Study need and rationale, research questions and rationale, testable Essay

Study need and rationale, research questions and rationale, testable hypothesis or hypotheses annotated bibliography - Essay Example 41, 6755-6786. Habib CHaudhury, Atiya Mahmood, and Maria Valente are all Professors at reputed Universities. This research studies the effect of environmental design on reducing nursing errors and increasing efficiency in acute care settings. They concluded in their study that variables such as, noise levels, ergonomics, lighting, and design can increase errors at work place. This study is relevant to the current research as the current research also focuses on the efficiency of employees at a hospital and the effect of variable i.e. music, on their productivity. 3. Furnham, A. & Strbac, L. (2002). Music is as distracting as noise: The differential distraction of background music and noise on the cognitive test performance of introverts and extraverts. Ergonomics. 45, 203-217. Furnham and Strbac are Professors at the Department of Psychology, University College London. They conducted the research to study the effects of background noise on the performance of individuals who were both introverts and extraverts and found that the noise has a negative impact on their performance and concluded that music has different impact on people with different personalities. This study is similar to the current research as it also studies the impact of music on the performance of employees at a hospital. Dr. Tim Gilmor is an organizational psychologist who specializes in assessment and development of management teams. He conducted the meta-analysis of data which was conducted from five different research studies evaluating the efficacy of Tomatis Method. He concluded that affect sizes that favoured the children being studied were in compliance with the clinician’s report. This study is relevant to the present research because of its evaluation of effect of auditory sensation on learning of children with learning and communication disorders. Hallam, Price, and Katsaru conducted this research to study the effects of background music on the task performance of Primary

Critical Response Paper Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Critical Response Paper - Assignment Example It is imperative for the country to balance the opinions of the different religions and integrate them in the formation of the government. This is because the relationship between the government and the religion is very fluid; the religion and/or the politics change in response to history and its interpretation. According to Brown-Foster and Goldstein (2010), circumstance and history determines the evolvement of the relationship between the state and the religion. The institutions should be set up in a way that they do not have certain privileges within the constitution but the freedom of worship privately should be given. According to Costopoulous, Diamond and Plattner (2005), religious institutions should not be provided with constitutional privileged prerogatives that permit them to consent public policy within the democratic governments. It is important to note that the political parties will perform the role of mandating the public policy because the religious institutions are not supposed to mandate any public policy. Voting is the only way to offer transparency within the government and the political parties have the mandate of voting in their favorite

The Native American Trail of Tears Essay Example for Free

The Native American Trail of Tears Essay Removal of the Cherokees and several other native nations during the 1830s allowed expansion of Anglo-American populations south and west through parts of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and neighboring states. At roughly the same time, industrial application of Eli Whitneys cotton gin created a mass market in moderately priced cotton clothing. Within a decade after the Trail of Tears, the Cherokees homeland had been replaced, in large part, by King Cotton and a revival of slavery. Between one-fourth and one-third of the 16,000 Cherokee people who were removed during 1838 died on the march to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) or shortly thereafter. The Cherokees name for the march, nuna-daa-ut-suny the trail where they cried, provided its English name, the Trail of Tears. President Jackson, having retired from his army career of Indian fighting, avidly supported the Removal Act of 1830, which led to the Cherokees Trail of Tears. Ross was the Cherokees foremost advocate against removal, the man most responsible for taking two major cases to the Supreme Court. Marshall worked the facts of the conflict into legal doctrine that has shaped law regarding Native Americans for more than a century and a half. The removal of the civilized tribes from their homelands is one of the most notable chapters in the history of American land relations. Jacksons repudiation of John Marshalls rulings, which supported the Cherokees rights to their homelands, comprised contempt of the Supreme Court, an impeachable offense under the Constitution. The subject of impeachment was not seriously raised, however. During the conflict over removal, which continued through most of Jacksons presidency, the entire United States debated assertions of states rights vis-à  -vis the federal government and the Cherokees in a prelude to the coming dissolution of the Union during the Civil War less than three decades later. Had Jackson followed Justice Marshalls rulings, the Civil War might have started during the 1830s. The explosion of westward migration after roughly 1800 generated enormous profits in land speculation. Fortunes were made in early America not usually by working the land, but by buying early and holding large parcels for sale after demand increased dramatically because of non-Indian immigration. As a frontier lawyer in Tennessee, Andrew Jackson often took his fees in land rather than money, which was as scarce along the frontier as land was plentiful. As a lawyer, Jackson acquired immense holdings with which he began a mercantile establishment and bought a plantation. . . . He built an expensive frame house at a time when most wealthy Tennesseeans still lived in log cabins, and spent large sums on whiskey, horses, and expensive home furnishings imported from Europe (Rogin 55). Jackson quickly acquired more than a hundred slaves, making him one of frontier Tennessees largest owners of human capital. He traded actively in slaves and occasionally wagered them on horse races in a display of expendable wealth that established power relationships on the frontier. In the realm of intellect, Jackson was not a subtle man. He admired Napoleon Bonaparte to the point of nearly totally ignoring the French emperors tendencies toward tyranny. Perhaps yielding to the aftertaste of the War of 1812, Jackson sincerely believed that a republic would spring from the wreck if Napoleans army would invade England and topple British royalty (Rogin 73). Jackson did not seek the removal of the Cherokees and other civilized tribesthe Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks, and Seminolesbecause they did not know how to make productive use of the land. On the contrary, four of the five (the exception being the Seminoles, who had escaped to Florida) were called civilized tribes by the immigrants precisely because they were making exactly the kind of progress the Great White Father desired of them: becoming farmers, educating their children, and constituting governments modeled on that of the United States. Immigrants, many of them Scots and Irish, had married into native families. Some of them owned plantations and slaves. Removal had been proposed for the Cherokees as early as 1802, when Thomas Jefferson was president. During that year, the state of Georgia signed an agreement with the U.S. government (the Cherokees were not consulted) stating its intent to work toward extinguishment of all Cherokee land titles within state borders as early as the land could be peaceably obtained, and on reasonable terms (Moulton 24). By the time President Jacksons Removal Act was passed by Congress, most white Georgians regarded the United States as seriously delinquent in the bargain (Moulton 24). Before he emerged as an advocate of Indian removal, President Jacksons name had scorched the memories of Native American peoples for decades as an Indian fighter. As a general in the U.S. Army, Jackson blazed a trail of fire throughout the South, refusing to even when his superiors ordered him to relent. In a battlefield confrontation with William Weatherfords Creeks at Horseshoe Bend, Alabama, Jackson imprisoned assistants who advised retreat. For those who retreated in battle without authorization, the penalty levied by General Jackson was harsher: Any officer or soldier who flies before the enemy without being compelled to do so by superior force . . . shall suffer death (Tebbel 75). By the time the Removal Act was passed in 1830, the Cherokees had 22,000 cattle, 7,600 horses, 46,000 swine, 