Journal of Studies in Dynamics and Change (JSDC)

Baiga Sports

Uday Pratap Singh, Ranju Hasini Sahoo — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0530

Universally, sport is a very ancient practice. Tribal sports are deeply rooted in the traditions, customs, rituals, and history of indigenous communities. Through traditional sports, native people learn the importance of nature and culture and vice versa. Around the world, tribes play various sports. Sports activities also serve many purposes, including preparation for hunting, skill development, and the interpretation of their culture. The traditional sports of Baiga reflect not only the physical abilities but also their social structures, natural beliefs, spiritual power, and community values. These sports are associated with their habitats, agriculture, land, water, mountains, trees, and ecology. The sport is associated with their health and wellbeing. It requires rigorous training, discipline, rules and regulations, continuity, practice, sportsmanship, and teamwork. Different sports have different grounds, different social surroundings. Through traditional sports, the community learns social values such as respect, teamwork, honesty, sportsmanship, empathy, discipline, leadership, environmental connection, cultural exchange, recognition, and a sense of indigenous identity. Traditional sports are essential to the physical and mental health of the tribal community, a community whose membership is determined by shared immediate locale. Through conventional sports, one can understand their physical and social criteria.

Ethno-Ecology, Eco-System and Environmental Wisdom

Sandeep Kumar Sahu, Nilakantha Panigrahi — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0530

Human society from the ancient times maintains a symbiotic relationship with forest and forest-based resources which influence their life, living and source of livelihood from birth to death. The forest resources in the form of plants, animals, birds, fruits are adopted in various cultural practices in the form of totems, beliefs and customs which are considered as the environmental wisdom in which human society is an integral part of both physical and meta physical entities. Most of the concepts of environmental wisdom used as a part of environmental explanations in this field have western origin and looking from etic perspectives. The humor theory of Hippocrates considered as the important foundation for environmental determinism has its origin in the theory of ‘Panchatatva’ of Indian Philosophy includes Prithvi (Earth), Jal (Water), Agni/Tej (Fire), Vayu (Air) and Akash (Space/Ether), which are the fundamental building blocks which influences our physical and mental wellbeing. The geographic differences in the physical form and their effects on personality resulted in variations in their world by life and living. However, over the period scientific methods based on simple, linear, cause-effect relationships ignored or neglected the complex interactions and feedback processes that make environmental wisdom. However, only recently a new approach is focused to look at environmental resources and ecological relationships from participants’ point of view which is called as ethno-science, ethnographic semantics indigenous traditional knowledge systems broadly known as Environmental Wisdoms build over centuries through various coping processes which need to be understood from emic perspective. Keeping this in mind, attempt is made through empirical studies and understanding among few Janjati communities of Chhattisgarh with respect to their emic understanding of the Ethno-ecology, Eco-system, and environmental wisdom long been practiced and handed over from generation to generation as a part of the processes of cultural continuity and change.

Shaping Electric Vehicle Perceptions

Sweeyam Chakraborty Sweeyam Chakraborty, Sudakshina Gupta — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0530

Electric vehicles are widely presented today as a new solution to the environmental costs of internal combustion engine (ICE) – a clean alternative challenging a technology that has dominated private mobility for more than a century. Over this period, the characteristics of the ICE have become so deeply embedded in public understanding that they now define, for most people, what a car simply is. Yet this perception obscures an earlier history. At the turn of the twentieth century, steam, electric, and internal combustion vehicles competed directly for the emerging private mobility market, and electric vehicles were not a marginal technology. By 1900, they accounted for nearly one-third of American automobiles and, in several respects, offered advantages over their rivals. This paper takes that overlooked technological contest as its starting point and argues that the subsequent dominance of ICE vehicles cannot be adequately explained as a straightforward market outcome in which the most efficient or practical technology prevailed. Instead, it contends that ICE dominance was substantially the product of path dependence. Contingent historical events, patent litigation, corporate financial collapse, and industrial-political manoeuvring locked in a technological trajectory that was not preordained by cost or performance alone. Once established, this trajectory was reinforced over successive decades into a deep cultural and psychological normalization, through which ICE characteristics became embedded markers of identity, status, and masculinity. Consequently, when electric vehicles re-emerged in the late twentieth century as a climate-policy priority, they appeared as a historical anomaly rather than the revival of an earlier competing technology, generating resistance from both industry and consumers. The paper concludes that economic incentives can move price-sensitive consumers but are structurally insufficient alone: sustained EV adoption requires policy that addresses the non-economic, identity-based residue of this history.