With the Northeast identified as India’s “future powerhouse”, Sikkim has witnessed a surge in the development of hydro-power projects. At present it plans to develop 26 hydro-power projects on the river Teesta and its tributaries and the state currently has five projects which are operational along with four projects at various stages of construction. The construction of these run-of-the-river projects and the building of tunnels in an ecologically fragile region have not been without its fair share of controversies and opposition. The opposition to the dams has largely concentrated on the upstream impacts of the hydro-power projects along with issues of displacement, loss of culturally significant ecologies and other environmental concerns. However, the downstream impact of these projects and its implications on downstream populations has been largely ignored in the Project Appraisals, Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) studies as well as in public hearings. Furthermore, the completion of the four ongoing projects will ensure that most of the river will flow through tunnels and will substantially change the natural flow patterns and the ecology of the river. Against this background, the paper studies the downstream effects of the dams on the communities and populations living downstream in general and the Teesta V HEP in particular and argues about the need for a more comprehensive assessment of the costs and benefits of building dams. 

Recently, graphene has attracted both academic and industrial interest because it can produce a dramatic improvement in properties at low filler content. Graphene-based materials are single- or few-layer platelets that can be produced in bulk quantities by chemical methods. The utilization of graphene-based materials in the fabrication of nanocomposities with different polymer matrixes has been explored. A variety of routes used to produce graphene-based materials are reviewed, along with methods for dispersing these materials in various polymer matrices. An overview of potential applications for these composites and current challenges in the field are provided for perspective and to potentially guide future progress on the development of these promising materials.

Fractal features are widely observed in nature as well as in various fields of science. To determine the scaling properties of fractal, the widely used technique is detrended fluctuation analysis  (DFA) method. It is successfully applied to various non-stationary time series such as DNA sequances, heart rate dynamics, long-time weather records, earthquake data etc. The multifractal spectrum identifies the deviations in fractal structure within time periods with large and small fluctuation. The present article is a brief description of the multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis (MFDFA) technique that estimates the multifractal spectrum of so many non-stationary time series.

In an era when a married woman was meant to be an ‘angel in the house’ with no profession of her own, Elizabeth Gaskell, the well-known Victorian novelist, was a dutiful wife, mother, and avid traveler as well as author of several controversial books. This dichotomy in her life and in her writings was reflective of the ambiguous social situation of most middle-class married women. Although some women acquired fame and semi-fulfillment, others suffered silently. The ‘literary apartheid’ imposed by the male literary establishment made women authors seek ways to assert their views using various means.  This paper will demonstrate, using Elizabeth Gaskell’s short story, ‘The Grey Woman’ as an illustration, how the Gothic/Sensational literary genre allowed Gaskell and her fellow writers to voice subversive ideas without appearing overtly radical. Use of this mode of writing was one of the ways which helped Gaskell negotiate her way through restrictive patriarchal norms and survive as a ‘proper’ Victorian housewife while pursuing her ambitions as a writer.