2,500 sheep, 762 looms, 2,488 spinning wheels, 172 wagons, 2,943 plows, 10 sawmills, 21 grist mills, 61 blacksmitheries, 18 schools, 8 cotton gins, and 1,300 slaves. All of these things indicated that they led prosperous lives very much like those of the European-American settlers who sought their land. Removal was never popular among the Cherokees. The federal governments representatives disregarded the majority opinion and relied on the minority Treaty Party to negotiate removal treaties, largely ignoring John Rosss National Party. One proposed treaty, signed during February 1835, was voted down by a substantial number of Cherokees. The result (114 yes, 2,225 no) was a fair indication of the proposals popularity. Despite the manifest unpopularity of removal, a minority of Cherokee leaders in the Treaty Party, including Elias Boudinot, John Ridge, and several others, journeyed to Washington, D.C., in 1835 to negotiate removal, an initiative that was not sanctioned by the Cherokee government. On December 29, 1835, Boudinot and nineteen other Cherokees signed the Treaty of New Echota, which ceded Cherokee lands as of May 23, 1836. This treaty, called the Christmas trick by its many opponents, was ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1836 by a one-vote margin (Cole 116). Although Ross continued to protest removal for two more years, the state of Georgia started to coerce the Cherokees into selling their lands for a fraction of their real value. Marauding whites plundered Cherokee homes and possessions and destroyed the Cherokee Phoenixs printing press because the paper opposed removal. Opposition to removal by a large proportion of the Cherokees continued until the Trail of Tears began. On March 10, 1838, with removal impending, the Cherokees assembled a petition opposing removal with more than 15,000 signatures. While some of the signatures may have been invalid (the entire Cherokee population at the time was about 16,000), the petition demonstrated widespread Cherokee opposition to the terms of the Treaty of New Echota. John Ross was deeply disappointed by Jacksons unwillingness to enforce the law as interpreted by Chief Justice Marshall. When Ross faced removal from his own plantation-style home, he may have recalled words he had told a delegation of Senecas in 1834: â€Å"We have been made to drink of the bitter cup of humiliation; treated like dogs; our lives, our liberties, the sport of whitemen; our country and the graves of our Fathers torn from us in cruel succession; until driven from river to river, from forest to forest, and thro [sic] a period of upwards of two hundred years, rolled back nation upon nation, we find ourselves fugitives, vagrants, and strangers in our own country, and look forward to the period when our descendants will perhaps be totally extinguished by wars, driven at the point of the bayonet into the Western Ocean, or reduced to . . . the condition of slaves.† (Moulton 55) By 1838, the Cherokees had exhausted all their appeals. As they were being forced to leave their homes, the Cherokees passed a memorial that expressed the manifest injustice of their forced relocation: â€Å"The title of the Cherokee people to their lands is the most ancient, pure, and absolute known to man; its date is beyond the reach of human record; its validity confirmed by possession and enjoyment antecedent to all pretense of claim by any portion of the human race. The free consent of the Cherokee people is indispensable to a valid transfer of the Cherokee title. The Cherokee people have neither by themselves nor their representatives given such consent. It follows that the original title and ownership of lands still rests with the Cherokee Nation, unimpaired and absolute. The Cherokee people have existed as a distinct national community for a period extending into antiquity beyond the dates and records and memory of man. These attributes have never been relinquished by the Cherokee people, and cannot be dissolved by the expulsion of the Nation from its territory by the power of the United States Government.† (OBrien 57) The U.S. Army forced Cherokee families into prison camps before their arduous trek westward. As a result of unhealthy and crowded conditions in these hastily constructed stockades, some Cherokees died even before the Trail of Tears began. James Mooney, an ethnologist, later described how the Cherokees were forced from their homes: Squads of troops were sent to search out with rifle and bayonet every small cabin hidden away in the coves or by the sides of mountain streams. . . . Families at dinner were startled by the sudden gleam of bayonets in the doorway and rose up to be driven with blows and oaths along the trail that led to the stockade. Men were seized in their fields or going along the road, women were taken from their wheels, and children from their play.† (Van Every 242) A U.S. Army private who witnessed the Cherokee removal wrote: â€Å"I saw the helpless Cherokee arrested and dragged from their homes, and driven by bayonet into the stockades. And in the chill of a drizzling rain on an October morning I saw them loaded like cattle or sheep into wagons and started toward the west. . . . Chief Ross led in prayer, and when the bugle sounded and wagons started rolling many of the children . . . waved their little hands goodbye to their mountain homes.† (Worcester 67) More than 4,000 Cherokees died of exposure, disease, and starvation, about a quarter of the total Cherokee population. Quatie, Rosss wife, was among the victims of this forced emigration. After removal, the miserable conditions continued. Many Cherokees died after they arrived in Indian Territory as epidemics and food shortages plagued the new settlements. An observer in Kentucky described the Cherokees midwinter march to Arkansas: â€Å"Even aged females, apparently nearly ready to drop into the grave, were travelling with heavy burdens attached to their backs, sometimes on frozen ground, and sometimes on muddy streets, with no covering for their feet.† (Collier 124) On the subject of the Cherokees removal, Ralph Waldo Emerson weighed in solidly with John Ross. Emerson wrote to President Martin Van Buren on April 23, 1838, about the impending Trail of Tears: â€Å"A crime is projected that confounds our understandings by its magnitudea crime that really deprives us as well as the Cherokee of a country, for how could we call the conspiracy that should crush these poor Indians our government, or the land that was cursed by their parting and dying imprecations our country, any more? You, sir, will bring down that renowned chair in which you sit into infamy if your seat is set to this instrument of perfidy; and the name of this nation, hitherto the sweet omen of religion and liberty, will stink to the world.† (Moquin 105) In his letter to Van Buren, Emerson seemed concerned less with Indian suffering or a sense of injustice than with a belief that their removal would stain his image of the presidency and the national history of the United States. Portions of the same letter to Van Buren contain assumptions that might have pleased Andrew Jackson, had Emersons letter been addressed to him. Emerson spoke of the Cherokees frame homes, grist mills, farms, government, and written language as painful labors of these red men to redeem their own race from the doom of eternal inferiority . . . to borrow and domesticate in the tribe the arts and customs of the Caucasian race (Black and Weidman 272). Despite the cruelty of the marches they were forced to endure, as well as the death, disease, and deprivation that dogged their every step, the surviving Cherokees, with Ross again in the lead, quickly set about rebuilding their communities. Much as they had in the Southeast, the Cherokees, Creeks, and others built prosperous farms and towns, passed laws, and set about rather self-consciously civilizing themselves once again. John Ross set about recreating a new Cherokee homeland with the same energy that had characterized his battle against removal. Works Cited Black, Nancy B, and Bette S. Weidman. White on Red: Images of the American Indian. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1976. Cole, Donald B. The Presidency of Andrew Jackson. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993. Collier, John. Indians of the Americas. New York: New American Library, 1947. Moquin, Wayne, ed. Great Documents in American Indian History. New York: Praeger, 2003. Moulton, Gary E. John Ross: Cherokee Chief. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1998. O’Brien, Sharon. American Indian Tribal Governments. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999. Rogin, Michael Paul. Fathers and Children: Andrew Jackson and the Subjugation of the American Indian. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995. Tebbel, John W. The Compact History of the Indian Wars. New York: Hawthorn Books, 1966. Van Dale Every. Disinherited: The Lost Birthright of the American Indian. New York: William Morrow Co., 1996. Worcester, Donald E., ed. Forked Tongues and Broken Treaties. Caldwell, ID: Caxton Printers, 1995.

