Mind and Society

Personal Characteristics of Bihari Migrants: Some Impressions

2022-05-09T04:58:57+02:00

This paper is part of a major project on ‘Bihari migrants in Mumbai’ whose sample comprised 152 male Bihari migrants and 155 local people of Mumbai. The paper’s observations are based on the migrants’ ‘self-ratings’ of 36 personal attributes associated with the Bihari people and, the ratings of these attributes by the local people of Mumbai. The rating scores were factor analysed for studying the factors of the migrants’ ‘self-perception,’ local people’s ‘perception,’ and the common factors of the migrants’ overall personal characteristics extracted through a combined sample score. The results showed that the migrants mainly ‘self-categorized’ themselves significantly highly on positive attributes, while the local people on the negative ones. Despite whose ratings were used, the factor analysis results suggested two prominent strands in the Bihari people’s overall image. One was positive and seemingly represented the core feature of the Bihari people. It described the migrants as, simple, modest and sensitive towards others’ feelings.The other aspect was negative and described the migrants as law breakers and quarrelsome in case of the migrant’s own self-perception, dishonest and law breakers according to the combined sample factor and law breakers and untrustworthy as regards to the Marathi people’s perception. Some anomalies were also observed in the configuration of the factors extracted from the rating scores of different instances (i.e., migrants’ self-ratings, local people’s perception-based ratings, and the combined sample scores).

Spiritual experiences of Islamic seekers

2022-04-29T08:02:45+02:00

In this paper I intend to present a classified description of the experiences of the seekers who subscribe to the religion Islam bringing the essential characteristics of these experiences to the fore. The paper shall also explain an aspect of experiences through drawing insights from the philosophy of physics as it has developed in the past century. Since the use of the term seeker is treated here as an interchangeable with the term Sufi, the later shall be used throughout this discourse and the word experiences shall imply Mystic experiences.

Operationalization of green behavior at workplace: Analyzing three major constructs

2022-04-29T08:08:28+02:00

Pro-environmental behavior is a broad construct of individual activity that minimizes harm to or benefits the environment. Different researches have given different terminology for different aspect of those environment oriented behavior. Present research compares between the three different constructs of pro-environmental behavior at workplace which has been extensively researched upon in the last decade- employee green behavior, voluntary workplace green behavior and organizational citizenship behavior towards environment. Theoretical comparisons of the three variables were done. Comparisons among the three variables were also done by collecting data using measures of three variables. Data was collected from 234 employees from chemical manufacturing firm. Factor analysis was done to find out factors. Result of factor analysis showed similarities among the variables. The items of three scales loaded into three factors – daily pro-environmental activities, lesser consumption of resources and alternative pro-environmental steps. The similarities among the variables along with theoretical contribution are discussed. Comparison among three major initiatives have been done.. A comprehensive tool which has been suggested can be used by future researchers to measure environmental behavior at workplace.