In the United States, healthcare providers, institutions, and society have failed to ensure the conditions necessary for racial and ethnic minority communities to be in good health. Many scholars and federal government officials consider racial and ethnic disparities in health to be an injustice and have called for national attention and strategies to eliminate them. Several of these strategies, including cultural competency, focus on addressing deficiencies within the health care system. Cultural competency is the ability of a healthcare provider to (...) function effectively in the context of cultural differences with the clients they serve. Increasing cultural competency among healthcare providers has been shown to improve the quality of healthcare received by racial and ethnic minorities, which contributes to reducing health disparities. Achieving equity in the quality of healthcare received is a necessary strategy, but is insufficient for eliminating disparities in the health status of racial and ethnic minority populations. A growing body of literature reveals that health disparities are determined, not only by inequities in health care, but by social factors. The implication is that strategies that focus solely on healthcare perpetuate the misconception that health status is determined by access to or quality of healthcare. To eliminate racial and ethnic disparities in health status, the fundamental conditions for good health, which include but are not limited to healthcare equity, must be acknowledged and ensured for all people. (shrink)

In this work, we focus on the problem of selecting low-level heuristics in a hyperheuristic approach with offline learning, for the solution of instances of different problem domains. The objective is to improve the performance of the offline hyperheuristic approach, identifying equivalence classes in a set of instances of different problems and selecting the best performing heuristics in each of them. A methodology is proposed as the first step of a set of instances of all problems, and the generic characteristics (...) of each instance and the performance of the heuristics in each one of them are considered to define the vectors of characteristics and make a grouping of classes. Metalearning with statistical tests is used to select the heuristics for each class. Finally, we used the Naive Bayes to test the set instances with k-fold cross-validation, and we compared all results statistically with the best-known values. In this research, the methodology was tested by applying it to the problems of capacitated vehicle routing and graph coloring. The experimental results show that the proposed methodology can improve the performance of the offline hyperheuristic approach, correctly identifying the classes of instances and applying the appropriate heuristics in each case. This is based on the statistical comparison of the results obtained with those of the state of the art of each instance. (shrink)

The formal oversight of medical education in India occurred with the promulgation of the Indian Medical Degrees Act in 1916. Despite an awareness of the need to train ethical doctors and the formal discussion of this as early as 1955, the formal teaching of medical ethics has been restricted to a few colleges as it has not been part of a mandated requirement. In August, 2019, all medical colleges in India will adopt a new Medical Council of (...) class='Hi'>India mandated curriculum. An embedded AETCOM module across all years of training is a part of this curriculum and is the first attempt to introduce medical ethics uniformly in close to 500 medical colleges in the country. This paper traces the historical attempts to include medical ethics in medical education in India, and describes the current plan to implement ethics teaching in the undergraduate medical curriculum in India. (shrink)

Though John Stuart Mill's long employment by the East India Company did not limit him to drafting despatches on relations with the princely states, that activity must form the centrepiece of any satisfactory study of his Indian career. As yet the activity has scarcely been glimpsed. It produced, on average, about a draft a week, which he listed in his own hand. He subsequently struck out items that he sought to disown in consequence of substantial revisions made by the (...) Company's directors or the Board of Control. He also listed items that achieved publication as parliamentary papers and they amount to about ten per cent of his drafts. The two lists, published in the most recent volume of his Collected Works, reveal, at the least, the ‘political’ despatches from which he did not seek to dissociate himself. The despatches were not entirely his work and authorship in the conventional sense may not be assumed. They were the product of an elaborate process, in which many hands were engaged. At worst, they were his work in much the same way that an Act of Parliament is the work of the Crown Solicitor who drafts the bill. At best they were his as are the drafts of a civil servant who believes in policy statements that he prepares for his political masters. The greatest English philosopher and social scientist of the nineteenth century was, in his daily occupation, an employee. His Company was charged with initiating policies for the Indian states and they were subject to the control of a minister of the Crown. (shrink)

Indian philosophical thought has been deeply metaphysical, and it is no surprise that, faced with the anti-metaphysical thrust of contemporary philosophy, one of the issues uppermost in the minds of Indian thinkers is the question of the possibility of metaphysics. In recent philosophical literature, two tendencies are discernible: an attempt to defend metaphysics in the traditional grand style, and a concern with the idea of descriptive metaphysics as an alternative. For the former, we may turn to Kalidas Bhattacharyya and J. (...) N. Chubb; for the latter to J. N. Mohanty and S. N. Ganguly. (shrink)

XLRI, in association with a few Tata Group companies, established the XLRI-JRD Tata Foundation in Business Ethics in 1991 to mark their long-standing commitment and contribution to business ethics in India. The foundation seeks to address this by publicly affirming the urgent need for ethics in business and the need to bring about a conducive culture in which it can thrive.