The Black Sea Region History Essay

The Black Sea Region History Essay On the south-western side of the hill surmounting Lake Ohrid, travelers will find oneof the architectural masterpieces of medieval Orthodox Christianity. The church, that was dedicated to St. John the Theologian, and also known as Kaneno, whose consecration dated back to no later than.1447, is usually known as a legacy of Medieval Slavic empire (whether one calls it as Bulgarian, or, Macedonian, depends on ones fancy). Taking into consideration, however, its unique style that reminds us a highly successful combination of Byzantine and Armenian architectural technologies, it seems more appropriate to calldt.as-a monument of the cultural integrity of the wider Black Sea rim. The Black Sea world, just like the church Kaneno, had been an artifact of cultural mixture, composed of various peoples of different faiths, vernaculars, customs and practices until the first decades of the twentieth century. They had been, moreover, living in a well-integrated and well-organized socio-economic entity that was tightly bound up by common water. Artisans of famous silver ornament in Trabzon would live on the Ukrainian wheat and Bulgarian wine, while the wealthy mercantile famnyin Odessa would enjoy their afternoon tea with dried figs from Anatolia. Life of the people around the Black Sea had been directly resting on the incidents at the opposite side of the water. They had kept watchful eyes on the course of event there. However, such a vivid image of the Black Sea region seems to be quite perplexing, if not alien, for us, people living in the twenty first century. Just like the record inscribing the name of the architect of the church Kaneno had been lost, our knowled ge on the Pontus world is too fragmented to envision a unified picture. The Pontus world also addresses us a perplexing question. Is it a mere accidental coincident that the three mercantile nations, Armenians, Greeks, and Jews, who had once been major lubricants for the organic mechanism in this world, suddenly disappeared from the Black littoral at the very moment when we lost the vivid image of this region? Armenians, Greeks, and Jews were all historical nations well-known by their conspicuous activities in commerce and financing. All of them had their residential centers around the Black Sea before the twentieth century. Armenians had been widely dwelling in the southern Caucasus and the eastern Anatolia, and displayed their strong presence in every commercial centre around the Sea. Greeks had densely populated in the Black Sea littoral as well, and often constituted plurality in major trade entrepots like Istanbul, Trabzon, Odessa, Varna, Constanta and Krasnodar. Until the last decades of the nineteenth century, majority of the world Jewry had lived in the Russian Black provinces and their hinterlands. However, it is an arduous work for us to trace out them on the contemporary ethnic map of the region. It seems as if they had taken away our memory of the region with them when they retreated to the backstage of history of the Black Sea. What kind of process of modern conceptualization prevents us from shaping integrated scenery of the Black Sea region in our mind? The easiest answer might be the one that seeks the root in the nationalization of history. By the word Cemomorski rajon, an ordinary Bulgarian will think of an area the word Karadeniz bolgesi. For both of them, cities like Kisinev, Akkerman, or Batumi are not the part of their Black Sea region, but some unknown foreign cities. The nation-state, as a model for historical thought, has obscured many elements. The area studies, self-styled inter-disciplinary science, seem to have overcome the narrowing views of the national history, as they claim to have adopted an approach that makes it possible to analyze more than one nation-state at the same time. However, they seem, to be suffering from the same type of shortcomings. As for the Black Sea studies, there are too many candidates for the possible frame work, Slavic Studies, Balkan Studies, Caucasus Studies, Russian (and Soviet) .Studies (or its new version Eurasian Studies), Turkish and Islamic Studies, or Mediterranean Studies, but none is enough to cover all aspects of the Black Sea region. In order to comprehend the Black Sea region, it might be necessary to mobilize several area studies, but at the same time, it would mean saturation of methodologies. Such inherent weakness of the area studies seems, partly; to come from their methodological ancestors. Disciplines like Slavic Studies or Russian and Eurasian Studies could not completel y cut off themselves with the tradition of Slavic philology. Both Turkish studies and Iranian Studies are, by and large, nd more than a dummy branch of the Orientalism (as its original meaning 6f the word). Area studies are still accompanying preconceptions that had been inherent to their methodological forefathers. Apart from methodological questions, it seems relevant to interrogate a primordial question: where, at all, is the destination of intellectual endeavors of the area studies, or more simply, for what purpose are they serving? Recent developments may suggest us a part of the answer. There took place a* drastic reshaping of the area studies after 1989. East European studies have already divided into Central European Studies and Balkan Studies. Former Soviet Studies have also transformed themselves into Eurasian Studies. As the change is apparently linked to the shift of geopolitical situation, the answer must be lying somewhere beyond the natural evolution of methodological thinking, or survival strategies of individual researchers. The recent change indeed bears marked similarities to the realignments of traditional disciplines and eventual crystallization into area studies after the World War II. Both of the cognitive processes went through strong impact of the hegemonic shifts that h ad reshaped geopolitical map of the globe. The shift inevitably brought the regions drastic changes. From economic point of view, each region had to modify its trade regulations, financial mechanism, monetary policy, and working practices to be fit into the new situation, thus, it precipitated changes in the structure, and even mode of production. Political systems were also required to accommodate themselves to the new relations. As these changes caused considerable stress to the society, social tissue had to undergo significant metamorphosis. The area studies analyze various aspects of these changes, and provide, as a whole, a systematic knowledge to cope with the new reality. Therefore, they are working, irrespective of the intension of individual researcher, for special concern of particular forces that have common interest in a certain form of regional division of labor. Indeed area studies seem to pay less attention to the phenomena that tend to slip out of the scope of their main concerns, especially those overlapping several areas. By reassessing historical narratives concerning three nations, this paper tries to demonstrate the significance of those phenomena that have been made invisible by the frame of cognizance which was formulated in the course of modernity. The Ottoman Conquest and the Black Sea regional economy The Black Sea