2005; Nziku & Struthers, 2018). A key objective of this chapter is to critically appraise some of the conceptual approaches adopted in this literature. In so doing, the authors revisit a seminal paper first developed by Granovetter (1973) which suggested that female entrepreneurs, instead of being disadvantaged by the so-called ‘weak ties’ that bind their business networks, actually enjoy compensating benefits which Granovetter referred to as the strength of weak ties (SWT). Building on the conceptual work of Nziku and Struthers (2018) which developed an innovative taxonomy for analysing the SWT concept within a Principal-Agent (P-A) paradigm, the chapter will set out new insights which challenge some of the assumptions of the extant entrepreneurship literature. In particular, that women are inherently more risk averse in their business decision making than men. The theoretical context for this will be derived from a behavioural economics methodology first developed by Kahneman and Tversky (1979). They introduced the concept of loss aversion as a more realistic approach to attitudes towards risk on the part of entrepreneurs than risk aversion. The chapter contends that the loss aversion perspective may be more appropriate to the decision-making frame adopted by female entrepreneurs, especially in the context of Africa as well as in other developing regions of the world. The chapter will therefore suggest that such an approach can yield fresh insights on the topic of female entrepreneurship which the extant literature heretofore has not addressed, though this will have to be subsequently tested empirically.