India had a rich history of ‘philanthropy’, but over time along with the changes in the macro-economic environment, the concept of social development gradually changed. In the years following economic liberalization, India witnessed rapid economic growth and thus, a new era of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in India began. Today, CSR has become embedded into corporate activities in the form of synchronizing their business activities with society and environment, thus ensuring good governance practices and corporate ethics. The (...) skewness of private sector CSR activities is a thought-provoking idea which seeks more government role in CSR activities. In 2010, Department of Public Enterprise (DPE), Government of India introduced ‘mandatory’ CSR policies for 249 Central Public Sector Enterprises (CPSEs). The transition from voluntary to mandatory CSR activities is proving difficult for many. As a result, an effective framework is required to ensure the success of ‘mandatory’ CSR initiatives. Hence, a framework is proposed to the DPE for effective management of CSR activities in 249 CPSEs. This article also debates whether CPSEs should be doing mandatory CSR. (shrink)

Lang, B. Philosophy and the manners of art.--Hofstadter, A. Freedom, enownment, and philosophy.--Mehta, J. L. A stranger from Asia.--Fox, D. A. A passage past India.--Rucker, D. Philosophy and the constitution of Emerson's world.--Schneider, H. W. The pragmatic movement in historical perspective.--Barnes, H. E. Reflections on myth and magic.--Cauvel, J. The imperious presence of theater.--Seay, A. Musical conservatism in the fourteenth century.--Hochman, W. R. The enduring fascination of war.--Davenport, M. M. J. Glenn Gray and the promise of wisdom.

Jnanasrimitra (975-1025) was regarded by both Buddhists and non-Buddhists as the most important Indian philosopher of his generation. His theory of exclusion combined a philosophy of language with a theory of conceptual content to explore the nature of words and thought. Jnanasrimitra's theory informed much of the work accomplished at Vikramasila, a monastic and educational complex instrumental to the growth of Buddhism. His ideas were also passionately debated among successive Hindu and Jain philosophers. This volume marks the first English translation (...) of Jnanasrimitra's Monograph on Exclusion, a careful, critical investigation into language, perception, and conceptual awareness. Featuring the rival arguments of Buddhist and Hindu intellectuals, among other thinkers, the Monograph reflects more than half a millennium of competing claims while providing an invaluable introduction to a crucial philosopher. Lawrence J. McCrea and Parimal G. Patil familiarize the reader with the author, themes, and topics of the text and situate Jnanasrimitra's findings within his larger intellectual milieu. Their clear, accessible, and accurate translation proves the influence of Jnanasrimitra on the foundations of Buddhist and Indian philosophy. (shrink)

This article featuring India constitutes one of five articles in a collection of essays on local capacity-building in research ethics by graduates from the University of Toronto’s Joint Centre for Bioethics MHSc in Bioethics, International Stream program funded by the Fogarty International Center for Advanced Study in the Health Sciences. Research ethics is a growing area of work and interest in India. Ethics review remains the weakest component in the mechanism of good clinical practice, and there is a (...) severe dearth of professionals trained in ethics who can provide leadership. Although the Indian Good Clinical Practice Guidelines, the Indian Medical Council Act, and the Drugs and Cosmetics Act require that the Indian Council of Medical Research’s ethical guidelines be followed as a mandatory requirement for physicians who conduct research, there is a pervasive lack of awareness of basic requirements guiding the ethical conduct of research. There is a great need to strengthen India’s research ethics capacity and regulatory framework for research. (shrink)

Copyrighted originally by George Allen and Unwin Ltd. in 1962 this paper edition makes Conze's review of Indian Buddhism available at a relatively low price. The book is divided into three parts: Archaic Buddhism which deals with facets common to all of Indian Buddhism, the Sthaviras which deals with the Hinayäna, and the Mahäyäna. Often a commentator will present a traditional view of Indian Buddhism through a translation of some Buddhist's compendium on Buddhism. This work, however, is the result of (...) the author's own long research into Buddhism, and thus at times it reflects his own reactions to aspects of Buddhism rather than those of a more Catholic Buddhist. Specifically his remarks on tantra and logic, though representative of some Buddhist opinion at some time, do not reflect the views of more Catholic Buddhist historians and scholars. However, in his introduction the author describes the scope of his work with the full realization that he cannot fulfill the rather awesome demands which a review of the whole of Indian Buddhism asks.--P. J. H. (shrink)

This is a fine exposition of the view of Mädhyamika Buddhism established by Indian pandit Nägärjuna and its subsequent transmission to China. The teaching of Emptiness, the central doctrine of the Mädhyamika, was first brought to China in detail by Kumärajiva. A number of documents written within fifteen years of Kumaräjiva's arrival in China are analyzed to determine the aspects that were and were not understood by those students. Writings of Hui-Yuan, Seng-jui, and Seng-chao serve as the basis of the (...) investigation; they are first treated individually in order to investigate their views and terminology and then are compared in a short summary chapter. The end of the book consists of fifty-eight pages of their writings, either question and answer tracts on Emptiness, introductions to Indian translations, or short treatises on Emptiness or the lack of own-being. The book is a must for those who wish to understand either the Mädhyamika or the transmission of it to China. Though it is well written and the chapters on China read easily, the subject matter of the chapter on the philosophy of Nägärjuna makes the going rougher.--P. J. H. (shrink)