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University of North Bengal

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    Filtered Identities: Social Media Engagement and Quarter Life Crisis among College Students
    (University of North Bengal, 2026-03-31) Sewa, Neha
    The phenomenal rise of social media has introduced a new form of pressure, particularly among college students, who navigate the challenges of identity formation, academic expectations, and personal growth. This paper attempts to examine what we call “The Aesthetic Pressures” generated by the delineation of perfect lifestyles portrayed in social media for youths and their relationship with quarter-life crisis, a phenomenon affecting young adults. A quarterlife crisis typically occurs between the ages of 18 and 30, which is marked by feelings of self-doubt, uncertainty, identity issues and existential questioning, intensified by societal xpectations. Social media exacerbates this crisis by presenting often unrealistic yet unattainable representations of perfect success, beauty, and happiness. Through qualitative and quantitative research methods, including surveys and interviews conducted with college students, this study examines how social media’s aesthetic portrayal of perfection influences students’ self-perception, mental health, and overall life satisfaction. Participants were asked to reflect on their social media usage. Findings reveal a significant correlation between frequent social media engagement and heightened anxiety, dissatisfaction, and a sense of inadequacy caused by social media. Many students reported their struggles coping with the unrealistic comparison to their peers’ highlighting reels, which often led to an increased sense of disconnection from their authentic selves. Additionally, students reported the need to constantly project an image of success online, which contributed to feelings of pressure and a sense of purpose crisis.
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    Micropolitics of Everyday Life and Agency in a Gendered Space: A Study of a Harijan Basti in Guwahati
    (University of North Bengal, 2026-03-31) Saikia, Bondita
    This study analyses how women in Guwahati’s historically embedded slum, a Harijan Basti, negotiate the structural and spatial limitations manifested in the intersectionality of caste, class, and femininity. The study explores how home and domestic spaces become a contested domains of power, negotiation, and agency, with a focus on the notion of micro-politics of everyday lives, documenting how women see, understand, and behave within spatial constraints that are imposed from the outside and regulated by household dynamics using the existential phenomenological approach of Merleau-Ponty (1962) with an emphasis on embodied subjectivity and intersubjective meaning. The study attempts to frame the notion of agency of marginalised women as both situated in relationality and placed in accordance with a feminist spatial framework, which views subjectivity as continuously shaped by daily routine interactions, emotional labour, and social status in society. The paper claims that slums, which are frequently perceived in reference to precarity and hardships of everyday life, are also spaces where gendered agency is continuously engaged in symbolic production, reconstruction, and resistance.
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    The Ordinary Hero: Gaze, Recognition, and Everyday Life in One Punch Man
    (University of North Bengal, 2023-03-31) Chettri, Ragini
    This paper reads One Punch Man as a way of thinking through what heroism looks like once it is placed inside the routines of everyday life. Instead of treating heroism as rare or elevated, the manga consistently situates Saitama in spaces that feel ordinary and even dull: a small apartment, worries about employment, long stretches of paperwork, and days marked by boredom rather than purpose. These details are easy to overlook, but they are central to how the series frames heroic action. They suggest that heroism does not stand outside social life, but is shaped by it. Drawing in part on ideas associated with Erving Goffman and Henri Lefebvre, this analysis argues that an action only becomes “heroic” when it is socially recognised. Saving the world, on its own, is not enough. It has to be seen, named, and repeated within recognisable frameworks. Visibility, therefore, becomes a key issue, though not simply in terms of public admiration. What matters more is the institutional gaze of the Hero Association, which classifies heroes, assigns ranks, and translates action into numbers, profiles, and media value. In this sense, the Association functions less like a moral community and more like a bureaucratic apparatus. From this perspective, Saitama’s persistent anonymity is significant. It points to a disjunction between doing good and being legible as good. Despite his extraordinary power, his actions often fail to register within the systems that confer status and recognition. By dwelling on boredom, obscurity, and the frustration of going unnoticed, One Punch Man complicates the familiar fantasy of the celebrated hero. The series suggests that in late-modern society, virtue increasingly depends not on the act itself, but on whether that act passes through the correct institutional channels and appears in an acceptable frame.
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    Gender, Governance and Land Rights: Navigating Tribal Customary Law in West Bengal
    (University of North Bengal, 2026-03-31) Chakraborty, Sreeparna
    This paper highlights the intersection of gender, traditional tribal customs, and the participation of local governance in the Balurghat Block of Dakshin Dinajpur in West Bengal. Santal women in this region are primarily engaged in agriculture, but legal control over land till remains a dilemma. Under traditional Santal customary law, women are generally denied rights to the landed property of their father or husband. Despite state policies like the Nijo Grijo Nijo Bhumi (my home, my land) scheme, which mandates that land Pattas (deeds) be issued in the name of the female head of the family, these women are often excluded during actual distribution. Because tribal women are often excluded from the Hindu Succession Act, which grand sequel inheritance rights to daughters, they turned to their local gram panchayat to resolve land disputes; here, the panchayat acts as a local court. Panchayats sometimes provide the right judgment and sometime acts as a source of discrimination.
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    Cultural Hybridity of the India-Born Tibetans in Sikkim
    (University of North Bengal, 2026-03-31) Bhutia, Sonam Choden
    This paper examines the evolution of cultural identity within the Tibetan community, specifically focusing on the Indian-born younger generation Tibetans currently residing in Sikkim. Records of previous studies on the Tibetan exile experience have centred on the preservation of culture and identity as a form of political resistance. However, this paper is based on the cultural hybridity emerging among younger Tibetans. Drawing on Homi Bhabha’s concept of “cultural hybridity”, this study utilises a qualitative methodology incorporating quasi-ethnography and observations using semi-structured interviews. The paper aims to explore their linguistic, food and other socio-cultural aspects that shape hybrid identity and culture in exile. The findings suggest that by blending traditional Tibetan values with Western and Indian influences, Tibetan youth are not experiencing cultural erosion. Instead, they are engaging in a strategic hybridity that ensures the survival of Tibetan culture and identity, revealing a structure and agency relationship. The paper concludes that this hybrid cultural identity serves as a powerful coping mechanism in allowing a population of displaced backgrounds to negotiate and maintain their social existence in society.