and surrounding lands had been playing significant roles as a hinge that bound together the Mediterranean, Central Asian Steppe, and Indian-Middle East economies since antiquity. The economic wealth of the region was an important factor in the political and economic stability of the Macedonian, Roman, and. Byzantine Empires in the Classical and Medieval times. The Black Sea also formed one of the major arteries joining the Islamic world and north-eastern Europe, and served as an important commercial rout between the ninth to early thirteenth century. Within itself, the Black Sea region, together with the Aegean, had formed a closely knit economic entity, as the northern Black Sea region produced and exported grain, meat, fish, and other animal products, while the southern Black Sea and the Aegean exported wine, olive oil, dried fruit, and luxury goods in exchange [Kortepeter, 1966: 86; Peacock, 2007:66-67]. By the time the Byzantine control of the region collapsed at the beginning of the thirteenth century, the Black Sea trade had largely fallen into the hand of the Venetian and Genoese merchants. At first Venetians seemed to have taken upper-hand, but Genoa succeeded in gaining a t near monopoly over the Black Sea commerce after 1261. By the time, Genoa had been building up a network of its colonies covering all lands surrounding the Black Sea. The Genoese BlackSea Empire was, however, relatively short-lived, as there emerged a formidable power in the western corner of Anatolia at the end of the thirteenth century, and it was to bring the Italian hegemony in the Black Sea finally to an end in the course of fifteenth century. Starting as a small warriors state, the Ottomans followed a gradual, but steady course of territorial expansion during the first half of the fourteenth century. They were successful in intruding into the Balkans after crossing the Dardanelles in 1346. By the end of the century, the Ottoman sultans had established themselves firmly on the vast landmass lying at the both sides of the Straits. Although the Ottorrfans at first did not show much interest in controlling the Black Sea commerce, a clear Ottoman policy regarding the Black Sea began to emerge during the reign of the Mehmed II (1451-1481) [Kortepeter, 1966: 88]. Upon assuming the throne the throne, Sultan the Conqueror embarked on a series of campaign to destroy the Latin colonial empires in the eastern Mediterranean, as a part of his project to reassemble the former Byzantine territories. Especially after the takeover (ri AXrooTj) of the Byzantine capital in 1453, Mehmed II felt it necessary to establish a complete control over the resources of the Black Sea region for the reconstruction and development of his new capital. In 1459, the Ottomans first deprived the Genoese of Amasra, the most important port on the Anatolian Black Sea coast, as it formed, together with Caffa, the shortest route in the north-south communication in the sea. After the fall of Amasra, the Genoese colonies were confined to the north western corner of the Black Sea. The seizure of the main Genoese colony of Caffa took place in 1475. Caffa had long been the chief trade and manufacturing centre for the Genoese in the Black Sea. After the fall of Caffa, the Genoese gri p on the Black Sea considerably weakened and the Ottomans captured all of the Italian colonies in the Crimean and the Caucasus within a decade. The only remaining trade centers of significance were two Moldavian port cities, Kilia and Akkerman. Both of them fell to the Ottoman hand in 1484. In this way, by the beginning of the sixteenth century the Ottomans had turned the Black Sear into an Ottoman lake [Inalcik Quataert, 1994: 271-3; Kortepeter, 1966: 92-3]. i The Ottoman conquest brought about a new socio-economic system into the Black Sea region. Now, majority the coastal lands of the Sea were directly connected to the imperial capital, Istanbul, and a new regional division of labor was introduced in order to maintain this extraordinarily large city. Moreover, the Ottoman Empire employed a kind of command economy whose main purpose was to maintain its military predominance. Hence, the government put strong control over the transportation of manufactured goods and raw materials produced within its domain, imposing de facto ban on the export, while, on the other hand, it showed lavish attitude to the imported commodities that its lands could not yield. Under this regime, many parts of the empire constituted an autarkic economic entity. Hence, it was natural that the Black Sea region, along with other part of the Empire, constituted an integrated, but closed to outside, system. Non-Muslim Merchants as coordinating elements One of the most important changes that took place after the Ottoman conquest of the Black Sea region was the termination of the Italian predominance in favor of the native Ottoman subjects. Owing to the poor development of Muslim mercantile class at the beginning of the Ottoman-conquest in this region, it was the non-Muslims that took initiative in forming the: wider regional network. Already during the Italian rule of the Black Sea, the Greeks and other indigenous people, together with Jews and Armenians, played the role of middlemen and widely dwelled in the Genoese trade centers. Many of them were employed as apprentices in the Latin enterprises, and accumulated the knowledge of the business practices in the Levant trade. Even before the fall of Caffa, the Italians were losing their control of the oriental trade in the northern countries, and were being replaced by Ottoman subjects, mostly Armenian Christians, Greek Orthodox Christians and Jews. The Ottoman government found in them reliable traders and contractors as middlemen within the empire. Thus, non-Muslim merchants took advantage of the new opportunity of the closure of the Black Sea to the foreigners in the sixteenth century, and they made use of their privileged position to traverse the Ottoman domain, in order to organize trading networks across southern and western European cities [Kortepeter, 1966: 101; inalcik Quataert, 1994: 272, 209]. The first element that gained most from this new order seemed to be Greeks. The Greek merchants of this period widely operated in Ottoman inter-regional trade. They were in control of a significant portion of the commerce of the eastern half of the Balkan Peninsula. Greeks were particularly active in the Ottoman capital, as traders and sea captains, carrying grain from the Balkan coastal regions adjacent to the Black Sea. The Greek merchants, allegedly descendants of the Byzantine aristocracy, widely engaged in tax farming, large-scale trade and shipping both in international and domestic. However, after the execution of tfye great tycoon in the Greek community of Istanbul, Michael Cantakuzino  §aitanoglu in 1578, the predominant position of the Greek merchants in the imperial economy began to shake [Stoianovich, 1960: 241; Inalcik Quataert, 1994:517]. Instead of Greeks, Jewish bankers and tax-farmers surfaced as predominant elements in Ottoman finance and long-distance trade during the second half of the sixteenth century. The expulsion of the Marrano Jews from the Catholic countries especially contributed to the Jewish prosperity in the Ottoman economy. The Marrano