In arid and semiarid regions and under rainfed conditions, water availability is one of the principal ecological constraints that hinder agriculture’s sustainability. The super absorbent polymer (agricultural) is water-absorbing and is cross-linked to absorb aqueous solutions through bonding with water molecules. It is a new approach to water management under water-stressed conditions to conserve soil moisture in the active rooting zone of crops by reducing the evaporation, deep percolation, and runoff losses. Agricultural hydrogels are water retention granules which swell their original size to numerous intervals when they come in contact with water. It can absorb and retain a huge amount of moisture under plentiful rainfall and irrigation events and release it back to the soil for mitigating crop water demand when the rhizosphere zone dries up under drought conditions. It plays multifarious roles in agriculture including soil-water retainer, nutrient and pesticide carriers, seed coating, soil erosion reducer, and food additives. It has the extraordinary ability in improving different physicochemical, hydrophysical, and biological properties of soil, simultaneously decreasing irrigation frequency, enhancing the water and nutrient use efficiencies, and increasing the yield and quality of the field, plantation, ornamental, and vegetable crops. These biodegradable materials are nontoxic to the soil, crop, and environment. Hence, the addition of the hydrogel polymer will be a promising and feasible technological tool for augmenting crop productivity under moisture stressed conditions.

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Basharat Peer’s Curfewed Night (2008) is a perspicacious commentary on the violence, exile and dispossession that have wrecked the lives of ordinary Kashmiris since 1947. Peer compellingly ruminates on the gradual loss of the Kashmiris’ belongingness in the last few decades that eventually curtailed their sense of individual and collective selfhood. The present article aims to analyse how Peer’s memoir emerges as a crucial intervention in focusing on the othering of Kashmiris in postcolonial India. This article will examine how Peer’s personal story shapes his creative expression of homeland and uncovers the gradual stymieing of Kashmiri Muslim citizenship and identity under Indian statehood, perhaps most alarmingly manifested in the abrogation of Article 370 in 2019. This article will look at how Peer’s narrative interrogates the predominating imaginations of Kashmir as the other in the pan-Indian psyche and engages with the inherent "ambivalence" of the nationalist discourse of India. Accordingly, the article will also study how Peer positions Kashmir as a "heterotopic space" that transcends any form of monolithic comprehension. In so doing, Peer’s memoir emerges as an alternative and autoethnographic chronicling of the Kashmir story undercutting the dominant assumptions, reinforced by the Indian nationalist project. Pertinently, the concepts of "ambivalence" and "heterotopia" are drawn from the theoretical perspectives of Homi Bhabha and Michael Foucault, respectively.

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