India is the largest consumer and importer of palm oil in the world. Its demand for palm oil is expected to double by 2030, which cannot be sustained just by increasing the import quantity, as it would be exporting its biodiversity issues to the supplying countries. We support the Government of India's views to expand oil palm cultivation in India. However, an aggressive push toward domestic oil palm cultivation at the expense of biodiversity is currently underway. Unsustainable expansion of oil palm cultivation in India with short-term economic goals will lead to both biodiversity and social issues. In this article, we outline India's position in the production and trade of palm oil. By reviewing the situation of Malaysia and Indonesia, we also propose necessary, workable solutions for sustainable oil palm cultivation in India. We recommend working within an integrative framework involving scientific research, social measures, and political actions: the 'SSP framework.' We believe that such an integrated approach is critical to achieve global sustainability targets from Paris Agreement at COP21 and 2015-2030 United Nation Sustainable Development Goals.

Over the years of research on gender and language, a growing interest has developed in the study of gender differences and differences in verbal interactions. However, TV talk-shows are a relatively less studied area of pragma-linguistics. TV talk shows are like everyday face-to-face talks except that they take place in an institutional setting. They include all the major features of conversations wherein turn-taking is a salient component of conversational interactions. Based on Holmes’ six universals about language and gender that stood against Lakoff’s Deficit Model, this study examined four episodes from four TV talk-shows in Bangladesh, two being hosted by men and two by women, to determine how differentially the hosts take turns to manage their verbal interactions in their talk shows. This study employs the conversation analysis approach developed by Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson to examine how the hosts’ turn-taking overlaps with guests’ speeches, and how the hosts’ practices of interruptions, based on gender, are shaped with distinct functions to manage their interactions in talk shows. Data analysis shows that the female hosts, aligned with Holmes’ universals, managed interactions by soft transitions, minimal turns with supportive overlaps, the strategy of co-construction, and nonlinguistic back channels whereas the male hosts’ interaction management patterns were fully opposite from each other’s: one took excessive turns mostly characterized by interruptive overlaps while the other, like the female hosts, made soft transitions and avoided interruptive turns. This study adds to gender and language studies contributing to emerging social perceptions that woman verbal interactions are characterized by solidarity and co-operation despite their social high standing.

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One of the most concerned topics in ecology is the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. However, there are few field studies, carried out in forests, although many studies have been done in controlled experiments in grasslands. In this paper, we describe the relationship pattern between three facets of diversity and productivity at Ratargul Fresh Water Swamp Forest (RFWSF) in Bangladesh, which is the only remaining fresh water swamp forest of the country. Sixty sample plots were selected from RFWSF and included six functional traits including leaf area (LA), specific leaf area (SLA), leaf dry matter content (LDMC), tree height, bark thickness and wood density. In analyzing TD, we used Shannon diversity and richness indices, functional diversity was measured by Rao's quadratic entropy (Rao 1982) and Faith's (1992) index was used for phylogenetic diversity (PD). It was found that, TD, FD and PD were positively related with productivity (basal area) due to resource use complementarity but surprisingly the best predictor of tree productivity was FD. The results contribute to the understanding the effects of biodiversity loss and it is essential for conservation decision-making and policy-making of Ratargul Fresh Water Swamp Forest.

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