Jews seemed to introduce into the Ottoman Empire the techniques of European capitalism, banking and the mercantilist concept of state economy, and played decisive role in the finances [inalcik Quataert, 1994: 212]. Jews also played a considerable role in the development of the Danube basin. As tax farmers, Jews were managing many Danubian ports and customhouses [Levi, 1982: 26-27]. But the Jewish domination of the Ottoman economy could not last long. Already in the 1650s, Jewish merchants had been less active in Ottoman territory than during the second half of the sixteenth century. The Jews were losing the functions that they had acquired in the sixteenth century, in cluding the farming of custom duties, minting, and the positions of money exchanger for the ottoman notables. Westward Jewish migration that occurred synchronously with the shift of the global economy to the trans-Atlantic trade was a part of reason. Another reason is the renewed expansion of activities of Greek merchants that forced many Jewish merchants out of Balkan trade [Panzac, 1992: 203; inalcik Quataert, 1994: 519]. The presence of the Armenian merchants in the Black Sea region had been strongly felt long before the Ottoman conquest. Armenians had settled in Crimea as early as the eleventh century [Panossian, 2006: 82]. They were important trade partners for the Nogays in the North Caucasus, and engaged widely in the transaction of slaves and large quantities of butter and furs [Kortepeter, 1966: 104]. They were predominant in the Moldavian [Lwow-Akkerman) route of trade during the fourteenth century, and obtained the trade privilege for all Ruthenia in 1402. The leader of the caravan on this route was always an Armenian throughout the fifteenth century. Until that time, Armenians had widely settled in the commercial centers in Crimea and Rumania. According to an Ottoman survey in 1520, there were 2,783 households in Caffa, out of which about 60% was Christian, mostly Armenian [inalcik Quataert, 1994: 280, 286]. The Ottoman conquest of the Black Sea region brought about more favorable conditions for the Armenian merchants. In the Ottoman Empire, Armenians, like Greeks, constituted a Christian community that was accorded with religious and judicial autonomies. Their religion also gave them easier access to the lands of Christian Europe. They had already firmly established themselves in southern Poland and Transylvania, and controlled local commerce. Making use of the Ottoman trade policy as the linchpin, the Armenian traders succeeded in building up their commercial network, extending as far as Venice and Central Europe. The Armenians could also make use of the rivalry between Ottomans and Russians in order to establish their new trade route. Several Armenian merchants played conspicuous role in the court of Ivan the Terrible, and further expanded their commercial activities as far as the northern end of the Grand Duchy of Moscow [Goffman, 2002: 15; Braudel, 1992: 155]. The Armenian merchants had another advantage, as they were going to expand their activities further in the east. The Armenian middlemen settled in Persia found in silk an eminently marketablecommodity. In the seventeenth century, the Ottoman Armenian merchants distinguished themselves by their association with an international trade network basing around New Julfa, a suburban city of Isfahan. Merchants from this city took an active role in the Iranian silk trade which spanned the globe from Narva, Sweden to Shanghais, China. In this way, the Armenian merchants had been successful in establishing their trading network stretching from China to Western Europe by the eighteenth century [McCabe, 2001]. In the course of their expansion, the commercial activities of three non-Muslim merchant communities widely transcended the Ottoman borders. It was, by no means, the loss of weight of the Ottoman commerce for them by the eighteenth century. The commerce on Ottoman territory continued to be crucial for the maintenance of these networks, as the goods they traded were often of Ottoman manufacture or had transited through the Ottoman state. The trade activities of Armenians, just like those of Greeks and Jews, remained intrinsic to the economic system of the Ottoman Empire, and the Ottoman wealth was central to their prosperity [Inalcik Quataert, 1994: 517-8]. As we have, hitherto, surveyed the significance of the non-Muslims merchants in the Ottoman Black Sea trade, it is necessary to emphasize that we should not downplay the importance of the Muslim merchants. Although they were late comers in this region, already in the fifteenth century, Muslim merchants had outnumbered the others at least in the southern section of the south-north trade over the routes of pursa-Istanbul-Caffa or Akkerman by sea and overland by Edime-Kilia-Akkerman [Inalcik Quataert, 1994: 278]. It seems probable that the role of the Muslim merchants constantly gained importance in the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth century, and eventually took over the non-Muslims, especially in the intra-regional trade. The position of the Muslim merchants in the intra-Ottoman trade was much stronger than the non-Muslims during the eighteenth century. The minorities almost always held only a secondary position in the domestic maritime trade. According to an Ottoman document of 1782 or a list of cereal ships to Istanbul provide us an interesting data that out of the total 56 names of merchants, 55 were Turks or other Muslims, only one was Greek or Albanian, and even he was associated with a Turk. The document also shows us that out of 158 ships captains, 136 (86%) were Turks or other Muslims, and 22 (14%) were Greeks or Albanians. Therefore, the Muslim merchants had secured almost total control over the supply of wheat to Istanbul by the Black Sea route [Panzac, 1992: 195, 203]. Socio-economic features of the non-Muslim merchant communities From historical point of view, merchants, especially those who engaged in cross-cultural- trade, possessed, more often than not, ambivalent characters. As frequenters in two or more distinct societies, they had to master several important knowledge and skills that were usually unfamiliar to those who lived inside a particular culture. So, they brought with them, not only a variety of foreign goods and wares, but new technologies and information. These cultural goods often catalyzed a transformation of the host society. In the case of the Ottoman non-Muslim merchants, they became major actors in a technological and cultural interplay between the Ottoman Empire and the rest of Europe. It wa,s their trading network that helped produce a uniform commercial method throughout ti?e Mediterranean and European worlds before the  ¦ nineteenth century [Goffman, 2002: 16]. On the other hand, every society that based principally on the production of use values would inherently harbor antagonism toward the merchant. Such hostilities were often boosted by the stresses that arouse in the course of cultural transformation. Therefore, the position of the cross-cultural merchants was constantly under the threat of eventual outburst of hatred against them. In order to avoid, or at least to alleviate, the tension with the host society, the merchant community had to be adaptive. In