University Library, University of North Bengal

It is indeed gratifying that the fourth volume of Social Trends is being published on time. This year, an important landmark has been reached and that is the journal has been approved by the UGC. This recognition has already motivated the young scholars to write for the otherwise young journal.

The developments guide me to approach my task with greater vigour. I can see the young minds inching towards maturity, ready to take on new challenges. I thoroughly enjoy passing on the editorial tips out of my experience to the scholars who are not my direct students. In a way, thus, I get an opportunity to dialogue with a larger body of inquisitive minds. I enjoy doing this meager service to the growth of the discipline.

The journal offers an opportunity for the young and established scholars to write experimental papers. One can see that the papers by Pinaki Roy, Jhuma Chakraborty and Sritama Basu, and Sanjay K. Roy in this volume have been written applying auto ethnography, in line with the tradition set by scholars like S. C. Dube, M. N. Srinivas, C. Wright Mills, to mention only a few. The idea is to explore the rich reserve of our personal experiences, reflect on them dialogically, objectify them and draw discourses, which would give us some idea about how people in general organize their everyday life, coordinating consciousness and actions.

Since we published the last volume of Social Trends, we have lost our beloved Prof. Sharit Kr. Bhowmik, a member of the Advisory Committee of the journal, a former faculty of the Department of Sociology, NBU, and a leading sociologist in the country. We have included an obituary on Prof. Bhowmik, in this volume.

Prof. Rajatsubhra Mukhopadhyay, a faculty of the Department ofSociology and a member of the editorial team of the journal, has retired on 9 November 2016 after serving the Department for 31 years. We have included in this volume a note of appreciation, which was accepted in his farewell meeting, held on 16 December 2016 in the Department of Sociology.

I would thank the members of the Advisory Committee, my colleagues on the Editorial Board, the contributors and the reviewers for their kind help and suggestions in bringing out the fourth volume of the journal.