the case of the non-Muslim merchants in the Ottoman Empire, we can notice strong tendencies of compliance to the authority. Ottoman Jews and Greeks played major role in the finances during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and even later. They were the major players in the tax-farming, the most important means of capital formation at that time, and their accumulated wealth became indispensable for the state finances and the palace. In return for their service, the Ottoman government conferred them various privileges. Several Jews were appointed the court physicians and imperial treasurers. Greeks were employed as dragomans (official interpreter) and, later, rulers of Moldavia and Wallachia [Inalcik Quataert, 1994: 209], The Ottoman Armenians also played significant role in the palace. The upper strata of their community, often called as amiras, made their presence strongly felt in government as bankers or money lenders. In the tax farming, they provided the capital as sarrafs (bankers), and sold the commodities collected in kind as merchants. After the eighteenth century, they became instrumental in keeping the fragile Ottoman financial system functioning. It is symbolized by the fact that the prominent Dtizian family monopolized the position of superintendent of the state mint office from 1757 until 1880 [Panzac, 1992: 203; Panossian, 2006: 85]. Probably, the most important in this aspect was the role played by their religious authorities. The Ottoman government traditionally granted wide range of religious and judicial autonomies to its Christian and Jewish subjects, calling each of these congregations as millet. The Greek, Jewish, and Armenian mercantile class in Istanbul practically monopolized the posts of the highest priests of their millets, and did their utmost in preserving the imperial order, by securing the loyalty to the sultan among their coreligionists. Thanks to these endeavors, Jews and Armenians were often praised by the authority as millet sadakat, or loyal subjects. In the case of Greek Orthodox, they failed to win this title because of the several unruly elements like semi-nomadic mountaineers or provincial peasants with independent spirits, the upper strata of their community, however, generally earned high esteem among the Muslim authorities. In spite of such functions, non-Muslim merchants did not dare to go over a certain limit of the host societies, because over adaptation to the host society was suicidal to their existence. It would increase the tension with the other society where they made business at the same time. For example, the conversion to Islam might promise better position in the Ottoman society, but it would make very difficult, if not impossible, to earn by the international trade. Thus, probably the best strategy for the merchants was to blur the demarcation line with the host society by making their existence more and more vague and ambiguous. By doing so, they could expect more secure conditionsfor their survival. It was, therefore, no coincidence that the three non-Muslim merchant communities in the Ottoman Empire possessed marked characteristic of special multilingual!sm. As the other Jews in the Western Europe, Jews in the Ottoman Empire adopted the languages of the people among whom they lived. They could, usually quite fluently, communicate in Turkish and other majority languages, but they nevert fully assimilated linguistically to the host societies. The Romaniotes, who had long lived among the Greeks, adopted vernacular Greek as their communal language,.while the, Ashkenazi, East European Jews continued > to speak Yiddish in their home. The most influential element of the Ottoman Jews, the Sephardi, preserved medieval Spanish, where their ancestors had been living until the Catholic take-over. Moreover, all of these Jewish vernaculars contained significant portion of Hebraic expression. Thus, the dialect expresses the two contradictory tendencies: the integration to the surrounding soci ety and the isolation. The Ottoman Armenians shared the same characteristic. While they continued to use ancient Armenian as their spiritual symbol especially in their place of worship, almost all of them were either bilingual or, in some cases, monolingual speakers of Turkish. Turcophone among the Armenians was so strong that Vartan Pasa, an Armenian writer in the nineteenth century, in the preface to his History of Napoleon Bonaparte, justifies the fact that he had written this work in Turkish with the argument that the Armenians who knew ancient language (krapar) were very few and that the new literary language based on the vernacular was still not sufficiently developed thus, that the Turkish language was the best tool to the majority [Strauss, 2003:41, 55]. The case of Greeks was much more complicated, but it might show rather vividly the advantages of linguistic ambiguity for the prosperity of the mercantile community. During the Ottoman period, the word Greeks seldom denoted the linguistic community. Many Greeks in the Anatolian plateau spoke Turkish dialect, Karamanh, while the Greeks in Syria and Egypt used Arabic as their ordinary means of communication. The Greeks in the Balkans were more perplexing. There were many Greeks who spoke Bulgarian, Vlacho-Arouman, Albanian, and Turkish. The linguistic variety derived from the context that the communal identity of the Ottoman Greeks usually conflated with the Rum millet identity. Within the Ottoman Empire, the Greek Orthodox Christians, especially those who composed the urban strata, were collectively referred to Romans, members of the Rum millet, regardless of their ethnic origins. Such tendencies were strongly felt especially among the mercantile class. The notion of the Greek Orthodox Christian was indeed a social category. In many parts of the Balkans, contemporary denomination of nations, like Serbs and Bulgarians, denoted the peasants in particular locations. When Slavs moved into the urban space or became members of the middle class, they generally shifted their identity to Greek. The local Christian higher strata were Grecophone in Serbia. In the Bulgarian lands, the domination of cultural life by the ecumenical patriarchate led to the promotion of Grecophone culture in liturgy, archives, and correspondence [Roudometof, 1998:13-14]. The tendency became more conspicuous after 1750, when the prosperity of the Greek Orthodox merchants was reaching its peak. Owing to the predominance in trade, Greek became the primary language of commerce in the eastern Mediterranean, and Orthodox Christian merchants, regardless of their ethnic origins, generally spoke Greek and often assumed Greek names. The middle class Orthodox Christians were largely acculturated into the Greeks or under heavy Grecophone influences [Stoianovich, 1960: 291]. The ambiguity or ambivalency of the groups seems to have been felt stronger at such elements like new comers, lower members, and/or provincial elites, than at the centre of the community. For example, during the first half of the nineteenth century, the biiingualism, especially with the dialect spoken by the majority member of the surroundings, was more conspicuous among newly immigrated members from local villages than those who had lived in urban space for generations. It reflected in their identities that veteran urban dwellers were adamant in their Greek consciousness in contrast to the new comers with mixed identity with Bulgarian element [Markova, 1976: 43-54]. The same was true for the Greek ecclesiastic circle, where lower clergy tended to remain within the boundary of Metropolitan diocese, while the higher hierarchies rotated several dioceses of different Patriarchates. As a result, high dignities in the Church possessed deep-seated belief in the Hellenic nature of the Ortho doxy; ion the other hand, parish priests widely shared non-Hellenic culture with their parishioners. To summarize our discussion hitherto, the non-Muslim merchants in the Black Sea region bore the following attributes as groups. They were religious congregation as well as occupational category. As for the latter, they were, more often than not, engaged in external trade, or in other words, were agencies tonnecting different cultural, socio-economic entities. The members of these groups were usually quite proficient in special occupational expertise. They knew well specific business and social practices of various places, and they were multilingual for the most of part. They were generally more adaptive to the host society, and, at least on the surface, very compliant to the existing authority. The demarcation line between them and the other groups was vague, and often intentionally blurred. Their ambiguity or ambivalency was more intense, more strongly felt at peripheral or lower strata than at the core. Perhaps, this was the most important attribute that made possible the non-Musli m merchants to maintain their social and economic function, while preserving their identities, without provoking serious conflict with the host societies. The above mentioned characteristics of the Ottoman non-Muslim merchants might seem to fit well into a wider category of Diaspora merchants. But, at the same time, there arises an uncomfortable feeling to call those merchants who dwelled in their homeland as Diaspora, because, except for the Jews, many Greek Orthodox and Armenian merchants lived in the territory of their former Kingdoms or Empire. Moreover, there were many non-Mercantile members within the Greek Orthodox and Armenian communities in the Ottoman Empire (the Jews were exception in this case as well). It does not seem reasonable to separate the merchant groups from the peasant mass when we discuss them as ethno-religious communities. Taking into these inconveniences into consideration, it seems more pertinent to apply the old notion of people-class,1 proposed by Abram Leon, for the case study of the Ottoman non-Muslim merchants. In his work that examined the historical development of the Jewish communities in Europe, Leon 1 turned

Garden for the Blind Essay :: Architecture Design Essays

Garden for the Blind Essay One of the first actions needed in constructing a garden for the blind on the south lawn of Hume Hall is to construct a barrier on the northern end and eastern end surrounding the garden so as to block out any unwanted street noise. The wall would preferably be cement, with the sides facing Museum Road and North-South Drive unpainted so as to absorb as much sound as possible. However, the sides facing the garden should be painted so as to reflect the sounds of the garden back to its occupants. This wall may need to be as high as seven feet or larger, however high it needs to be in order to block as much external noise as possible. When a person walks through this garden, the first sense that is triggered is the sense of sound, for the walkway is wooden at the beginning of the garden path. Since this garden is situated on a steep hillside, the walkway needs to be level and built up next to the hillside, with steps going down leading to the next level walkway. The garden path continues, winding back and forth to the bottom of the hill. The entrance to this garden is to the west of the north wall, and the first realization that one is in the garden is the aroma of the mints lining the edges of the walkway on the hillside. Wooden railings line either side of the walkway to help guide the visitor, and the person would be able to touch, smell, and even taste the different mint plants lining this area of the garden. The different mints would include chocolate mint, pineapple mint, spearmint, and peppermint. The next area of the garden a person encounters is one that appeals to the active touch, for these plants have appealing textured bark and leaves. A person realizes that this next stage of the garden applies a different sense because the walkway changes to a brick path, which reflects a different sound to the person, whether he or she is tapping the path with a cane or simply listening to the sound of his or her own footsteps. The first plants found in this ?texture? area are crape myrtle, which have smooth bark. These plants can be considered small trees or shrubs, and occupy some space, so the visitor can walk along the path, gently touching the leaves and bark until the next plant, the lamb?

Coming to Terms :: Personal Narrative Writing

Coming to Terms It's not a light bulb that suddenly turns on. It's not a bolt of lightning that strikes you without pain. It's more like a boot; a steel toe boot that literally drops out of the sky and kicks you directly in the face, knocking out the majority of your teeth and smashing your nose into a bloody mess. That's more what it's like when you come to a realization. All that talk of a magical epiphany is left in the dust while the boot moves on to its next victim. It doesn't let you see through some new set of eyes; it dulls your other senses so that all you can do is see. You see what you've been missing for a long time. Being a person of many passionate convictions, its fair to say that I've had to have facial reconstructive surgery quite a few times. It most notably happened my sophomore year of college, taking a class called â€Å"Cubans in the USA .† Of course my family warned me that the professor was a raging communist, known for such ghastly evils as not believing in the embargo, questioning the motives of the Cuban American National Foundation, and, dare I say it, not thinking that Fidel Castro was the anti-Christ in the flesh! (Oh no! Stone Him!) So sure enough, the first day I went in, wearing a Cuban flag pendant, guns ablaze, ready to strike down this hedonistic infidel with my passionate patriotism. But something happened. He told us to give him a chance to ward off these notions our grandmothers instilled in us. (Oh no, he's already using some evil mind control technique! ) But I did give him a chance. And at the end of the semester, I was eager to learn more of how to correct my mis-education, without loosing my sense of pride in my background, while slowing recovering from the boot's most vicious attack. But even more recently, and more notably, it happened during our visit to the South Florida Water Management District. I scanned the website the night before class and went in on Friday morning, armed with my deep, uncontestable knowledge of the everglades, ready to battle this evil government agency whose sole purpose had to be to serve as a faà §ade for the fact that the government didn't care about the everglades.

Overview of the Social Security Scheme in India: ESIC Scheme Essay

Social Security is both a concept as well as a system. It represents basically a system of protection of individuals who are in need of such protection by the State as an agent of the society. Such protection is relevant in contingencies such as retirement, resignation, retrenchment, death, disablement which are beyond the control of the individual members of the Society. Men are born differently; they think differently and act differently. State as an agent of the society has an important mandate to harmonise such differences through a protective cover to the poor, the weak, the deprived and the disadvantaged. The concept of social security is now generally understood as meaning protection provided by the society to its members through a series of public measures against the economic and social distress that otherwise is caused by the stoppage or substantial reduction of earnings resulting from sickness, maternity, employment injury, occupational diseases, unemployment, invalidity, old age and death. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) defines Social Security as â€Å"the security that society furnishes through appropriate organization against certain risks to which its members are perennially exposed. The ILO concept of social security is based on the recognition of the fundamental social right guaranteed by law to all human beings who live from their own labour and who find themselves unable to work temporarily or permanently for reasons beyond their control. At the international level, the preamble of the Constitution of ILO also referred to the need and protection of workers against sickness, disease and injury arising out of their employment, pension for old age, and protection of the interests of the workers who were employed in countries other than their own. Thus, the right to Social Security was recognized officially for the first time. Subsequently, the UN General Assembly, while adopting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights also recognized the right to Social Security by stating that every member of the society has a right to social security. â€Å"Social Security† has been recognised as an instrument for social transformation and progress and must be preserved, supported and developed as such. Furthermore, far from being an obstacle to economic progress as is often said, social security organised on a firm and sound basis will promote progress, since once men and women benefit from increased security and are free from anxiety, will become more productive. There is considerable controversy about the social and economic effects of social security, and most of the current debate is focused on its supposedly negative effects. Social Security is said to discourage people from working and saving to reduce international competitiveness and employment creation, and to encourage people to withdraw from the labour market prematurely. On the other hand, social security can also be seen to have a number of very positive economic effects. It can help to make people capable of earning an income and to increase their productive potential; it may help to maintain effective demand at the national level; and it may help create conditions, in which a market economy can flourish, notably by encouraging workers to accept innovation and change. Social security measures are generally income, maintenance measures intended to provide a minimum living to the people when they are deprived of the same due to invalidity, unemployment or old age. The two basic elements of social security are provision of a ‘minimum living to those who are deprived of the same and ‘selective redistribution of income’ to a target group to reduce inequalities. Thus Social security is an instrument for social transformation and good governance. According to the ILO- World Labour Report-2000, the total security expenditure in India as percentage of GDP in 1996 was 1.8 whereas for the corresponding period the Social Security expenditure in Sri Lanka was 4.7, Malaysia 2.9 and China 3.6. In Argentina, the social security expenditure for the same period as a percentage of GDP reached the level of 12.4 and in case of Brazil 12.2. In comparison to Argentina and Brazil, the expenditure on social security in India is much less. The expenditure on social security cannot be directly related alone to the economic development. Intervention of the State would be essential and a co-relationship may have to be established for faster economic d evelopment. Social Security in India was traditionally the responsibility of the family/community in general. With the gradual process of industrialization/urbanization, breakup of the joint family set up and weakening of family bondage, the need for institutionalized and State-cum-society regulated social security arrangement to address the problem in a planned manner in wider social/economic interest at national level has been felt necessary. Currently, on-going measures towards transformation process for trade and industry, increasing role of market forces and increase in longevity, in general world over has added a new dimension to the issue and enhanced the requirement further towards a planned and regulated institutionalized measure in the form of social security in its common understanding. Social Security in Organised Sector in India The social security schemes in India cover only a very small segment of the organised work force, which may be defined as workers who are having a direct regular employer-employee relationship within an organization. Out of an estimated work force of about 397 million, only 28 million are having the benefit of formal social security protection. The Social Security Laws in India at present can be broadly divided into two categories, namely, the contributory and the non-contributory. The contributory laws are those which provide for financing of the social security programmes by contributions paid by workers and employers and in some cases supplemented by contributions/grants from the Government. The important contributory schemes include the Employees State Insurance Act, 1948 and the Provident Fund, Pension and Deposit Linked Insurance Schemes framed under the Employees’ Provident Funds and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1948. The three major non-contributory laws are the Workmen’s Compensation Act, 1923, the Maternity Benefit Act, 1961 and the Payment of Gratuity Act, 1972. Social Security in Unorganised Sector in India. As already mentioned, the coverage under Social Security is about 10% of the working population mostly in the organised sector. The vast majority of the workforce is in the unorganised sector, which includes agricultural labour, cultivators, small traders and hawkers, artisans and other self-employed persons, porters, auto-rickshaw drivers and other transport workers etc. Bringing them under formal social security coverage has been found difficult due to the following reasons: a) Seasonal and intermittent nature of work, leading to difficulties in meeting the qualifying conditions. b) Low level and irregular pattern of earnings and employment; c) Absence of employer-employee relationship leading to difficulties in determining the principal employer and in assessing and recovering contributions. d) Relatively weak administrative structure, particularly in rural areas. Under the Employees State Insurance Scheme and Employees’ Provident Fund Scheme a very small segment of workers in the unorganized sector are covered. The huge gap in coverage in the unorganized sector requires for a fresh strategy to extend coverage of both the schemes to the unorganized sector. The unorganised workforce is characterised by scattered and fragmented areas of employment, seasonality of employment, lack of job security, low legislative protection because of their scattered and dispersed nature, lack of awareness and high unemployment levels, perceived mis-match between the training requirements and the training facilities available, low literacy levels, outmoded social customs like child marriage, excessive spending on ceremonial festivities leading to indebtedness and bondage, etc., primitive production technologies and feudal production relations are further impediments not facilitating these workers to imbibe and assimilate higher technologies and better production relations. The unorganised Labour can be categorised broadly into four categories as follows:- a) Occupation : Small and marginal farmers, landless agricultural labourers, share croppers, fishermen, those engaged in animal husbandry, in beedi rolling beedi labelling and beedi packing workers in building and construction, etc. b) Nature of Employment: Attached agricultural labourers, bonded labourers migrant workers, contract and casual labourers come under this category. c) Specially distressed categories: Toddy tappers, scavengers, carriers of head loads, drivers of animal driven vehicles, loaders and unloaders belong to this category. e) Service categories: Midwives, domestic workers, fishermen and women, barbers, vegetable and fruit vendors, newspaper vendors etc. come under this category. The unorganised nature of the workforce, dispersed nature of operational processes and lack of institutional back up reduces their bargaining power and their ability to take full benefits from the Acts and legislations enacted for their benefits. Further, low skill levels of this workforce provides little scope for them to move vertically in the occupational ladder to improve their financial situation. The growth of informal, unprotected work with shrinking formal employment compels the workers to bear an increasing direct burden of financing social needs, with adverse effects on their quality of life. That burden may also undermine the capacity of enterprises to compete with global economy.